My name is Ray Chambers. I'm a specialist in computing and have a first class honours degree in computer science. I'm currently the lead teacher of computer science at Brooke Weston Academy in Corby Northamptonshire. I have been teaching for roughly 8 years and I thoroughly enjoy my job. In 2015 I was fortunate to win the Pearson National Teaching Award for innovative use of technology. I also won the BAFTA for mentoring young coders.
My name is Ray Chambers. I'm a specialist in computing and have a first class honours degree in computer science. I'm currently the lead teacher of computer science at Brooke Weston Academy in Corby Northamptonshire. I have been teaching for roughly 8 years and I thoroughly enjoy my job. In 2015 I was fortunate to win the Pearson National Teaching Award for innovative use of technology. I also won the BAFTA for mentoring young coders.
This lesson requires prior knowledge of Kodu and gets you thinking about paths.
It introduces the path feature to them and you give your students 'tinker' time so that they can explore the tools more.
Get the students to think about how they move characters in the game. Introduce automatic movement and show them how to follow other objects.
Students complete the worksheet.
Over 30 exam questions with PowerPoint slides and answers for the teacher to work through for the Computer Systems part of the OCR AS Level Computer Science exam. These are past questions and the answers have been broken down into smaller parts to help students answer it. You can email these to your students alternatively you can go through the answers with your pupils.
There are questions on the following topics within these slides: -
Database
Ethics
Data transmission
Handshake
DBMS
RISC/CISC
Client Server Model
HTML
CSS
SQL
Binary / Unsigned Binary
RAM/ROM
Network Models
Real-time
This resources breaks down to students how to think abstractly. It includes answers to the questions discussed on the PowerPoint slides. It also includes a step by step guide to breaking down problems.
The students will have a number of activities which require them to solve problems. There are attached videos which have been taken from YouTube resources which should help students understand how to think abstractly in more depth.
I have attached a link to the OCR PDF specimen paper and I have pointed to questions relevant to this discussion.
The lesson plan helps break the task up and includes answers to the PowerPoint.
This lesson is a short extra lesson on teaching your students how binary shift works. It introduces the basics to them and also gives them a worksheet. I have included an answer sheet and you can fit this around the rest of the data representation lessons.
The lesson includes some visuals to help students understand what is happening.
The worksheets come with answers. There are only 4 questions but it's a small area of the syllabus to cover and should fit nicely into the other lessons.
Objective: - We’re learning how to apply compression to sound and how to explain check digits.
Students will be given a break down how sound is represented. The teacher will also have some teacher notes and things that they can talk about. I’ve included a worksheet for the end of this task which tests their knowledge of the PowerPoint slides. Where possible, I’ve tried to include a diagram to explain how it works so that it’s more visual for students.
Keywords this lesson:
Analogue
Bit depth
Bit rate
Sample rate
Compression
Topics covered by this presentation:
Analogue to digital compression
Sample rate - number of samples taken when converting to digital.
Bit rate - sample rate x bit depth
Estimating file size
Lossy and lossless compression: - When to use them
Check Digits - Also diagrams to show you how to convert them.
Content written by National Teaching Award winner: - Ray Chambers 2015 - Innovative use of technology.
This is a 50 mark assessment to check students understanding of input, output and storage devices. As the new spec for OCR is quite new. I went through all of the computing spec to find old questions which will map into the new specification. This gives you a good idea of how your students are performing.
Students will answer the questions and their is an answer sheet for you to use so that you can mark your students. I currently use the OCR A-Level grade boundaries for a rough idea.
1.3.2 - Characteristics of networks and the importance of protocols and standards.
This lesson is the first part to two lessons on section 1.3.2 of the OCR syllabus. The lesson starts off with some questioning on the CPU which was the topic I covered with students in their recent lesson. Check the PowerPoint notes.
Slide break down: -
Slide 1 - 4 - We’re learning to explain the characteristics of Networks and the importance of protocols and standards - Learning objective and questions. Asks students what a network is.
Slide 5 - A video explaining why we need networks.
Slide 6-8 - Explains what is meant by a network. Explains what a LAN and WAN is and uses key points from past computing exam papers to give students what the mark scheme would look for.
Slide 9-13 - Looks at different transmission media. Gets students to understand copper and fibre optic.
Slide 14 Students share what they did for homework.
Slide 15 - 25 Explains topologies and includes a video. Their are unplugged activities which get the students to become the network.
Final Activity included
This lesson starts off with some previous exam questions about LAN and WAN. It includes answers and shows students where they can gather their marks.
It then explains to students how a protocol works. It gives them an example and gets them to think about their communication.
Following on from this there is a video explaining the TCP/IP stack with the 4 layers that they're likely to need to know. Each layer is broken down into key points.
There is a single exam style question.
Students are then expected to look up the remaining protocols which are used regularly in networks. This task can be through poster, video or other medium.
This set of slides is over 45 slides long. It introduces the basic logic gates and basic boolean algebra. It shows how to simplify boolean.
There are over 45 slides showing K-Maps / Karnaugh Maps and they show how you can spot the patterns and show what the answers should be.
At the end of the slide there are two links to YouTube videos I have made of these slides showing it being taught. It should have a break down of some computing problems which should help you.
Assessment covering the following areas of data representation: -
Units - bits, bytes, nibble etc...
