Teach Computing Fest 21

Neil Crumpton, from the North Midlands Computing Hub, tells us about the inaugural success of the Teach Computing Fest 21.  

This was definitely one of those MIMO moments. For those of you who were unable to attend our inaugural Teach Computing Fest we have a small summary for you here. On 15 April, during the Easter holidays, over 100 teachers came together to experience three fascinating key note talks and participate in some sample course workshops.

The concept of Teach Computing Fest came about through discussion with our SMEs about how it would be great to give people a small sample of some of our courses. This would enable them to ‘try before they buy’ and help secure participants onto the right courses for them.

So, three hubs, Central Midlands, Midlands West and North Midlands got together with some of their SMEs, facilitators and a Computer Science Champion to spread the word about Teach Computing. This was an opportunity for us to engage with teachers we had not managed to reach before, and it shows what is possible when multiple hubs work together.

After a fascinating keynote from our very own Dave Gibbs about computing and the importance of supporting non-specialists, we learned all about Code Club from Rohima Crook and the free resources that are available for running clubs for 9-13 year-olds.

The teachers then broke off into their scheduled sessions including topics such as Meet a CS Champion, Demystifying Teach Computing, Primary Programming and Algorithms, Search and Sort Algorithms and Leading Primary computing.

After four sessions, everyone came back together to hear from Wendy Piccinini about what Computing at School can do to support teachers through their Communities of Practice.

The teachers who attended had lots of feedback to provide such as, “All very useful. Links for further investigation welcomed.”, “…perhaps incorporate a few minutes break between workshops”, “It was all really fab!”, “I’ve now got a very long list of stuff to do!”

If you want to keep up to date with the pioneering work of these hubs, head over to Twitter and give them a follow @ComputingHubSOT, @BCComputingHub and @TC_ComputingHub.