Monday 15 October 2012

School helps Primary School with Computing Problem

A member of the School of Science and Technology helped a local primary school look at ways they could add some programming into some of their ICT lessons. The Greenfoot software (http://www.greenfoot.org/overview) and tutorials (http://www.greenfoot.org/doc) were used to demonstrate some possible ways this could be done. This type of activity is similar various people are trying around the country to persuade children that programming is fun and not as hard as some people may tell them (see Coding for kids is as easy as Pi  for another example)


This Greenfoot work forms part of the on-going out-reach activities the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton is actively working in partnerships with schools. Other examples include:

For more details on any of these please contact Dr Scott Turner






Thursday 4 October 2012

URB@N (Undergraduate Research Bursaries at Northampton) call


The call for projects for this year’s URB@N (Undergraduate Research Bursaries at Northampton) scheme is now open.

URB@N is a scheme offering opportunities for current undergraduate students to participate in a pedagogic research project taking place at the university. Having student involvement in such research can add valuable additional insight to the student voice that could not be easily accessed using other means. This can provide real authentic data which has the potential to impact on teaching and learning practice and hence the student experience.

At this stage, staff are invited to propose a project idea that they would be seeking to investigate in their area of work. Projects must focus on learning and teaching and ways to improve the learning experience for students at Northampton. Purely discipline-focussed research cannot qualify. The projects should have clear outcomes, and should be mutually beneficial for both the supervisor and the student researcher. Each project should have a named academic leader who will act as supervisor to the bursary student. Students will then invited to apply to be researchers on those projects, with successful students receiving a £500 bursary to support their involvement in the scheme.


Information about the scheme, and the application process, can be found here: www.northampton.ac.uk/urban