Author: mraharrisoncs

I’ve created these to go with the Edexcel GCSE Computer Science course, but they can be adapted to fit other board’s material easily. The Edexcel Pseudocode is very different to OCR/AQA as it is based on Haggis, but otherwise it should be easy to “port”.

Hat tip to Chris Whitworth, whose KOs (available free on TES) I used as a basis for these, so much of the work is his, thanks Chris. I’ve rearranged, changed a few things and added lots of images, but the commentary section is still his.

I’ve included samples of Python, so if you use another language that’s another thing to change. Anyway I hope it is useful. Feedback welcome in the comments or on my Twitter.

Sorry WordPress doesn’t support zip files, so I’ll upload to CAS soon as a zip.

The Quizlet resources referred to are also available for free on my Quizlet account here.

01_Problem-Solving_Knowledge-Organiser

02_Programming_Knowledge-Organiser

03_Data_Knowledge-Organiser

04_Computers_Knowledge-Organiser

05_Communication-and-Internet-Knowledge-Organiser

06_The-Bigger-Picture_Knowledge-Organiser

Edit 16 April. I’ve tidied up the paper and now uploaded the solution / mark scheme. 

There are precious few mock papers out there for the new spec Paper 2, so I’ve written one. It’s on CAS here
CAS Resouce 5573 – my Paper 2 Mock   and also attached to WordPress at the link below. In both cases shared under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 licence – feel free to use non-commercially. Enjoy!

Linked documents below:

Computing Edexcel GCSE Paper 2 PPE AH

Computing Edexcel GCSE Paper 2 PPE AH Mark Scheme

I’m all set. Tomorrow I pair up my Year 10s for programming. I’ve asked them who they want to work with, giving me several options each. I’ve then paired similar abilities (following advice from @teknoteacher), and created a booklet of challenges from absolute beginner to fairly advanced GCSE coder.

I’ve given points for each, and we’ll be doing this all week (3 hours) with me hovering around helping when they get stuck, but mostly facilitating them in getting unstuck themselves. I’ll report back later on how this works. But if you want the resource, it is attached…

GCSE Coding Workbook 1 AJH

Kids love a puzzle or two at Christmas. This is mine, compiled mostly from unplugged activities at cs4fn.org and teachinglondoncomputing.org used with permission. Feel free to use, just retain the attribution in the footer please. Merry Christmas!

Download link for Word Doc:-

Computing Christmas Challenge 2017 public

It occurs to me that a lot of what has become reasonably automatic for me in the last two years (PGCE and NQT years) might not be everyone’s experience. So here are a few tips for new teachers based on my own experience.

1. Save everything, preferably digitally. I use OneNote as my school has an Office365 account, and everything I find useful goes in there. I take notes at meetings, save ideas on the fly, capture stuff from Twitter and other online sources. You never know when it will come in handy. Good digital notebooks include Evernote and Google Keep too.
2. Learn names. This was hard for me but nothing kills your confidence than getting students’ names wrong, or not knowing them. I had one class last year with two Niamhs and a Neve, which doesn’t help. But once I knew the names – and better still, knew something about them – I was much more in control and confident. Take a class photo if you can, or print one off from SIMS if possible, and revise at home. Do some activities early in the year such as “
3. alliteration” (the kids have to come up with an alliterative nickname eg. Dancing Dean, Singing Sophie etc.) and learn those names!
4. Smile. This might be hard if you’re under pressure. But kids will relax and enjoy your lessons if you look like you’re enjoying them. So in return you get better behaviour. It’s tricky but rewarding. Don’t feel you have to compromise on behaviour, just smile while being firm! Be warm but strict… more here.
5. Capture the kids. By this I mean save data on them, we’re not talking the Choky from Matilda. I use Excel, like almost everyone else. I download the marksheet from SIMS at the start of the year, format nicely and then add columns. These are the columns I add:
   • Quality of book notes (2 cols: grade A/B/C and notes) twice every half term
   • Formative assessment grade twice every half term
   • Summative assessment once every half term
   • Teaching and Learning notes: support needed etc.
   • “About me”: what they like, aspire to etc. (from first lesson captured by Edmodo)
6. Remember why you’re doing this. Read “Teach Like a Pirate” and write down your passions, and keep them close. Put your favourite inspirational quotes up on the wall and share them with your students. You’ll forget, once in a while. Why not feign exasperation and ask the kids “why do I do this?” and see who replies “because we’re the future, Sir, you’re training us to clean up your mess, innit!” – guaranteed to bring that smile back.

Yes, that is my dog, Casper, in the picture. Be like Casper. With less tongue, perhaps.

