CAS Trainee & ECT Community

BCS 2025 Competitions Please publicise these, and maybe enter your students and how about entering the BCS Open classes yourself ? - many thanks Margaret

This year there are BCS 2025 competitions, organised by the BCS GreenIT, e-learning, Animation and Games Development SGs.

Details of all these at Community competitions | BCS

All student entries, at all levels, including part-time students, must be entered by a member of staff at that educational establishment.

Each year there are different themes for each of these competitions.

Here you will find a list of competitions being run by our BCS SGs

BCS e-Learning specialist group
-Theme: “AI for Health Improvement and Education”. - Who can take part?: Primary to Post-grad (p2p) and Open classes

Entries by: Monday 7 April 2025, World Health Day 2025 BCS e-Learning SG 2025 competition | BCS
BCS Animation and Games Development specialist group

Theme for the artifact: “The Power of Connection - Design a game where the core idea is understanding, empathy, and unity among players from different cultures and backgrounds”
Who can take part?: Primary to Post-grad (p2p) and Open classes
Entries by: Friday 9 May 2025
BCS GreenIT specialist group

Theme: Our Power, Our Planet “This is why Earth Day’s theme for 2025, Our Power, Our Planet, is perhaps our most important theme ever. This year we will shine a spotlight on renewable energy — for our power, our people, and our planet.!”
Who can take part?: Primary to Post-grad (p2p) students and open classes
Entries by: Tuesday 22 April 2025 (Earth Day) -
BCS Cybercrime Forensics SG Theme: “Cybercrime Forensics - show us your stuff!”
Who can take part?: HE and FE students
Entries by: Friday 30 May 2025

An example of a winning entry of one of the Power Point competitions:

The winning entry a few years ago for the idea for a computer game was a single PowerPoint titled “The Last Mermaid” showing a picture of a mermaid sitting on a rock with rubbish in the sea around her - so the picture immediately gave a clue to the subject, as did the title “The Last Mermaid”.

There were 5 bullet points that explained the idea, which were:

a simple computer game for all ages from the young to the old to compare how long different items remained in the sea (say comparing an apple core to a baby’s nappy)

a more different difficult level of the game “The Last Mermaid” was to identify how different materials could harm different types of wildlife in the sea, from eating plastic to getting trapped in plastic containers

the aim of the game which was to make everyone regardless of age more aware of the harm that we could do to the oceans and the creatures that live in it

everyone should to think about renewing or reusing items that we no longer use

Every one of the Panel of Judges independently chose this, “The Last Mermaid”

as it was relevant to the theme, with a clear simple explanation, together with suitable picture(s) relevant to the theme for that year, showing a possible useful application to help solve a problem

Although the judges are given no precise criteria, they are asked to rank the entries in their preferred order. Their comments that I received after from the judges all commented positively on those above points.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is running a free online half-day workshop for trainee computer science teachers on Thursday 17 April.

If you currently have trainee teachers at a placement in your school, we’d love them to take part. And if you’re a trainee teacher yourself, you’re very welcome!

More details here: Ada Computer Science

Please forward on to anyone you think might be interested. Thanks

Hiya,

This is your one-week-to-go reminder for our ICT/ECT peer to peer drop-in call, on Teams Monday 24 February, 17:00-18:00

Register here: ITT/ECT P2P Support Drop-In

Joining Link: Join conversation

See you soon!

Will

Hi all,

How can we better support students in exploring careers in computing? This was the focus of our recent CAS ITT & ECT Meeting, where we discussed effective strategies for guiding students towards opportunities in the field.

If you couldn’t attend—or would like to revisit the insights shared—you can now access the event summary, recording, and useful resources here:
Event Summary & Resources - CAS ITT & ECT Meeting: How to talk to students about careers in Computing

We hope these materials help spark valuable career conversations in your classrooms. If you have any thoughts or questions, we’d love to hear from you!

Dear Community,

We’re having our monthly social peer support drop-in call for trainees, ECTs, and those who may be past it, but still nurture and support their inner trainee. This Thursday, 6pm:

Please pop in!

Dear Community,

The CaS website will be offline for coughmuchneededcough maintenance and updates next week. So I am posting the link to our Monday call here. Please pop in!

See you Monday! 5 to 6, drop-in any time.

