A Thurles teacher is one of five who has been working on a project to share resources on how to teach coding.
The CS (Computer Science) First programme is a collaboration between the teachers and researchers from NUI Galway and Lero in the University of Limerick.
They have been mapping Google’s CS First curriculum to help teachers to teach coding and digital media literacy.
As part of Science Week, the teachers are hosting a series of webinars for teachers, starting with the first one today (Thursday).
Miriam Bergin teaches Computer Science and Coding in Coláiste Mhuire Co Ed in Thurles.
She explained to Tipp FM how the project will help teachers.
“For instance, if you were teaching variables, you’d look at the list of lessons on the CS First course and just pick out the ones that teach variables and therefore you could target what lessons you want to teach and what to use.
“We also colour coded it – the green circle indicated that the variables and top learning outcomes were well covered and well taught and the orange circle indicated that it was partially taught, so you may need to look at extra lessons with it.”
Google’s CS First is a valuable classroom resource, particularly for teachers new to the subject and with no background in Computer Science or coding.
Conor Power (Coláiste Chiaráin Croom, Co. Limerick) Miriam Bergin (Colaiste Mhuire Co Ed Thurles, Co Tipperary) Pat Butler (Scoil Ide, Corbally, Limerick), John Hegarty (Clongowes College, Co. Kildare) and Tadhg O’Connell (Celbridge Community College, Co. Kildare) collaborated with the researchers to create a set of recourse to share with teachers nationally.
Dr Cornelia Connolly, School of Education, NUI Galway, said: “Coding has been identified as a new universal literacy, an essential skill for living and working and especially important that children and young people are designers as well as users of technology; and it’s really exciting to collaborate with teachers to bring coding into many more classrooms.”
Dr Clare McInerney, Lero, the SFI Research Centre for Software, reiterated the importance of this project and coding, adding: “It’s fantastic work with such a great team of teachers demonstrating the benefits of coding and to broaden participation.”
This first webinar will give an introduction to and overview of CS First as a learning platform.
The presentation will feature subject experts from both primary and post-primary who will discuss the use of CS First in their respective contexts.
CS First is a free curriculum provided by Google to teach learners to code and was designed for learners aged between 9 and 14 years of age. To date, CS First has been used by more than 2 million students and 60,000 teachers in 60 countries worldwide, including Ireland.
Webinar details can be found here; https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/csfirst-introdutory-webinar-tickets-205513525487
