Inspiring Computational Thinking and Digital Literacy Stewart Powell, Coordinator

LiDW Technocamps Beginning in September 2014, Technocamps have been funded by the Welsh Government to deliver a minimum of one 3-hour computer science based taster session within every secondary school in Wales! Since September we have engaged with over 75 secondary schools and have supported many extra-curricular events such as regular after-school Technoclubs, etc. Response from schools has been particularly positive with many school looking to book additional sessions.

Technoteach In addition to our school engagement, we offer a wide range of CPD opportunities for teachers. These sessions range from: Primary School Programming Secondary School Python Secondary School Greenfoot Secondary School Theory Sessions will be on offer throughout this term with more information on our website.

Today… I will introduce a selection of activities which can be used to introduce computer science within the classroom. Discuss the challenges faced when presenting these tasks to your students. The next steps to promoting digital literacy within your departments and your schools.

LEGO Challenge I need a two volunteers… Objective 1: Create the most interesting shape of the the 12 LEGO pieces I have given you… Objective 2: Describe the shape to the second volunteer who must try and make the same shape!

If I was a robot, how would you instruct me to… Walk Forward Follow a line on the floor Walk to the wall and then stop… before hitting it! Find the nearest wall

Cargo-Bot Cargo-Bot is an iPad application where you program a robotic arm to move around boxes from an initial set-up to a given final set-up. We are going to go through the tutorials on the board and then you are going to complete these tutorials, along with the first task.

LEGO Mindstorms Robots The LEGO Mindstorms is a great kit to introduce programming within your classroom. It benefits from providing: A graphical programming environment (not dissimilar to Scratch) A hands-on approach which helps engage the majority of students It’s LEGO

Mindstorms NXT Programming The LEGO Mindstorms NXT programming software is an all in one tool which allows you to write programs to control the LEGO Mindstorms robot. On opening the program, you should see a screen similar to the one on this slide.

Where to go from here… I hope that today has inspired you to thinking differently about the ways to introduce computer science into your classrooms. There is significant importance to ensuring all students are exposed to computational thinking throughout their education. We have a wealth of resources online at which can be used as a starting point to introducing other computer science technologies into the classroom.

Thank you for listening! Questions?