How Manchester Digital brought Computer Science 生活 in Tameside

Research has proven we’re much more likely to learn a task by doing rather than listening, 记忆, 或者看. 这是因为当我们做一项任务时, we’re able to transfer this understanding to other contexts, 结果是强化了学习. 

With the traditional curriculum set up as learning through listening, we wanted to bring this learning as ‘doing’ element into schools, supporting the next generation to better understand how the things they were being taught about in principle could be transferred into a real-life setting in the tech industry.

That’s why we worked with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to set up up ‘Bringing the Curriculum to Life.“这个项目, part of our wider Digital Futures initiative, connects industry with education to provide exciting and real-life careers and curriculum insights for pupils taking 计算机科学. 到目前为止, 50 industry experts have pledged to deliver projects across the city, linking the syllabus topics into real-life work examples. Each project is then turned into a reusable resource for other schools to access, inspiring others. 

One school already benefiting from the programme is St Thomas More RC College in Tameside. 课程领导, 亚当·詹宁斯, 与欧文匹配, Managing Director of Computeam – a Stockport-based IT support and managed service provider – to provide practical examples to students on the topic of networks; where a set of computers are connected together so they can share resources, 比如连接到互联网. 

作为乐趣的一部分, 积极的项目, students at St Thomas More used the software Neverwhere and Chrome to reformat 10 old devices into new Chrome-enabled devices. The students also had to consider access rights, 道德, and networks while completing the project, which took place over the space of 2 double lessons.

在教室里, the students physically set up the independent network and logged on to set up a new GoogleOS system. 一旦启动并运行, students drastically reduced the initial start-up time of the computer from 60 seconds to an impressive 20 seconds. Throughout the project, students communicated solely using Google’s in-built chat bot. This project has helped the pupils not only understand the topic in further detail, but gather real examples for their upcoming exams and consider new ways of working.

Talking about its impact, 亚当·詹宁斯 said: “The project has only taken the class 3.5小时完成. In that time pupils have been applying their learning to a real-life context while revising for the mock exams. Not only will this help them with their important exams this year, the group has also learnt important core employability skills which will help them with their next steps.”

节目结束后, the school has seen the number of students wanting to go on to study Computer Science at A-Level increase significantly. 也, 年轻的学生, 选择他们的GCSE选项, have also been inspired to sign up for the subject, so they can take part in a similar project in the future. 

With the success of the Tameside project, we’re rolling the Bringing the Curriculum to Life programme out across Greater Manchester. We’re hoping to educate more students on the exciting world of tech, giving them experiences which they’ll then take into their future careers.