York St John University Computer Science Summer School success

The summer school ran 22 – 24 July, attracting teachers from across the north of England, including from schools in York, Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Teesside and Liverpool.

The immersive summer school enabled teachers to get to grips with new key skills to help them prepare for the delivery of the new GCSE and ‘A’ Level curricula. The course aimed to give teachers a good introduction to Python Programming, using the Raspberry Pi computers, and to physical computing.

The summer school, was instigated by Dr Mike O’Dea (Senior Lecturer, Computer Science), who has a specialist research interest in Computer Science education. The event was supported by a York St John Teaching Fellow grant and all of the Computer Science team were involved in supporting and delivering the Summer School programme.

Dr O’Dea said: "It was very well received by all attendees, many of whom are already asking if we plan to run another next year, as they would like to sign up again and would be recommending it to colleagues and friends.

"It was nice to find out that we seem to have got the content, level and timing of the Summer School right, considering it was our first attempt at it."

Dr O’Dea’s views of the event were echoed by subsequent feedback from several of the teachers who attended. The team hope to build on the success of the Summer School next year, by running a follow-up.

Dr Justin McKeown (Head of Programme, Computer Science) said: "The event has helped us develop new links within the educational community and further consolidate existing ones. Computer Science has only been in existence for two years at York St John and contributing to the development of community is very much part of our agenda.

"The success of the Summer School, and other activities, such as our work with local industry through the Yorkshire Innovation Fund, demonstrates that although we’re a young programme, we’re already having a positive impact beyond the University."