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Esports Parents and Carers Guide with NSPCC and British Esports Association

The British Esports Association (@British_Esports) has developed a new Parent & Carers Guide in collaboration with the NSPCC, which aims to educate parents and carers about esports and online safety.

This guide has been created to provide information to help parents understand more about the esports industry.

The contents of the guide include:

  • Information about the British Esports Student Champs
  • Benefits of esports
  • Esports in education
  • Academic pathways
  • Inclusivity and diversity in esports
  • How you can get involved with your child
  • Parents testimonials
  • Online safety

 

Tom Dore, Head of Education at British Esports Association, said:

“At British Esports we’re helping to establish industry standards for safeguarding and keeping young people safe online. Developing the Parent & Carers guide in collaboration with NSPCC has allowed us to celebrate many of the positives around esports, and also highlight important issues around safeguarding and online safety.

It is crucial as an industry that we’re doing everything we can to keep young people safe while participating in esports. We should look to traditional sport, and other established industries, to learn from their ongoing work. British Esports strongly encourages all stakeholders in the esports industry to scrutinise their own practise around their work with young people and prioritise safeguarding and online safety throughout their organisations.’

 

Find out more about the guide

 

View the guide

micro:bit Educational Research

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation are looking for primary school (second level) teachers from Scotland to take part in a piece of research about their experiences in primary education and the teaching of digital skills.

Teachers who take part will be entered in to a prize draw with multiple prizes of £50 and £100 and a top prize of £500 to be won!

 

The research will help inform a programme of activity, delivered by the Micro:bit Educational Foundation, to support UK primary school teachers teaching digital skills, including free CLPL and classroom resources. Your input in to the research is crucial to ensure the programme gives teachers across Scotland the support they really need.

We are looking to recruit teachers who are willing to take part in a short (10 min) online survey in late September/early Oct 2021 and then again in December 2022 (estimated date) and June 2023 (estimated date).

 

It’s important that we hear from teachers across the UK and so your contribution to the research will be extremely valued.  We want the views of teachers across UK, so make sure Scotland is represented.

Sign up here: https://form.jotform.com/212093636436052

Computing Science and Digital Learning and Teaching Calendar 2021

We’ve created this calendar of events to support termly planning for learning and training. We’ll update it as required and we’ll also add extra events to this page too.

  • Back to School CRIS insets – wb 09 August
  • Scottish Learning Festival – 21-23 September
  • Maths Week Scotland – wb 27 September
  • EU Code Week – 09-24 October
  • European Cybersecurity Month – October 
  • Ada Lovelace Day – 12 October
  • Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge – 08-19 November
  • Book Week Scotland – wb 15 November
  • Computing Science Education Week – wb 06 December

 

EUROPE CODE WEEK 9-24 OCTOBER 2021

EU Code Week is 9-24th October 2021 and is a grassroots initiative which aims to bring coding and digital literacy to everybody in a fun and engaging way. The EU Code Week site is full of advice and resources to help you plan your coding lessons but so is our Resources page. If you’re not sure where to start then have a look at our Professional Reading page for information to help you understand computing and coding concepts.

 

Coding Activities

Coding Pedagogy

Coding Posts from our Community

DIGITAL FUTURES PROGRAMME – MICROSOFT

Microsoft have created the Digital Future Programme to help young people explore the digital future aims to prepare young people for the technology-driven world of tomorrow, demonstrate how diversity helps build better technology, and how it can be used as a force for positive change. The programme brings together the best resources from Microsoft and our industry-leading partners, and covers these exciting topics:

  • Discover the tech industry
  • Coding
  • AI
  • IoT
  • Big Data

 

Digital Future takes a creative approach to digital skills education with classroom activities, challenges and more. Once completed, students get a certificate to celebrate their success!

 

Digital Future Programme – Microsoft UK

digital skills for youth - microsoft

DATA, TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITALISATION SERIES: DIGITAL SKILLS FOR YOUTH – MICROSOFT

The Commonwealth Secretariat is hosting a webinar in partnership with Microsoft about the skills young people need to be competitive employees, entrepreneurs and digital citizens.

Over 60 percent of the Commonwealth’s 2.4 billion citizens are aged 29 or under. This webinar is an opportunity for young people from across the Commonwealth to talk to industry experts about their digital skills needs and challenges.

Discussions will kick off with opening remarks from The Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and Senior Leaders at Microsoft.

The webinar will then offer two panel sessions, the first of which will look at country and organisational initiatives in building digital skills for young people. The second session will be led by the Commonwealth Young Professionals and will discuss youth experiences and ideas on digital skills gaps and opportunities. A demonstration of digital skills capacity-building tools will also be demonstrated by Microsoft, followed by a Q&A session.

