Paul Curzon - Public Engagement Champion via CS4FN
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen Mary University of London
Department Name: Sch of Electronic Eng & Computer Science
Abstract
This programme will support Prof Paul Curzon to act as an ICT public engagement champion. It will (1) turn UK teachers into local ICT research engagement champions within their schools by empowering them to act as intermediaries (2) build a pipeline of engagement with UK ICT research from primary school onwards by working with children directly, and indirectly through their teachers, to inspire them about ICT research, and (3) deeply embed public engagement in the research culture of ICT researchers to feed the pipeline via a community of practice. An explicit focus will be to emphasise the diversity of computer scientists and the wide-ranging ICT research that they do, both in the UK and beyond, and the diversity of new and future job roles that use ICT, directly or otherwise. We will build upon our existing CS4FN family of public engagement vehicles to do this: a key aspect is to scale up our pilot work with primary schools.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Paul Curzon (Principal Investigator) |
| Title | 2024 Christmas bumper issue Puzzles Pack for UK & US audiences |
| Description | For Christmas 2024 we wanted to create a downloadable pack of festive-themed CS4FN puzzles which could be used by both our UK audience on A4 paper and our US audience on US Letter-sized paper. One of the things we've become increasingly aware of (thanks to our website stats) is the expanding number of visitors we have from the United States. Recreating (resizing) the pack for US paper is straightforward in Word or PowerPoint. We also created a variation for home educators that had the solution at the bottom of the page (which could be folded back before giving to a child) whereas the school teacher pack had the solutions provided at the back of the pack to save having to fold back 30 bits of paper. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | This pack has proved popular with 603 downloads in all; 272 for the UK packs, 173 for the US packs and another 158 download (of a combined zip) from our TES 'shop'. This was also indirectly inspired by learning, from instructional YouTube videos on how to use free Inkscape graphics software. The program is much used by Etsy sellers who increase their commercial reach by supplying digital products that can be used by a US as well as a UK audience (see also the section on "Colour-in mini Christmas zine from CS4FN"). |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/christmaspuzzles/ |
| Title | A Bit of CS4FN Issues 4 and 5 |
| Description | We have produced a suite of five primary-aged booklets in all (two sequels to the first three booklets in the 'A bit of CS4FN' series and three puzzle books - see also the section called "Primary Puzzle Books 1 - 3 and certificates"). Each booklet contains a mix of inspiring stories about computer science research and puzzles to complete with links to our website to find out more. Issue 4 looked at some of the history of computer science, in particular the ways in which information can be represented, stored (e.g. vector graphics) and transmitted in different ways including semaphore, Morse and by light through optical cables. Issue 5 highlighted Gladys West's work in satellite navigation and included a pull-out copy of her poster (see the "Diversity in Computing - Heroes posters for primary" section), wrote about research into soft robots and how mazes are fun to solve by hand or algorithmically (included in this was a mindfulness activity about carving a maze into a piece of clay before baking). Another activity combining history and code was making your own core rope memory (the original version was used to get us to the Moon). |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | In addition to the print run (18,000) the booklets (as PDFs) have been downloaded another 125 times (this figure doesn't include people also reading individual articles on our website). Newly added to the back of the booklets for this project that "18,000 copies of this free booklet have been sent to over 460 UK school /home educator subscribers." This is both informative to anyone looking at it and a useful reminder for us when at events to tell people about its reach. |
| URL | https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/primary/ |
| Title | CS4FN Blog |
| Description | We have written a large number of articles covering a wide varierty of research, career and diversity topics. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | See entry for engagement activity. |
| Title | CS4FN magazines |
| Description | Two magazines in our secondary range were created as part of the project. The first on Computational Contraptions was jointly funded with another project. The second was a core artifact from this project, on DIversity in Computer Science and covered very diverse aspexts of diversity including women, various ethnic backgrounds, disability etc. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | In June 2023 we published issue 29 of the CS4FN magazine, called "Diversity: computing by all, working for all" with a print run of 21,000 copies of which 20,532 free copies were posted to our 2,572 subscribing schools and home educators; another ~500 copies were given away at other events. As with all our magazines a free PDF is available to download (434 downloads) and the magazine's landing page has been visited 400+ times (this doesn't include page views of individual articles from the magazine). We've also shared excerpts from the magazine through our social media pages. The magazine included articles about computer scientists from a variety of backgrounds (including ethnicity, disability and sexuality) and about a range of topics including facial recognition technology and bias in algorithms. |
