A summer of computing

01 September 2021

We spoke to Computer Science teacher Leroy David, who recently attended one of our face to face events in York, about his experience of attending CPD over the holidays.

Two years ago I attended a course from the Computer Science Accelerator during the summer holiday and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have been able to use what I learnt to improve my teaching of GCSE computer science, and in particular it helped to improve my Python teaching and programming skills. Those four days had such a positive impact on my knowledge, skills and confidence, and I believe that my students have been able to benefit from this.

Over the past year, I have been using the free KS3 and KS4 resources available from the Teach Computing Curriculum, and they have helped me to save so much time during such a turbulent year in teaching.

This year I attended the CSA in the Summer - teaching advanced GCSE computer science track for three days at the National STEM Centre in York. The course that I attended two years ago was fantastic and I didn’t think that it could be topped - but I was wrong! The advanced course was absolutely amazing!

Due to the pandemic it has been quite a while since I last attended any face to face courses and I jumped at the opportunity to attend this one. I’m also always keen to keep developing what I know and attending a course during the summer holiday is much more convenient for me than trying to do so during my working week.

We covered higher attainment in exams, Python implementation, testing and analysis, design and evaluation. The presenters were extremely knowledgeable and they were so supportive throughout each of their days.

I liked that the presenters allowed us to ask as many questions as we wanted to, and they were happy to spend quality time ensuring that all of our queries were completely dealt with.

The pace of the three days was really good and this was supported by numerous resources which we could use in our own teaching. From start to finish the whole course was very well organised, and delivered in an excellent learning environment.

From day one we were provided with numerous tips and techniques to further support our students and it was great being able to speak face to face with so many other computer science teachers. Being able to share experiences and bounce ideas off other computer science teachers really added an invaluable dimension to the course.

I am looking forward to putting what we covered into practice and seeing the positive impact that I expect it to have. I would strongly recommend that any computer science teachers who see the opportunity to attend one of CS Accelerator courses should do so.

The three days during the summer holiday didn’t feel like I was on a course and it seemed to go by so quickly. In my opinion, the best CPD are the ones which don’t feel like training at all!

Interested in finding out more about the Computer Science Accelerator?