Computer Science Conference 2024
Posted: 04/07/2024
On Wednesday, 3rd July 2024 in Routh Hall, Bromsgrove School hosted the inaugural “Craig ‘n’ Dave and Friends” Conference, a national event for Secondary Computing Teachers. With over 200 teachers attending from across the country, the event was supported by Computing at Schools (CAS), the Subject Association for Computing, and the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE). Bromsgrove School run regular CAS “Teachmeets” for local Computing teachers, as well as running CPD for the NCCE. We hope that this will be the first of many such events we host here.
Craig ‘n’ Dave are a leading supplier of educational resources for Computer Science teaching and their innovative and free YouTube channel with videos on all topics in GCSE and A-level specifications, has been nominated for many teaching awards. We regularly use their resources here at Bromsgrove, and also support them closely in their development of new ones. There is always a real buzz of excitement from our students when they visit the School. They are most certainly the rock stars of the Computing Education world, and there was a tangible buzz in Routh Hall when Craig ‘n’ Dave revealed the features soon to be available on their innovative “Smart Revise” learning platform.
The conference opened with a superb keynote speech from Miles Berry, Professor of Computing Education at the University of Roehampton, on the future of education, showcasing the rapid developments in the use of Artificial Intelligence(AI). Following this, there were a large number of break-out sessions for attendees to choose from. Topics included: Coding for Climate Action and Sustainable Computing, Cyber Security, Using AI Activities in Your Code Club, Addressing Gender Balance in Computing, and a range of presentations from the examination boards.
The day also provided many opportunities for debate, networking and conversation with Computing Educators from across the country and a marketplace of companies and Computing education groups, including OCR, Pearson, Code Club, Raspberry Pi Foundation, West Midlands Regional Cyber Crime Unit, Samsung UK, KITRONIK, Mindjoy, EduBlocks, Ocado Group, CAS, NCCE, Digit<All> and Inversity. This particular element of the conference was valued extremely highly by conference delegates.
Professor Miles Berry said “Craig’n’Dave’n’Friends was a fabulous computing conference. It had a superb community feel to it, it was lovely to see so many friends here, and I feel very privileged to be invited to deliver the keynote.”
We are already thinking about how we can make it even bigger and better next year.
