Wednesday 22 April 2020

Remote CPD for teachers


During the lockdown, I have received a few emails from teachers about what we can do to keep abreast of curriculum changes and also develop our subject knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. Here are my recommendations.

General pedagogy, teaching and learning:

Dylan Wiliam’s latest videos offer some input and then a discussion point which you can have with yourself, an online community or your peers: LINK

ResearchED have had some incredible speakers. Take your pick from Daniel Willingham, Becky Allen, Sam Sims, Nick Rose, Daisy Christodoulou, John Sweller, John Hattie, Dylan Wiliam, Pedro De Bruyckere and more: LINK

I'm a big fan of the Teach Like a Champion blog as it discusses techniques in written form and then shows a relevant video. The current posts reflect on remote teaching and the previous posts are based on the classroom and sports coaching: LINK

Tom Sherrington’s Kitchen pedagogy series. This series focusses on research-informed ideas: LINK

As mentioned in my last post, we are essentially communicators and public speakers. One of my favourite videos for how to engage and speak publicly: 

GCSE Computer Science

There are new specification changes from Sept 2020. OCR have launched their new GCSE Computer Science course J277 and Paul Long has discussed the changes on this excellent post. A summary of the key differences are on the last page: LINK


  • As the spec changes are quite minor, I still recommend Computer Science Tutor’s tutorial series: LINK
  • Craig N Dave have also updated their video series for J277: LINK
  • Mr Weir has a great presentation style which I enjoy: LINK


Technocamps have a range of “activity packs” mainly aimed at KS3 and KS4 and they are great for teachers too: LINK

If you want to become more fluent in Python programming, the Little book of algorithms might help.
I am also a big fan of these two sites:

Cambridge Nationals in Creative iMedia

There are some great tutorials for content on these channels:
Photoshop tutorials - For those of you who do not have Photoshop, Photopea is an excellent free online alternative

GCSE Stretch and A-Level Computer Science:

Isaac Computer Science launched their full content this week. There are lots of mini exercises and the explanations are clear and concise. All the material is written by current or former A-Level Computer Science teachers who I respect.


Two years ago, I took to learning PyGame as so many of our students were interested in making games for their A-Level projects. These two sites are (almost all you need):

If you just want some useful videos for you and your A-Level students, I’ve curated a playlist here

Computer Science Education Research


Finally, if you're interested in CS Ed Research,There is:

Lots of videos from the Cambridge Computing Education Research Symposium
The CS Ed Research Book Club?

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