PyconUK - A teacher's perspective

Short talk giving teacher's perspective of the Education track at pyconUK 2014.

Transcript

1. PyconUK An ex-teacher’s perspective James Robinson @jrobinson_uk Photos by @ntoll & @teknoteacher
2. Journey to PyconUK Early education (Sometime in the 80s) PRINT “Hello world”
3. Journey to PyconUK Life as an educator (2004 -) • Started life as Maths Teacher + Head of ICT • Quickly frustrated with how dull ICT had become. ◦ office app based, programming limited to Excel macros / Formula ◦ Engaging / difficult concepts left until end of year.. • Slowly made changes… ◦ Lego Robotics ◦ Games Factory ◦ Scratch ◦ HTML (notepad)
4. Journey to PyconUK Life as an educator (2004 -) • Began Collaborating (outside of school) ◦ Joined Computing at Schools (CAS) ◦ Worked with local primaries • New Computer Science GCSEs (much fanfare!) • Presents many challenges ◦ What language? ◦ Arrgghh how do I teach this? ◦ How do I challenge • Collaboration with other teachers imperative ◦ Twitter, Picademy, CAS,
5. PyconUK - Education Track • Two day track: ◦ Teachers Day ◦ Kids Day ◦ (Developers welcome to both) • Filled with workshops, demos, training, discussions, quadcopters and cake! http://goo.gl/osi7ce
6. Education Track - Teachers Day • Series of workshops (AM) ◦ Minecraft Pi ◦ Physical Computing ◦ Intro to OOP ◦ Robotics Demo • Unconference style session (PM) ◦ Resource development ◦ Coaching ◦ Creating Libraries / tools http://goo.gl/osi7ce
7. Collaboration Teachers Great at: • Delivery • Progression • Assessing • Engagement Need Help with: • Knowledge • Exploring possibilities • Relevance • Challenging pupils • Enabling learners Developers Great at: • Creating solutions • Detailed knowledge • Writing libraries / tools • Relevance Need Help with: • Engaging learners • Making Python more accessible
8. Education Track - Kids Day Unfortunately I couldn’t attend, but I wish I had…
9. What’s in it for me? • FUN for all!!! • Teachers ◦ Coaching & support / confidence ◦ Ideas for lessons / scheme / challenges ◦ New tools / contacts • Developers ◦ Adopt a teacher ◦ Engage teachers and kids with python community ◦ Warm fuzzy feeling ◦ Reinforces a deeper understanding & your own clarity of thought. • Kids ◦ Safe place to play and learn ◦ Collaboration with others ◦ Pride and achievement • Did I mention the cake?
10. Another perspective - @swaygrantham “...PyCon Edu track offers something that none of the other CPD programs out there do which is a connection to real world developers. Particularly for a primary school teacher, there's so many subjects we need to know about and we just don't have time to be experts in everything. What's best is that we know people who are experts at everything and we can utilise their skills. I am a relatively knowledgeable Computing teacher for the primary level and yet this is never going to compare to someone who programs all day every day. Perhaps a piece of code which would take me hours to find a tiny mistake in a professional programmer can find in minutes. As a primary school teacher, my students do not need to know all the complicated ins and outs of Python programming. What they need is something exciting which will inspire them to want to learn all the ins and outs of Python programming. Whilst this may not be something I can do, if I can get someone to do something really cool in Minecraft or to control a quadcopter etc. I can use that as a stimulus which will help inspire the youngsters in my class begin their programming journey.” http://goo.gl/xcLuHE
11. How can you help? • Adopt a teacher • Talk about computing in your local school • Help develop tools & libraries that support learners • Run a talk or workshop for educators • Run a code club • Something else amazing!
12. Questions?