Support for Schools

Our educational programme focuses on developing a technical pipeline by educating the next generation of software students and professionals. We support schools, teachers and students interested in computing as follows:

Scratch Programme

• Materials freely available on scratch.ie for primary and post-primary students on http://scratch.ie
• Working with the PDST we have designed and delivered Scratch training to teachers through the national education centre network.
• Lero founded the Scratch competition in 2010. See scratch.ie/competition and http://scratch.ics.ie for details on Scratch competition.

Junior Cycle Short Course

• Lero was commissioned by the NCCA to write the Junior Cycle Short Course in Coding in 2014. The Junior Cycle Short Course Exploring Coding pilot project took place from January 2016-January 2017 in collaboration with JCT (Junior Cycle for Teachers Support Service) and Intel.
• An interim report “Exploring Coding – a CPD initiative to support the introduction of the junior cycle short course in Coding was produced by Lero and JCT to document the initiative.
• A final report was produced https://www.jct.ie/perch/resources/shortcourses/final-report-exploringcoding.pdf to document the initiative.
• A new CPD phase “Coding in Action” is taking place 2017-2018. An interim report is available https://www.jct.ie/perch/resources/about/codinginactioninterimreport.pdf
• Final Report – November 2019 for the Junior Cycle Short Course in Coding.

Computing Camps

• Lero was awarded a GoogleRISE Award in 2015 and ran summer computing camps for girls during the summer of 2015.(See 2015 Video)
• Lero has been involved in the UL Cybercamp since 2009. During the summer months we invite second-level students on campus to give them a computing experience. For more information on the UL computing camps, please see http://pslc.ul.ie/cybercamp.

Smart Futures

• Smart Futures is a national campaign for second-level students in Ireland, highlighting career opportunities in STEM sectors such as medical devices, information and communications technology (ICT) and energy. For more information on Smart Futures please visit http://smartfutures.ie/
• Lero plans to increase capacity for Smart futures delivery in 2017. To date two Lero institutions have participated in Smart Futures training (UL and NUIG). We are planning to organise Smart Futures training for at least two other institutions in 2017 (DkIT and one more site). This should lead to increased participation in Smart Futures sessions delivered by Lero members. We will propose to participants that they deliver the presentations in pairs.

Computer Science at Leaving Certificate

• Final Report – September 2020

Exploring teachers’ professional development to support the roll-out of Computer Science in Irish second-level schools

• Interim Report – October 2019 on the Leaving Certificate Computer Science Teachers’ CPD Programme

• In 2016, Lero was commissioned by the NCCA to conduct research around the provision of computer science in upper second level education internationally: Report on the Provision of Courses in Computer Science in Upper Second Level Education Internationally