| URL | https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/ |
| Title | Colour-in mini Christmas zine from CS4FN |
| Description | A foldable paper zine with computing-themed puzzles and Christmas-themed pictures to colour in, for kids at home or in school. The product can be used as just a fun thing to colour in and complete puzzles, but can also be used to talk about some computer science, e.g. logical strategies deployed to solve the puzzles. There are two versions, one A4 for UK printers and a resized version for US letter size printers. This product was inspired by the popularity of colouring in pages on Etsy, in particular 'colouring in placemats' used to keep younger children occupied at the dinner table. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This free resource has now been downloaded a total of 250 times from our website and 107 times from the TES site. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ This has now been downloaded a total of 1,205 times with another 50 downloads from our TES 'shop' and 924 downloads of the UK A4 version and 124 of the US Letter version from our website. The zine was also included in the Christmas bumper issue Puzzles Pack but those figures aren't included here, this is just the standalone version. |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/colour-in-mini-christmas-zine-from-cs4fn/ |
| Title | Diversity in Computing - Heroes posters for primary |
| Description | Mindful of the need for visible representation from a young age of computer scientists we commissioned illustrator Richard Butterworth to design a series of 5 appealing, bright and colourful cartoon-style posters for primary school classrooms and corridors. We chose diverse people: Hedy Lamarr (frequency hopping), Clarence 'Skip' Ellis (collaborative documents), Gladys West (GPS), Louis Braille (binary representations) and Mu?ammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (algorithms). We made these available from our website to download individually or as a combined zip in October 2024, along with an automatic PowerPoint presentation which displayed the posters on a screen and, where available, articles about the people on the poster and their contribution to computer science.The Gladys West poster was included in the Bit of CS4fn booklet. We also added these as a zip to our CS4FN 'shop' on TES*. We have also had large versions printed professionally and these are now displayed in the corridors in our computer science department. *TES = formerly Times Educational Supplement; a site where teachers can download free or chargeable classroom resources (all of ours are provided free). |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | These have been popular and commented on positively by colleagues and teachers ("These are brilliant. Thanks for sharing!" on Curzon's LinkedIn post introducing them which also had 13 shares. The items have been downloaded a total of 574 times. |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/heroes/ |
| Title | Encrypted deckchairs (and More Encrypted Deckchairs) |
| Description | Inspired by NASA's "Dare Mighty Things" message woven covertly into Perseverance's parachute, these creative 'makes' for home or the classroom illustrate the principle of steganography, through stripey steganography (there is a message in the stripes in the deckchair). This was created by a QMUL colleague, Ho Huen (who also created video instructions), in consultation with Curzon and Brodie. "Encrypted deckchairs" is an origami deckchair + sun lounger project, which also includes a blank file for readers to create their own message. "More encrypted deckchairs" is a follow-on project in which a deckchair is made from craft and cocktail sticks. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The deckchair files have been downloaded over 100 times. 2023/2024 update ------------------------------ The files have now been downloaded 210 times. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ The files have now been downloaded 347 times. We have also worked closely with Ho to develop other activities for festivals. |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/2022/07/04/encrypted-deckchairs/ |
| Title | Primary Puzzle Books 1 - 3 and certificates |
| Description | We have produced a suite of five primary-aged booklets in all (3 puzzle books and two sequels to the first three booklets in the 'A bit of CS4FN' series - see also the section called "A Bit of CS4FN Issues 4 and 5"). Each page or double page in the Primary Puzzles books is a standalone puzzle or series of linked puzzles that is fun to do and which also illustrates an aspect of computer science, computational thinking in an easy to understand way - this lets the reader do something similar to what computer scientists do. For example finding five differences between two otherwise identical images can be used to highlight the importance of paying close attention to detail and pattern matching to spot bugs in code. Pixel puzzles or run-length encoding puzzles help to explain how computers store and share images. Logic puzzles of various kinds emphasise logical thinking. Each puzzle is explicitly linked to career skills. