Elan training day

Elan – the first new programming language to be designed in Britain specifically for teaching in secondary schools since BBC Basic in 1981 – was publicly announced at the CAS Conference in July 2024 and attracted a lot of interest. Beta versions are currently accessible (see https://elan-lang.org) and the production release (Elan 1.0) is scheduled for May 2025, along with a selection of quality teaching resources.

We're organising a whole-day training course on Elan for Wednesday 25th June. It will be hosted at the BCS headquarters in London, running from 10:00 to 16:00 with lunch provided. The course is free to attend, and open to all active secondary school teachers. You will not need to have any prior exposure to Elan, nor to be an expert programmer – Elan is an advanced language, but is designed to be easily assimilated by any teacher with prior experience of teaching programming up to GCSE standard in any contemporary language. The day will address both GCSE and A-level standard programming, and even if you don't currently teach A-level, you should find the latter very helpful in developing your own understanding.

The day will be led by Richard Pawson FBCS, who has led the design of Elan, and Richard will be assisted by others from the Elan design team. Parts of the day will be demonstrations from the front, but more of it will be hands-on (you will need to bring a laptop). As well as an introduction to the language and its integrated development environment, you will also be exploring a range of teaching resources.

A specific aim for the day, is that you would leave with enough understanding of the language, and the resources, that you would be able to teach Elan as an enjoyable, and instructive, experiment over the remaining 3 weeks of this summer term.

Places on the course are limited, so please book now if interested, and do cancel if you can no longer attend so someone else can take your place. A more detailed agenda will be released nearer the time.