 

Participation

The webinar will take place on 10 June 2021 from 11 am (BST/GMT+1)

For more information please contact: Margaret Dalziel, ICT Digital Platforms Coordinator, Commonwealth Secretariat

INDUSTRY IN THE CLASSROOM WITH SKILLS DEVELOPMENT SCOTLAND

Skills Development Scotland have been working with people in the cyber security sector, who have unique real-world experience to share with our young people, to show them what it’s really like to work in tech. This is a great opportunity to inspire the “digital humans” of the future. Taking authentic experience of working in the digital world into the classroom gives pupils a unique chance to learn more from a seasoned professional.

By talking about their role, what they do in their job, answering students’ questions about working in tech, as well as running a live engaging tech related activity/workshop/lesson they will help pupils to understand the digital world better. Not only that, but by talking about the other teams they work with, they can introduce them to the huge variety of roles in the tech industry.

If you would like to invite industry to virtually engage with your pupils, then get in touch with Debbie McCutcheon at Skills Development Scotland.

debbie.mccutcheon@sds.co.uk

Coding Success

Coding Success programme launched

Coding Success is a new programme designed to excite 8 –
14 year olds about STEM, providing teachers with engaging
curriculum linked lesson plans and free LEGO® Education
SPIKE™ Prime kits for your classroom.
Fully funded by BAE Systems, the Royal Navy and the Royal
Air Force, Coding Success offers 600 non-selective state
schools the opportunity to take part – fuelling the passion of
young people and encouraging the next generation of
scientists, engineers and technicians.
The programme is linked to the national curricula in England,
Wales and Scotland, delivering the requirements that all
children can program. Developed in partnership with The
Smallpeice Trust and Raising Robots, Coding Success brings
together teacher training with LEGO® Education to inspire
the next generation around STEM.

Key benefits

• Attend CPD sessions with qualified teachers who are LEGO® Education Academy
Certified Trainers
• Receive two LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime kits for your school to keep
• Six lessons’ worth of coding activities, with videos, resources and more
• Fully funded by BAE Systems, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force
• Learn new coding languages in the classroom
• Optional extension activities with Python to further challenge your students

Apply now

With 300 primary and 300 secondary school places available, places will be allocated on a first
come first served basis against criteria to help ensure a good regional spread and encourage
participation from a wide range of students. Participating schools will need to attend online
training, deliver six lessons to 60 students and complete programme evaluations.
Applications open on Monday 26th April and will close on Friday 28th May 2021.

Please visit www.codingsuccess.co.uk for further information.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING – DATA SCIENCE MASTERS LEVEL MODULES AT GLASGOW CALEDONIAN UNIVERSITY

Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) have announced a short course opportunity that will be funded by the Scottish Funding Council. The course has been designed,by GCU and will start in May 2021. Participation is entirely without charge for candidates who succeed in their application. 

GCU are particularly keen to support upskilling, curriculum future proofing in schools, career transition, career mobilisation, those at risk of unemployment.

Candidates have the opportunity to study two Masters level modules:

  • Software Development in Data Science – Starts 10 May 2021 (20 Credits at SCQF 11 )
  • Big Data Landscapes – Starts 20 September 2021 (20 Credits at SCQF 11)

 

These SFC-funded scholarships are designed to introduce learners to object-oriented programming, the programming language Python and its use for data programming and analytics.

Learners will build depth of knowledge in software programming skills and the management of data throughout its life cycle.

 

Modules are accredited and subject to assessment. Successful completion of each module will earn the learner portable academic credit. Portable academic credit may be used at a later stage towards a structured award at masters level, for example, GCU’s MSc Big Data Technologies. 

These short courses require no prerequisite knowledge; a basic understanding of matrix algebra and statistics would be advantageous. No prior experience of programming is required but learners should expect a swift learning pace. Learners without programming experience should expect to invest more time in study.

 

Find out more here:

https://www.gcu.ac.uk/study/datasciencescholarship/

 

For further information, contact Fiona.StewartKnight@gcu.ac.uk

COMPUTING SCIENCE GENDER BALANCE LESSON PLANS

Computing Science Gender Balance Lesson Plans

Research tells us that more boys achieve computing qualifications than girls. There can be many reasons for this and in order to help you mitigate some of these gender imbalances we have curated this folder of lesson plans and resources to support them. They have been curated to help you ensure your Computing Science lessons are as accessible and engaging to learners regardless of their gender.

Find out more abour Improving Gender Balance support here.