About the books

Cover art explained…

I conceived the cover art which features some of the characters and concepts explored in the book.

At top left we see Persian scholar al-Khwarizmi, whose name gave us the word algorithm, from where the line draws a famous photograph of Ada Lovelace, Victorian scientist and author of an algorithm for Babbage’s Analytical Engine.

Next the single line draws Tim Berners-Lee at CERN showing off the first ever website, before drawing Katie Bouman, astrophysicist and computer scientist on the Event Horizon Telescope project at MIT whose Python code created the world’s first image of a black hole.

Finally we see a woman relaxing in a self-driving car, representing cutting-edge computing applications of the 21st century. A single line draws the whole image, reducing the image to its essentials, representing abstraction, a key theme of computing which runs throughout the book.

Click below for some sample content of each chapter of “How to Teach Computer Science”…

How to Teach Computer Science

Buy the book at johncattbookshop.com or
on Amazon here

You will read some of the backstory to our subject – the “hinterland” – those fascinating journeys into history that make the subject come alive and place it in historical context. These stories will help you to enrich your lessons, cement core knowledge, develop cultural capital and help you excite a life-long love for the subject. We will go beyond the mark scheme to explore the subject knowledge behind the answers, giving you the confidence to discuss the field in greater depth, enabling you to use explicit instruction methods: presenting skills and concepts clearly and directly enabling student mastery.

We will explore misconceptions that arise when teaching our subject, so you can “head them off at the pass”. And we will look at teaching ideas – the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) – exploring the helpful analogies, questions and activities that work for each topic: practices that can be lifted and dropped straight into the classroom to immediately enhance your teaching.

Trainee or pre-service teachers, NQTs and early-career teachers will find this book invaluable, experienced teachers will find it inspiring, and all will benefit from a fresh look at the hinterland and subject pedagogy that makes computer science a fascinating subject to teach.

How to LEARN Computer Science

Read some extracts from the book here, or buy it from John Catt here or Amazon here.

How To Learn Computer Science is for all ambitious students of Computer Science. Reading this book will illuminate the subject, explaining where each topic comes from, looking at its history and exploring links to wider culture. The book tackles some key stumbling blocks in each topic such as common misconceptions: mistaken ideas about the topic that slow you down and cause frustration. Plenty of “fertile questions” prompt you to think hard about the topic, and each chapter encourages you to “Stretch It” by trying some ambitious activities, “Link It” to other topics and “Build It” in the form of a practical project. You will also find links to helpful resources and further reading for greater depth, and some super study skills that will help you achieve a top grade.

TL;DR: Read this book for a top grade in Computer Science!