The last two weeks have been really busy with remote teaching and delivering live lessons at home and in school. Into this busy fortnight I also attended 14 Webinars as part of the CAS Virtual Showcase 2020.
With lockdown many tech and education events have either been cancelled or moved to an online platform. CAS have not only fully embraced moving face to face meetings to online platforms but also put their summer term conferences online.
Fitting the webinars around my remote teaching timetable I was able to sign up for a good number and wide range of talks.
- Opening and welcome presentation
- Creativity for non-creatives by Dr Lucy Rogers
- The Chocolate Turing Machine
- Planning for progression using Learning Graphs
- Blocks to Python with EduBlocks
- Pencil Code Gym Jam
- Using PRIMM in the Primary classrrom (*)
- AQA New GCSE Spec
- Keynote: How does AI really work
- Deep Dives into Computing
- Machine learning for Kids
- Secondary Computing and the new Ofsted Inpsection framework
My highlights
Simon Peyton Jones’ keynote talk on AI was really good. He gave a very good overview to AI inclduing some very specialist knowledge and concepts. He presented it in such as way that although it had some very complicated bits I felt that I had understood it!
Paul Curzon’s hands on talk on the Chocolate Turing Machine was fascinating particularly as I am somone who loves modelling concepts.
This was a really great fortnight with a really good range of talks which left me feeling upbeat and positive about getting ready for the next school year. The talks about curriculum, GCSE and deep dive were really useful and I have already applied some of the content moving forwards.
Cat Lamin’s talk on Mental heath matters was both timely and very useful and I am particularly grateful that this was included.
The GoToWebinar system worked really well and is a super simple platform to use. (*) There was only one session I couldn’t access because it was full.
As we start to look towards a new normal in education I do think that this model of sharing more conference material online through live webinars is going to be really powerful as often it can be hard to get out of school at times.
Thank you CAS!