Teacher Computing CPD

 Teacher Computing CPD


This year in addition to my Lecturing role, I have had such an amazing opportunity in IT Tallaght. All due to my Head of Department, Dr. Barry Feeney who shares my enthusiasm for computer science. I am so lucky and humbled to have a role that involves reaching out to teachers and helping them in anyway that I can, to help them teach coding and many other areas of computing!

The rationale for this was due to the computing camps for secondary schools that we currently run (which will be discussed in an upcoming blog post). This is to allow the teachers to continue the delivery of the content after the camp was run with students. 

This also proved to be very valuable for teachers who were in Phase One of the leaving certificate computer science subject. In fact some of our teacher training sessions, were focused on the upcoming curriculum and how to deliver specific  content such as Python coding or the Applied Learning Task 4, using the micro:bit. 

Since September 2017 we have run 12 teacher training CPD events and delivered CPD to 293 teachers (with several additional conferences where we presented at, on methodologies and pedagogical approaches for delivering computing in second level). By the close of the year we are running several more teacher CPD sessions where we hope to deliver CPD for an additional 250 teachers. 

What makes me smile the most, is that at every session I run (usually on a weekend), with every teacher, the enthusiasm is so radiant. Teachers are so open to learning this, no matter what their background is! We have had English and Art teaching wishing to learn coding. It has been such a positive experience!

An amazing addition to the CPD sessions which again deserves a post of its own (and will detailed be very soon) is that Microsoft have sponsored the CPD and student camps. This backing is a statement in itself and the person who made it all happen (Stephen Howell, the Academic Program Manager), shares the same enthusiasm and vision for computer science in Ireland, he was also previously a secondary school teacher!

Education Centres in Donegal, Dublin, Kildare and Laois are also working with us to deliver CPD in micro:bits and hopefully next year a lot more! Their support again helps us to reach so many teachers!

If you would like to take part in any of the sessions or find out more, please do not hesitate to contact me at: keith.quille@it-tallaght.ie

Finally as pictures paint a thousand words, I will leave you with a small sample of our workshops to date!
Hijacking a session held in Kildare Education Center, led by Richard Millwood from CESI 
Stephen Howell from Microsoft co-delivering a Python CPD session in IT Tallaght.



One of our first Python CPD sessions in IT Tallaght




Again Hijacking a Richard Millwood CESI workshop in Kildare Education Center.




Scratch CPD for the Junior Cycle Short Course - A different approach!



Python CPD getting into the very detailed side of Lists 



Moate Community College organized a cluster meeting of teachers for me to deliver micro:bit CPD 

Moate Community College part 2

Dublin West Education Center - micro:bit CPD

AIB Future Sparks Event in the RDS, micro:bit teacher CPD

One of the First micro:bit CPD sessions in IT Tallaght