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | We have posted 18,000+ of each of these to our primary subscribers, and made them available to download from our website and from our TES 'shop', and feedback has been very positive. We have actively highlighted that home educators are welcome to request one of two copies for children too, which has also been appreciated. Puzzle Book 1 has been downloaded 307 times in total and Puzzle Book 2 has been downloded 247 times. At the time of writing Puzzle Book 3 has only very recently been added and has only been downloaded 14 times. The solutions to our puzzles are on our website. A new thing we experimented with for the project was to provide accompanying certificates which can also be downloaded, printed and awarded to children. Each puzzle book is accompanied by three versions of a certificate: one for children who've attempted some of the puzzles and two versions for those who've completed all the puzzles with one having an option to tick circles of each completed and one where the circles are pre-ticked. We thought this would be a bit of bonus fun for the puzzlers, and also a proxy marker as evidence that people are engaging with the mini magazines. The certificates have been downloaded 130 times. |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/puzzles/ |
| Title | Program a Pumpkin - Hallowe'en special |
| Description | This is based on our popular 'Emotion Machine' activity. Several facial features (eyes, eyebrows and mouth) are linked to a letter A, B or C and so young people can 'program' the overall face by declaring the letters which determines which features are shown. This is a simplified pumpkin-based version aimed at primary aged children just using a pumpkin's eyes and mouth. The activity can be done with just paper, or the pumpkin can be placed on a glass jam jar with a safety tea-light for extra spooky glow. Versions were made for both UK and US printers and we included classroom activities and drew links with why computer scientists might research the expression of human emotions (e.g. for companion robots, text sentiment analysis and use of emoji). |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The pumpkins have been downloaded 56 times from our website and another 20 times from the TES site. Those doing the activity will have gained understanding of how expressions can be programmed algorithmically and understood a little of the computer science research around emotions 2024/2025 update ----------------------------- The pumpkins have now been downloaded a total of 194 times (88 for the UK version, 58 for the US adaptation and 48 of the combined version on our TES 'shop'. |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/the-program-a-pumpkin-activity/ |
| Title | Write-a-postcard / Program a postcard |
| Description | We created an unplugged activity based on Strachey's Love letter writing program for use in science festivals and workshops to illustrate the idea of how an AI can generate text and why AIs can 'hallucinate'. It consists of sets of templates for lines to go in a postcard and an algorithm to create "AI' generated postcards, together with an illustrative program implementing it. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | A series of children / families explored following algorithms leading them to a better understanding of how AIs are algorithmic and why they make things up. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ We applied and have been accepted to deliver this workshop at the King's AI Festival - Family Day in May. |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/postcard/ |
| Description | 1. Made computer science research easy for teachers and young people to engage with through our blog, social media, magazines, talks and workshops ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ We have written hundreds of articles on a huge range of research topics, interspersed with articles on the history of computer science and about some of the people who've contributed to computing. While these have translated complex technical information into something understandable for a young audience they also demonstrate the many different sectors and topics in which computing research is used. We have deliberately made our articles as interdisciplinary as possible so that teachers of other subjects can also reference computing research and concepts in their lessons too. We have used social media to more widely engage teachers and others with the messages as well as to promote our other resources including the blog. Attempts to create a physical community of practice of teachers around computer science did not work due to teachers being overlaoded, difficulties with timing and there being lots of CPD now around pedagogy. Instead we focussed on engaging and informing teachers with research through social media and blog activities as well as through our physical artefacts. Brodie's side project, a collection of job descriptions, has been blended with a number of articles to showcase the types of roles available, in research, industry or elsewhere and the skills and knowledge that readers could develop in order to take part later in their career. Curzon's talks to teachers and sixth formers, and workshops for younger children, also explicitly highlight the importance of understanding people (in addition to technical skills), including using magic as a way to inspire them and form connections with research topics. 