Numbers - converting to hex, denary and binary
Binary Shift
How to convert whole denary numbers
Characters - use of binary codes
Character Sets
Images - How to represent images as a series of pixels
Images - Metadata included in a file
Images - Colour depth and resolution
Sound - Sampling rates / Size / Bit Rate / Frequency
Compression - Need for compression / types of compression
Objective: - We’re learning how to use data to represent characters and images.
Students will be given a worksheet to start this lesson which gets them to solve what the binary says. The answer is 'computing'. Once students have solved the question using a grid, it leads you into a conversation about how computers use binary to translate messages.
There is a lot of theory in this but there is a worksheet to complete at the end of the lesson and there are two worksheets to complete throughout.
Where possible there have been some hints and tips written in the notes.
Covered in these slides: -
Character sets
Exam questions
worksheets
Binary to ASCII conversion
Explanation of ASCII and why 16 bit was need
Break down of why character sets are needed
Image conversion
Images and pixels - how many bits
Colour depth and formulas to work out file size
Bits per pixel
Meta data of images
This resource was written by award winning teacher, Ray Chambers: National Teaching Award winner 2015 - Innovative use of technology.
This lesson works on the assumption that students have already been introduced to the Arithmetic Logic unit and section (a) of the 1.1.1 spec. This lesson covers: -
(b) – The fetch-decode-execute cycle, including its effect on registers.
(c) – The factors affecting the performance of the CPU, clock speed, number of cores, cache.
It includes some starter exam questions around the registers and answers are included in the presentation. Students will be expected to answer these questions. There is a research based task at the end which gets them to research other factors which have an impact on the CPU performance.
This Network Layering task breaks down the need for it and includes a complementary worksheet which requires students to answer a series of 4 questions.
Diagrams are included to support sayings and keywords are highlighted. It talks about rules, protocols, TCP/IP and it also explains what happens at each layer. This includes application, transport, internet and network and they also need to consider the different communication rules.
It includes some teacher notes to help the teacher and the diagrams can be printed from the slides and stuck into the students books.
This activity will teach you how to develop a simple table using Python and Tkinter. It walks you through step by step, how to add records to a database. It shows you how to create the table and how you can insert information into the table.
It shows you how to make a navigate button that moves forward through the records in the database. This guide is 7 pages long and includes the full code for the activity with explanations. Useful to anyone doing classes for the first time with databases and Tkinter. It shows you how to make the user interface.
This lesson is about introducing the programming technique 'variables' to the students. They will also learn about assignments, and outputs on the screen which is a build on what they learnt in their previous lesson. They are taught about how to understand variables using scenarios such as buckets.
There are teacher notes which will be useful for showing you how you can gather un-plugged resources.
Attached with the work is a worksheet so that the students can understand how to start naming variables. They is also some questioning put into the slides which will keep the students on their toes.
They are taught how to use variables, concatenation and their are plenaries that will help them to debug code with problems. This is a good way to help them spot errors in the code.
A nice little resource made to start people on coding. It introduces common mistakes with coding and also gives them 6 activities to attempt. They have been written based on difficulty for example, it goes from green to red.
Activities on this are basic string manipulation but it will be a good first lesson for students to get a taste of Python. Includes inputs, outputs and string manipulation.
This lesson gives you a structured break down to delivering the Micro:bit lesson for the first time. I have combined this with the Micro:bit book to make the creeper face.
In this lesson: -
* reason for the Micro:bit and discussion with the students
* students given time to read health and safety instructions and feedback to the teacher
* how to get onto the website.
* pictures to show how to connect to the website
* how to download the program in 3 easy steps
* how to get the program onto the MicroBit
* worksheet with extension
* introduction to Selection
* Challenge with video
These video tutorials will help you deliver the MicroBit lessons and will also leave some of the tasks open ended. I have uploaded one of the videos for free so that you can see what they're like.
The videos in this bank include: -
* Spirit Level
* Simple Maze Game
* Simple LED Lights
* Calculator - Add two numbers together using variables
* Random number generator
* Controlling how an LED moves around the screen
* A + B buttons (selection)
* How to make crossy roads on the screen
* Iteration and moving lights
All include some explanation of what has been taught and the key terms needed for programming. This has been done using the blockly editor.
This lesson introduces students to using operators such as Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide and Exponentiation. They're also introduced to Mod (working out the remainder) and Quotient (working out the whole number). They're given a number of activities which allow them to apply some of this and will attempt working out the median and mean. After this they're given an activity which gets them to work with the OCR structure. They're required to decompose a problem, list success criteria and build a sleep calculator. They will need to list their variables and on top of this will also need to show the development of their code. The worksheet can be typed in.
All operations are explained: -
num1+num2
num1-num2
num1*num2
num1/num2
num1**num2 for exponent
% used to explain remainder
// used to explain whole number part of division
Students given extension task / independent research task for finding out the mode.
Topologies
Presentation includes notes to train teachers who are very new to teaching computing.
Week 3 - What is topology?
Objective: - •Understand the difference between LANs and WANs
•Be able to give examples of each network
•Identify three different network topologies.
Task 1 : - Make notes about the difference between a WAN and a LAN network as your teacher explains things to you. This video will also be shown: - https://vimeo.com/145979347
Task 2: - Your teacher will now get you to act out 3 different networks by getting you up out of your seats. They will follow this by watching this video: https://vimeo.com/145982596
Task 3: - As a class you will come up with success criteria and produce a poster which meets the criteria. You should comment on the following:•LAN VS WAN
•STAR / RING / BUS
Useful links: •https://vimeo.com/145979347 - WAN / LAN video
•https://vimeo.com/145982596 - Topology video