Teaching is hard work, but enjoyable. And to me, planning to teach is not work at all, it’s play. Let me explain.

I am on holiday in the Dordogne, and it is 30 degrees already (10:45 CET) but I am blogging after cleaning the pool then doing some quick research and “link stashing” on Diigo (more later). This afternoon I will have a swim and sit by the pool reading “Guerilla teaching” and catching up with blogs and TED talks.

If you’ve met me you will know that what I like doing most is teaching, followed by talking about teaching. I can probably put “planning to te

ach” and “reading about teaching” somewhere on that continuum, all higher than, say, marking, and all of those are stratospheric compared to DIY and gardening.

So yesterday evening I had the great pleasure of drinking cold Kronenbourg while watching TED talks and Robotics videos on YouTube, playing with algorithm visualisations and organising my bookmarks about all of them. I learned, about quantum entanglement , robots that swim and considered buying 3d model specs for “logic goats”.

I’ve already finished “Teach Like a Pirate” this holiday and I’m now on “Guerrilla Teaching” before switching to novels for a while. As Dave Burgess says in TLAP, my brain will continue to process the ideas in both books subconsciously while I enjoy the non-teaching material.

But then I read this article in the Guardian’s “Secret Teacher” column. “By working in the holidays, teachers are showing that they don’t need them, that they needn’t be paid well for the time they allocate to a crucial job that is supposed to improve society. They are devaluing themselves.”

Hmm, now I said earlier, I love planning for teaching, I stash away ideas, I refocus on what is important. I learn “soft” skills (thanks @BurgessDave for making me remember my passions) and subject knowledge (I practiced coding by writing some JPEG image filters in Python). For this work I feel more confident about September.

Should I have done this? Or tried to find the time in September? I don’t know, apart from the self-knowledge that tells me I would be much more nervous about starting school, less centred, less well-prepared mentally if I did nothing over the holidays.

Confucius is quoted as saying “Find a job you love and never work again”, and this sums up my attitude to teaching. I will always “work” in the holidays because it’s fun.

I’ve just taught this lesson and I thought I’d share it.

I used the excellent “Squirrel Eat Squirrel” pygame program from Al Sweigart at the Invent With Python blog. I made a worksheet to help the students through analysis of the code. They had to use all their coding skills to decipher the finished code, and to “hack” it – change things and improve the code. I’ll elaborate later. Enjoy!

KS4 Worksheet – Coding – Squirrels

We’re having some work done on the house, as you can see. But wait, that’s not your average smartphone pic from out the window, what’s that URL snippet?

Yes, I set up a webcam to watch the builders at work. As a teacher I don’t have any time to watch, but still.. it’s a geek project and I’m a geek. This is how I did it. For free…

1. Find an old device. I have a Tesco Hudl that nobody uses any more. You could use an old smartphone.
2. Install an IP webcam app. I use IP Webcam  Others are available. Configure it and point it where you need it. Mine is in the bedroom window. While you’re at it, get the device powered up constantly, so you’ll need a charger and cable that reaches to the device.
3. View the webcam on your local network. You must find out the IP address of your device, usually by logging in to your router. Mine is a Virgin SuperHub and it’s there under DHCP. So the device is 192.168.1.20 today. Great, point your browser at http:// 192.168.1.20: 8080 you should see the webcam interface. Super!
4. While you’re in your router, you have to make sure the device stays on the same local IP address, this is called DHCP reservation. Get it’s current address reserved. So far so good, you have a webcam you can view when you’re on your home LAN!
5. To make the webcam visible outside your home, you need to go back into your router settings. Find “Port Forwarding” and forward the port (8080) for the device’s IP address (192.168.1.20) to the internet. This makes the webcam visible to the outside world.
6. You’re nearly done. Find out your current IP address – open a command prompt and type “ipconfig” on Windows  or open Terminal and type “ifconfig” on a Mac – or because it’s C21 and we’re lazy… type “whats my ip” into Google. Say it’s 89.10.191.34 for argument’s sake. Type “89.10.191.34:8080” into the address bar. Boom! Webcam on the web!
7. Because home IP addresses change often, you might want to set up “Dynamic DNS”. This means you can use a URL to access your home IP address and when it changes, the DNS entry for your URL changes to point at your new address. I use “FreeDNS” from afraid.org, they are geeks but… it’s free and does the biz. If youre a geek too, set this up.
8. If your device keeps going to sleep or going offline, you need a “keep alive” app. Try this one.  Now you’re done, and like me, you can watch builders do nothing for much of the day!

I post this for two reasons:

a) to prove I am still a geek
b) in case I ever forget how to do it. Time and tide etc…

Have a great half term.