2. Created a community of practice for those engaging different audiences with computer science research ************************************************************************************************************** Before the grant CS4FN operated largely independently and the biggest change has been working with some of the other ICT PE Champions, particularly in the development of a conference held in late 2024. The PECS mailing list has proved successful in that several people have started new topics and shared resources or events. We also have a higher profile than before within our department with Curzon now having been asked to give a series of talks/workshops at different research group meetings to promote public engagement and illustrate easy routes into science communication and public engagement which busy staff could get involved with. Our profile across QMUL has also been raised thanks to our team being shortlisted for and being commended in the Innovation Awards and our activities are regularly included in the all-staff bulletin. 3. Expanding the range of material for younger audiences that demonstrates diverse representation in computer science, past and present ********************************************************************************************************************************************** CS4FN's mantra is that computer science is for everyone. Young people may not feel that computing is for them if they can't see themselves reflected in role models, or understand the many ways in which careers and hobbies can involve computing. It is also important for those children who are more likely to see themselves represented everywhere to be able to see the contributions of people who don't look like them. We have created a whole series of Diversity portals on Different ethnic diversity, women, LGBTQ+, neurodiversity, disability and more, highlighting the contributions of people from those groups. We have previously provided free 'Diversity in Computing' posters for secondary schools and the grant has enabled us to widen our reach to include primary audiences. Our 'Computer Science Heroes' provide primary teachers with a simple and fun way to increase representation ambiently, from a younger age. Each has a snippet of information and a link to find out more and can be printed and displayed in classrooms or corridors. These have proved popular with teachers. Our primary magazines have also further provided material to support the diversity message as well as promoting computer science to primary teachers and primary aged audiences. We have also promoted the idea of daily computational thinking puzzles and provided wide ranging puzzles including popular computing skills and careers linked puzzle books for primary age groups, lots of puzzles and advice on developing skills through puzzles. |
| Exploitation Route | Our resources and material will be available long term and can be picked up by others (as well as ourselves), whether teachers, home educators or academics to be continued to be used to promote computer science research, careers and diversity.This is already happening including teachers using them and our partners the Royal Institution using them separately from the workshops we give. We have published work on our approach through analysis using the sociology theory, Legitimation Code Theory. This analysis approach provides a new tool for improving both teaching and public engagement activity in ICT that can also be built on in an academic context. This could be extended to analysis of transformational impact. Computing has now escaped beyond the confines of its own subject and almost everyone will interact with or be affected by the output of computers - a wider diversity of people involved in decision-making processes is essential. An increased understanding of how computer science can affect everyone, for good or bad, has never been more important and people able to support computer science communication and public engagement can play an important role. Our work and resources will support this especially given the wide ranging scope, help those from wide discipline backgrounds engage. Computer Science departments elsewhere are able to incorporate science communication skills into their curricula, giving students an opportunity to see their subject from different viewpoints and our work can support that. We have promoted the approach of public engagement as standard and including groups of stakeholders (so for example) involve some of the people who will be using the end product of the research throughout research projects. Masters and PhD students can adopt this approach as they develop their research projects. It is essential that resources for teachers or young people can be adapted for different audiences and ability levels, and that they are culturally relevant where possible. It also needs to start at primary level for biggest long term impact. We have shown ways this can be done so this can be built on and copied by others. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Electronics Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| Description | Ofsted's Research (literature) Review Series for computing explicitly highlights, in its section on storytelling, Curzon's approach to teaching computer science. It references the need for stories to be linked back to the specific computing concept, and the need for caution in using metaphors and analogies, making clear the similarities and differences between them and the ideas being taught." Our unplugged Artificial Intelligence activities, aimed at a primary audience, were included in the packs sent to venues organising live streaming events of the Royal Institution (Ri) Christmas lectures on The Truth About AI in 2023 and our Sweet Learning Computer is included in the Ri's advice pack for people interested in developing Computer Science Masterclasses. The RI are using our unplugged activities and approach to engaging with RI in masterclass sessions that they run. A variety of schools are using Curzon's classroom activities as a fun way to engage students and teach different aspects of computing and they are also regularly used by Digital Schoolhouse teachers. Several of our resources have also been added to the STEM Learning site and we regularly hear from teachers seeking permission to adapt our resources for their school, including language translations. Our posters have been used by teachers to promote diversity in their schools. Our CS4FN blog has a wide readership of students and teachers and so has raised the awareness of research and diversity case studies in computer sceicne. It was also included as part of the ACM's 'blogroll' at the end of 2022; a roundup of computer science blogs and news. The heuristic approaches to evaluating lesson plans based on Legitimation Code Theory for our workshop sessions that we have taught to teachers has had take up. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism |
| Impact Types | Societal Policy & public services |
| Description | Computing at School innovation Panel 2024-25 |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Description | NCCE2 Academic Advisory Board |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | The NCCE provides support, guidance and resources to Computer Science teachers throughout England. It has helped increase the numbers taking COmputer Science at school and the quality of education received. The academic advisory board have helped ensure academic rigour in this work |
| Description | PECS mailing list (Jiscmail) |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| URL | https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=PECS |
| Description | PEEECS Internal Group and public website |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| URL | https://peeecs.wordpress.com/ |
| Description | Royal Society AI in education |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Description | Support for colleagues starting a new professional mailing list |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| Impact | A new mailing list now exists for astro- science communication / public engagement practitioners to communicate about their work. |
| URL | https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=astromailbox |
| Description | Ri (Royal Institution) |
| Organisation | The Royal Institution of Great Britain |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Curzon has given a series of Computer Science and Mathematics masterclasses and summer schools for the Ri both at the RI and elsewhere as well as stepping in at short notice when others have dropped out. We have also run an RI masterclass series at QMUL. 2023/2024 update (these are detailed in the Engagement Activities section) • Curzon ran workshops for primary- and secondary-aged children at the Ri and elsewhere this year. We ran a 2024 QMUL / Ri Masterclass series in Computer Science in our department. Series is organised by Jo Brodie with another colleague in EECS. • Our department screened the livestream of the Ri's Christmas Lectures recording in December 2023 (on Artificial Intelligence). The Ri also shared links to our free AI-themed activity sheets as part of its marketing and with other organisations taking part. Curzon gave a talk at a physical and live streamed special celebration event for all those who had been involved in their masterclass series 2024/2025 update (these are detailed in the Engagement Activities section) • Curzon has given numerous in-person and online primary/secondary Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science and Maths at various sites • Curzon regularly runs Holiday Workshop events held at the Ri in London. • We are currently running our tenth season of the QMUL / Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science which will include an in-person session from Paul Curzon; series is organised by Jo Brodie with another colleague in EECS. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The RI provided a representative on the advisory panel and we have had separate discussions on ways forward. They provide organisational support and recruitment as well as rooms, allowing Curzon to engage with a wide variety of diverse school children and focus just on workshop development and delivery. While we had worked with the RI before which led to the collaboration on the grant, the grant has allowed us to increase the mutual support and number of workshops delivered, including extending to doing new Maths workshops on the maths behind computing. This included developing a new careers inspired usability consultant workshop. 2023/2024 update • The Ri provided school registration support for the masterclasses and also speakers for the first three sessions from Google DeepMind • QMUL was invited, through Curzon, to be one of the 'Xmas Lectures' livestreaming venues (particularly relevant given the AI topic). The Centre for the Cell (another department at QMUL) was also a streaming venue. • The Ri organised DBS checks for Brodie and Curzon 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ • The Ri has provided extensive support in arranging the QMUL series of masterclasses. • By providing a venue and admin support for other masterclasses and Holiday Workshops this has enabled Curzon to share computer science research and ideas with more children and young people. |
