Schlagwort: educational resources

  • Teach your learners with The Computing Curriculum

    Teach your learners with The Computing Curriculum

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Computing combines a very broad mixture of concepts and skills. We work to support any school to teach students about the whole of computing and how to create with digital technologies. A key part of this support is The Computing Curriculum.

    Two girls code at a desktop computer while a female mentor observes them.
    We help schools around the world teach their learners computing.

    The Computing Curriculum: Free and comprehensive

    The Computing Curriculum is our complete bank of free lesson plans and other resources that offer you everything you need to teach computing lessons to all school-aged learners. It helps you cover the full breadth of computing, including computing systems, programming, creating media, data and information, and societal impacts of digital technology.

    The 500 hours of free, downloadable resources within The Computing Curriculum include all the materials you need in your classroom: from lesson plans and slide decks to activity sheets, homework, and assessments. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive set of free teaching and learning materials for computing and digital skills in the world.

    Two learners and a teacher in a physical computing lesson.
    We continuously update The Computing Curriculum to reflect the latest research about this young subject.

    Our Curriculum’s resources are based on clear progression and content frameworks we’ve designed, and we continuously update them based on the latest research and feedback from practising teachers. Doing this is particularly important for computing education resources, because computing is a young subject where thoughts and understanding about the best teaching approaches are still evolving.

    Computing lesson plans that save time and engage your learners

    With The Computing Curriculum, we support educators of all levels of experience. Whether you specialise in computing, or you are a newcomer to the subject, the Curriculum will save you time and help you deliver engaging lessons.

    In our 2022 survey of teachers who have used The Computing Curriculum resources:

    • 91% said the Curriculum was effective or very effective at saving teachers time
    • 89% said it was effective or very effective at developing teachers’ subject knowledge
    • 81% said it was effective or very effective at engaging students

    The resources are organised as themed units, and they support your computing lesson planning, preparation, and delivery because they are comprehensive as well as adaptable. You are free to use the resources as they are, or adjust them to your context, access to hardware, and learners’ needs and experience level.

    A Kenyan child smiles at a computer.
    The Computing Curriculum will help you plan and deliver engaging lessons.

    One aspect of The Computing Curriculum that will facilitate your teaching is the progression framework on which the resources are based. In creating the resources, we have considered the learning objectives throughout each unit and year group, and throughout the entire schooling period. This progression is detailed in curriculum maps and learning graphs, and you’ll be able to use these documents to plan your lessons and to check your learners’ understanding.

    Start teaching with The Computing Curriculum

    You can download and use the resources for the year groups you teach computing right now. And please tell us of your experiences using The Computing Curriculum in your classroom, so that we can make the resources even better for educators around the world.

    If you are interested in curriculum resources tailored for your region, please contact us via this form. You can find out how we adapted resources from The Computing Curriculum for learners living in a refugee camp in Kenya if you’d like to learn about our approach to tailoring resources.

    Website: LINK

  • Scratch 3, and upgrading our free resources

    Scratch 3, and upgrading our free resources

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    On 2 January, MIT released the latest version of their incredible visual programming language: Scratch 3!

    Screenshot of Scratch 3 interface

    Scratch 3 is here

    We love Scratch — it’s the perfect starting point for young people who want to try coding, and we’re offering a huge variety of free Scratch project guides for all interests and coding abilities.

    Scratch 3 introduces a brand-new look and feel. The most obvious change is that the stage is now on the right-hand side; there are new paint and sound editing tools; new types of code blocks; and the blocks are now larger and easier to read.

    To help you and your young learners navigate the new Scratch 3 interface, we’ve created a free, printable Scratch 3 poster:

    Scratch 3 interface with annotations

    Perhaps the biggest news is that Scratch 3 also works on tablets, opening up coding to many children who don’t have access to a computer.

    We’ve upgraded!

    We want to make this a smooth transition for all of you who rely on our free project resources, whether that be at a Code Club, CoderDojo, Raspberry Jam, or at home, so we’ve been busy upgrading our resources to work with Scratch 3.

    Scratch 3 versions of all projects in the Code Club Scratch Modules 1–3 and the CoderDojo Scratch Sushi Cards are already live!

    Screenshot of Scratch 3 project on Raspberry Pi projects site

    The upgrading process also was a chance for us to review our resources to make sure they are the best they can be; as part of this, we’ve introduced a number of improvements, such as simplified layouts, better hints, and better print-outs.

    And we know that for many people, starting to use Scratch 3 is not simple, or not even possible yet, so we are committed to providing support for both Scratch 2 and 3 for the next 12 months.

    We are really pleased with how our newly polished Scratch projects turned out, and we hope you are too!

    What’s to come

    Over the coming months, we’ll update the rest of our Scratch projects. Meanwhile, our amazing volunteer translators will begin the process of translating the upgraded projects.

    Raspberry Pi projects site

    Brand-new projects that take advantage of some of Scratch 3’s new features are also in the pipeline!

    Scratch 3 on Pi

    Another reason for ensuring we support both Scratch 2 and 3 is that, at the moment, there is no offline, installable version of Scratch 3 for Raspberry Pi. Rest assured that this is something we are working on!

    The creation of Scratch 3 for Raspberry Pi will be a two-step process: first we’ll support MIT with their optimisation of Scratch 3 to make sure it delivers the best performance possible on a range of devices; once that work is complete, we’ll create an offline build of Scratch 3 for Raspberry Pi, including new extensions for the GPIO pins and the Sense HAT.

    Make sure you’re following us on Twitter and Facebook, as we’ll be announcing more information on this in the coming months!

    Website: LINK