Abstract
From September 2014, classroom teachers in the United Kingdom are required to move away from teaching ICT, towards new Programmes of Study in Computing, including computer programming. This chapter presents a developing international working model for teacher training, designed to support this major change in focus. Conceived at Brunel University, west London, ideas for the development of computer coding in the classroom were swiftly shared with colleagues at Charles University in Prague, at the University of Torino, Italy, and with De Montfort University, UK. Based on the MIT Scratch program, teacher trainers and classroom pupils are introduced to elementary block-coding, through a highly creative cross-curricular teaching and learning project called “Literacy from Scratch”. This centres on the cross-curricular production of animated narratives, together with the pupils’ own art work, for Sprites and Backgrounds. The project has successfully engaged pupils in computer coding from the ages of 5 through to 14 in the UK, and to 16 in Italy.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barbara Demo, G., Williams, L.: The Many Facets of Scratch. In: Proceedings of the ISSEP Conference 2014, Istanbul (September 2014)
Papert, S., Harel, I.: Situating Constructionism (1991), http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html
Rambousek, V., et al.: Výzkum informacní výchovy na základních školách. 1. vydání. Plzen: Koniáš, 360 s. (2007) ISBN 80-86948-10-2
Stager, G.: An Investigation of Constructivism in the Maine Youth Centre. Informatics in Education - An International Journal 6(2) (2007)
Williams, L., Černochová, M.: Literacy from Scratch. In: Proceedings of the 10th IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education, WCCE 2013, pp. 17–27. Copernicus University, Torun (2013), For a supporting text for teachers, as a guide to the project, see:
Williams, L. (ed.): Introducing Computing: A guide for teachers. Routledge (August 2014), http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138022850/
The web site with Literacy from Scratch teaching materials is to be found at, http://www.literacyfromscratch.org.uk
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Williams, L., Černochová, M., Demo, G.B., Younie, S. (2014). A Working Model for Teacher Training in Computing through the Literacy from Scratch Project. In: Passey, D., Tatnall, A. (eds) Key Competencies in ICT and Informatics. Implications and Issues for Educational Professionals and Management. ITEM 2014. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 444. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45770-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45770-2_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-45769-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-45770-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)