Career Long Professional Development

10th June 201518th March 2017

Raspberry Jam/Jam Packed event – August 2015

Hi Folks,

I just want to make you aware that the Jam Packed Team will be running a Jam Packed/Raspberry Jam Event at Hamilton Grammar School, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire on Friday 28th, Saturday 29th August 2015.

Details are still being ironed out as to the exact format of the event however the proposed running order will be along the lines of…

Friday 28th morning – pupil workshops in the school for classes from within the school
Friday 28th afternoon – CPD for teachers on getting started with the Raspberry Pi in Learning and Teaching
Friday 28th evening – “Family Hack” – pupils and parents (any age, any school) can bring a laptop for some fun filled computing challenges as presented by the Jam Packed Team.

Saturday 29th August – Raspberry Jam
10.30am – 3.30pm

We will be hosting a Raspberry Jam event. So there will be:

Hack Spaces – come and <code> with friends
Workshops
- Getting Started
- Geocraft – Coding Minecraft for Raspberry Pi
- Scratch
- Hackasuarus
- Sonic-Pi
- much more… (Want to run a workshop? let us know?)
Talks
- We are planning to get some people to present their projects and explain what they’ve done and how?
- Again, this is community driven. So book a space to tell us what you have done.
Project Demonstations
- Bring your projects and show us what you’ve done – let others have a go and share with other enthusiasts.

To control numbers all tickets for all events will be available via eventbrite.

For more information as it unfolds and follow the link to tickets from:

The Jam Packed Team are being supported by RM and the Raspberry Pi Foundation to run these events.

So, please come along and help make this event a success. Please contact me if you’d like to demonstate a project, lead a workshop or lead a seminar and I’ll see what we can do!!! I look forward to speaking to some of you there.

Colin

18th June 201318th March 2017

Oracle Java CPD for South Lanarkshire Computing Teachers

One of the good things to come out of this year’s CAS Scotland conference was the offer from Oracle to support the continuious professional development (CPD) of Scottish Computing Teacher’s.

We took up that offer and from the end of March till the middle of May, twenty-five Computing Teachers and Lecturers mainly from South Lanarkshire worked through their Java Fundamentals Programming Course. This course consisted of materials covering Alice, Greenfoot and Java using Eclipse and had two examinations a mid-term and final. Both counted towards course completion. Finally, there were two project days where we worked in teams to create a working game.

In due course i’ll embed that here!

We all really enjoyed it and are looking forward to a similar experience through one of Oracle’s other offerings.

27th October 201218th March 2017

Computing At School Scotland Conference 2012

Today, I attended the first Computing at School’s Scotland Conference in Edinburgh. This was a marvellous event on many levels.

It was over subscribed, yet over 100 Computing Teachers paid £20 probably their own money plus travelling expenses to give up their Saturday to meet with each other to try and progress their own subject.
There were a good range of speakers, all suitably qualified, well respected in their field who gave some of the best advice, guidance, thoughts or opinions about different challenges which face computing in Schools.
This wasn’t a greeting meeting! Everything was positive and constructive, forward looking and being for the benefit of and with the focus of learners experiencing computer education in the next few years.
It was a fantastic representation of support from the Government agencies, Universities in Scotland (and Kent), from Industry including Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Runrev and last but by no means teachers.
It was supremely well organised! Friendly, relaxed and everyone talked to everyone else.

I think that computing teachers sometimes get a bad press as being geeky, unapproachable and moaning. Well, certainly not those who were their today. We were proud and professional and I was glad to be one of them.

What did I learn? What will impact my learning and teaching? Lots! But that’s for a different post!

To all those who contributed, organised, presented or to those in the tweetisfere who I had the chance to meet in real life.

Thanks,

Colin