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

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

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