CAS A-Level Community

On Thursday at 4 pm I’ll be joined by Rebecca Franks for an introduction to Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

Explore our new enrichment resources that will support your learners in getting started in Unreal Editor for Fortnite. In the enrichment sessions, learners can design their own 3D world and personalise it with their own objects, they can then make a fun collectable game.
Sign up here: Getting started in Unreal Editor for Fortnite

On Wednesday at 4 pm I’ll be joined by Harry Wake and Anna Wake who will be
-offering some top tips on how you can make your programming lessons more interesting.
-demonstrating how to teach fundamental programming contexts with real-life scenarios, for instance, how programming can be used to tackle climate change.
-showcasing Mission Encodeable, the website they’ve created that takes students from knowing nothing about programming in Python to being able to answer high-demand GCSE programming questions. It’s completely free to access, very popular with students, and includes lots of interesting, real-world projects.
Sign up here Mission Encodeable's free programming resources

@bpeters suggested I share this here too…

DSIT are carrying out a survey to understand why teachers choose to deliver or not deliver the CyberEPQ and what the main incentives and barriers are. It should only take 10 minutes to complete and your participation will be highly appreciated and valuable to DSIT policy makers, whether or not you currently deliver the CyberEPQ.

Complete the survey here - https://dsit.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_39qV4fAM8t8aMt0

COMPUTING, ELECTRONICS & ROBOTICS
05 – 09 August 2024, University of Southampton

LIMITED FEMALE PLACES AVAILABLE!

Take your child’s passion for STEM to new heights in this five-day, ALL-INCLUSIVE residential course. This course will introduce students to industry professionals from Amazon Future Engineer, plus provide them with the opportunity to design and build their own robots whilst learning about the fundamentals of coding and circuits!

This course is available to students currently in Year 12 in England and Wales, S6 in Scotland, and Year 13 in Northern Ireland.

Hi Alan, on another topic - I wonder if there is a CAS meeting planned for Manchester Central? I am happy to come along or host at Tameside College if a venue is needed.
Thanks, Louise

Please sign up yourself or point your students here: Isaac Computer Science
This is an opportunity for your students and you to find out more about apprenticeships from the BCS and about other alternatives to traditional university degrees at an Isaac Discovery event we are hosting at 9am-10:30 am on 20th February 2024. (Aware that we are hitting half-term for some schools!)

(I’ll cross post to other threads - with advance apologies)

Thank you Richard, The spreadsheet really helps.

Abirami

Not a worksheet as such, but if you are teaching floating point normalisation, you might find this interactive spreadsheet simulation that I created useful:

https://metalup.org/floatingpoint/description.html

It is quite sophisticated, but by interacting with it you end up with a really strong feel for how normalisation works and why it is important to maintain accuracy. Also gives you an understanding of why the first two digits need to be different.

Richard

@Alan Harrison, thank you. I never thought about chatgpt worksheets.

@Abirami Kumar I use Craig’n’Dave resources, ExamBuilder and Isaac, but I also just used the free ChatGPT 3,5 to create some questions with this prompt.

Create a worksheet of six questions worth between 4 and 8 marks each, on 2’s complement fixed and floating point binary numbers, suitable for an exam in OCR A-level in Computer Science. Each question should have a mix of AO1 (demonstrate knowledge and understanding), AO2 (apply knowledge) and AO3 (evaluate and design solutions) marks. At the end of the worksheet write the mark scheme with model answers.
The results are in the chat transcript here, along with a follow-up prompt to create some simple conversion questions. Results are not bad, might need a tidy up.

@Priya Ravi it’s here: Useful websites for A-Level CS - Google Docs

Hi
I still can’t find the resources from 5/2/24 session - Useful websites to teach A level.
Can anyone help?
Thanks

@abirami Kumar, I teach it off the board, but you could try the Isaac Computing workbook? Isaac Computer Science

For OCR the questions on Data representations start on p127.
Alternatively ZigZag have worksheets with some questions.

Does anyone have worksheets for 2’s complement and fixed and floating point binary.

Hi all, for those of you teaching KS5, your learners may be interested in applying for an Apprenticeship at Arm. They have Level 4 and Degree apprenticeships in the Arm Cambridge offices.

Apply here: Search for available jobs at arm here

Lots of useful websites are linked to from here: Useful websites for A-Level CS - Google Docs
Do add your own if they’re not already included

Once I have taught Boolean algebra I get my classes to do Boolean Algebra Quiz and see how many questions they can get right in a row.

Are there any useful websites you use for teaching or would recommend for your students? Hoping to showcase some at our next event on 5th Feb. Email me if you’d be happy to show (Becci.peters@bcs.uk)

Ok, links being stripped out. Please do go to Isaaccomputerscience.org discover events for more details.

Hi there, I’m very excited to be able to offer “Alternatives to traditional university degrees” to a-level students via Isaac Computing events. As an OU graduate and post-grad and a teacher with an utterly non-traditional career, I would not be writing this here now without the OU. We are also talking about Apprenticeships and Code First Girls degrees. Isaac Computer Science
I hope it’s okay to tell people about this here :).

As someone teaching OCR for the first time this year these are really useful - thank you!

Thanks to those who came to the session this week about marking OCR exam papers. Here are the slides from the session. Do let us know if there’s anything you’d like covered in future sessions

Good idea!