The first episode features Shahneila Saeed – a founder board member of Computing at School, former Head of Computing at an inner London secondary school, and Programme Director for the Digital Schoolhouse at the UKIE (UK Association for Interactive Entertainment) – a Mayor of London and Department for Education backed initiative aiming to raise engagement and achievement in computer science in 100+ London schools.
Shahneila talks about how learning to code prepares students for the jobs of the future, the importance of making lessons fun and engaging, and the innovation in teaching programming that can be gained by using web-based platforms such as Codio.
The ‘Ask the Experts’ series follows Codio’s recent roundtable event which brought together many computing specialists to discuss the best ways of delivering the new Computing curriculum in schools. Attendees included Will Burrows, Head of Education Technology and Commercial Services and Rob Leeman, Subject Specialist for Computer Science and ICT from UK exam board OCR, whose recent partnership with Codio will bring rich, curriculum-mapped teaching and learning resources into the Codio integrated development environment (IDE). The collaboration will recognise the teacher and student benefits associated with a “learning by doing” form of computer science education and ensure that all learners have the appropriate technology to learn computer science and coding successfully.
Co-founder of Codio Phillip Snalune said: “Our priority is to help teachers and students embrace computer science and coding. By offering insights from industry experts, we hope to support teachers as they get to grips with the new national curriculum, and inspire them to find new opportunities to bring computational thinking and coding alive for students in fun and engaging ways.”
Alongside the ‘Ask the Experts’ videos, Codio will soon be launching two further series – Case Studies featuring exemplary schools who are using Codio in the classroom, and a ‘Team Codio’ series showcasing exciting new content and development updates. Stay tuned for OCR’s Rob Leeman in episode two of the ‘Ask the Experts’ series speaking about the new GCSE Computing specification, and how a platform such as Codio can help teachers facilitate student learning more effectively in the classroom.