Dear Com’

Our Peer to Peer support launch was a qualified success, in that I learnt webinar reminders are not automated, which explained the differential between sign-up and attendees!

To give everyone the chance, we’re having another drop-in, low-key, social call in Dec, on Monday 19th, this time 5-6pm.

Watch this space.

Hello,

We’re starting in just 5 minutes! Join us for Adaptive teaching in Computing
Get your tea/coffee ready and click the link below to join:

(further to my previous post, just two below)

If you are a trainee or early-career teacher, and would like to join our monthly drop-in, low-key informal video call, please register your interest here:

Don’t miss out on tomorrow’s session on Adaptive Teaching in Computing! Join us to explore effective techniques and strategies to tailor computing education to diverse student needs.

Event details and registration here - Adaptive teaching in Computing

Dear ECTs and Trainees,

I’ve done my ITT in 21-22, then two years of ECT (though I’ve not completed it, since it was all part-time). It was challenging, as I don’t need to tell you.

I’m volunteering for the BCS and CaS, and, after a discussion with Beccy, I would like to facilitate a monthly drop-in Zoom call for the community to network, exchange perspectives/tips/resources, support each other, elicit ideas for future events/resources for the community, etc…

This would be an after-school slot of 60-90 mins, on a different weekday each time so as to avoid timetable clashes.

Interested? reach out at williamDOTberardAT[The email service of the Mountain View company branded in primary colours].com

(hopefully the net-scraping surveillance AI won’t be able to crack that one!)

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Will

Hi everyone,
Just a quick reminder that our CAS Trainee & ECT Community meeting, Behaviour for learning within computing lessons, is happening tomorrow at 4pm. There’s still time to join us!

Register here if you haven’t yet:
https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2024/october/behaviour-for-learning-within-computing-lessons

Hi everyone,

We’d like you to join us for our upcoming community meeting, Effective Classroom Management in Computing, on Thursday, 10th October 2024 at 4pm.

The session will focus on the importance of rules and procedures, teacher-pupil relationships, and strategies for computing lessons, with Neil Rickus leading the discussion. We’ll also address specific challenges of using digital devices in the classroom and share examples of good practice for different cohorts.

Mark your calendars, and we hope you can join us!

Hi everyone,

Our first meeting of the newly formed CAS Higher Education Community—Kick-Off Meeting: Shaping Our HE Community Together—is happening today at 4 PM. This meeting is specifically for those who work in Higher Education, and there’s still time to join us for what promises to be an engaging and insightful discussion.

If you haven’t registered yet, you can do so here: Kick-Off Meeting: Shaping our HE Community together

Thank you to everyone who joined us for CAS Conference on Saturday - it was great to see you all in person! We hope you all enjoyed catching up with each other and listening to some great speakers as well. And don’t forget, the session materials are available to download from

https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/communities-and-events/cas-conference-2024/workshop-programme

Join me on Thursday where we’ll be giving tips for those who will be starting their ECT1 In September and outlining the support available from CAS, the NCCE and Raspberry Pi Foundation
If you’re an experienced teacher please come along and give tips to those starting their careers
https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2024/july/from-trainee-to-ect-where-to-get-your-support

Thanks, everyone for the meeting last night, I found it a very useful session and thanks Miles for the slides, brilliant ideas and resources.

@Steven Kenny – I would get in touch if I could find your contact details… please email me at mhoneyman@ccc.tela.org.uk Thank you.

Many thanks for last night Miles/Becci, it was really interesting and thank you for sharing the materials and video.

Here’s the recording from yesterday: https://youtu.be/7vyzIqdSiwU

The notebook I worked on during tonight’s session is here: Google Colab

To those who could and couldn’t attend the session tonight, Miles’ slides are here: The CCF/ECF for computing - Google Slides
I’ll add the recording tomorrow. Please let me know what you’d like covered at the next meeting (and do. let me know if you’d like to run a session)
Thanks!

Are there any PGCE/ITT tutors who are members of the group? AQA offers support to trainees to learn about the work of Awarding Bodies: how specifications and assessments are created, exam data and the opportunity to practise marking. The sessions have a broad focus and are designed to develop trainees’ understanding of the system in which they will eventually work. AQA can deliver sessions either face:face or online and the sessions can be tailored to suit your trainees’ needs. Please contact me if you think that I can help.