Summary
Take your first steps towards teaching programming within Design and Technology, during this course you’ll explore different programming techniques and how to apply them to popular platforms such as VEX, Crumble and Micro:Bit.
You’ll consider how use-modify-create can be used in the classroom to support students with their programming understanding. You’ll find out how algorithms are designed and how programs are written to provide clear instructions to machines.
Learn about the binary system used by computers to store and process data, and how to convert to and from the familiar denary system of numbers zero to nine.
Create some simple block-based computer programs and discover how to implement them using the Python programming language. Use your knowledge to write programs that can handle user input and manipulate variable values before outputting simple messages to the screen.
Do you prefer to learn in a classroom? If so, take a look at: Introduction to algorithms programming and data for D&T teachers
Who is it for?
This course is for all design and technology teachers who may be new to the subject, or who may have taught computing in earlier years.
No prior experience or knowledge of computing is expected before attending this course. It is advised that you become familiar with the National Curriculum in Computing before participating.
Outcomes
By the end of this course you will be able to:
- Develop basic programming skills using different platforms including VEX / Crumble / Micro:Bit
- Understand how use-modify-create can be used to support students with programming skills
- Learn about algorithms, how they are usually represented, and some of their most common applications
- Recognise and use the basic building blocks of programming: sequence, selection and repetition
- Explore developing code using block-based and text-based programming
- Understand how binary, denary and hexadecimal are used to represent numbers, and why this is important for computer science
Note: This course is split into different sessions over multiple days. To complete the course, you will need to attend all sessions