| Impact | RI/ QMUL Masterclasses Workshops for a non-academic audience (various) - Ones listed as RI-linked. QMUL / RI Masterclasses |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | 'Techy talks' listing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | There are a number of computing-themed talks, events and workshops happening online, in London or beyond that may be suitable for a school or general public audience, as well as of interest to teachers. The listing is a blog post, published every couple of months, with a round-up of suitable events that are coming up (the post is shared on Twitter and elements also incorporated into the next newsletter). The listing is also shared on the PECS Jiscmail mailing list. The intentions behind the listing format are to showcase a variety of events (and the venues which host them), to help teachers hear about events which might be suitable for their pupils to attend, or for the teacher to attend and discuss with pupils, and also to showcase further examples of public engagement with computing research to the PECS group. Academic seminars are largely excluded from the listing (unless the information specifically states that it's also suitable for a non-academic audience). 2023/2024 update ------------------------------ Another 4 posts have been published with information about upcoming talks taking place over the next couple of months. The content is also shared through newsletters and our social pages. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ Another two events listings round ups have been published (Spring 2024 and Winter 2024). One of the organisers of an event we listed got in touch to thank us for including them and to invite us to attend one of the lectures coming up in the series. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024,2025 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/techy-talks-for-non-techy-people-public-engagement-with-computer... |
| Description | A Bit of CS4FN Issues 4 and 5 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Full details are in Artistic & Creative Products: "A Bit of CS4FN Issues 4 and 5". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024,2025 |
| URL | https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/ |
| Description | Articles for Sapientia - computing educators' newsletter from ICT for Education |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Paul Curzon was invited by ICT for Education to write an article, about teaching computer science, for the Sapientia newsletter. It was emailed to their subscribers (teachers) in March 2024. 2024/2025 update Jo Brodie was invited to write an article about her plans to create a suite of school computing resources to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Arecibo Message; this was sent to ICT for Education's Sapienta newsletter subscribers in Autumn 2024. This arose after she published a blog post outlining her ideas for the resources, which was inspired by Curzon's 'pixel puzzle' talk given at the ICT Conference in April 2024. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.ictforeducation.co.uk/sapientia/ |
| Description | CS4FN Christmas Advent Calendar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Based on an advent calendar we published a blog post each day during Advent 2023. Each 'door' had a Christmas-themed image which was linked to the theme of the blog post. For example Day One displayed a Christmas jumper which opened to a post about the algorithmic instructional links between knitting and coding, about hiding messages in code or knitting (steganography). A pair of mittens for Day Two opened to a post about pair programming, digital twins, pairing devices and gestural gloves, as well as a magic trick. Most of the posts included a puzzle with the answers given the following day. The Christmas Eve post included information about how NORAD, FlightRadar and Google track the position of "Santa's Sleigh" and other flights, using Rudolph's nose as the transponder and his antlers as the antennae. We also included information on how to spot the International Space Station which was passing overhead at roughtly the same time on Christmas Day. The Advent series of posts were originally created in December 2021 but updated for December 2023. It was also tidied and reposted on social media for December 2024. The suite of pages has been viewed 680 times. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/cs4fn-christmas-computing-advent-calendar/ |
| Description | CS4FN issue 29 on Diversity |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | One of our objectives is "...to emphasise the diversity of computer scientists and the wide-ranging ICT research that they do, both in the UK and beyond, and the diversity of new and future job roles that use ICT, directly or otherwise." In June 2023 we published issue 29 of the CS4FN magazine, called "Diversity: computing by all, working for all" with a print run of 21,000 copies of which 20,532 free copies were posted to our 2,572 subscribing schools and home educators; another ~500 copies were given away at other events. As with all our magazines a free PDF is available to download (130 downloads) and the magazine's landing page has been visited 400+ times (this doesn't include page views of individual articles from the magazine). We've also shared excerpts from the magazine through our social media pages. The magazine included articles about computer scientists from a variety of backgrounds (including ethnicity, disability and sexuality) and about a range of topics including facial recognition technology and bias in algorithms. We also included a link to our Diversity portal https://cs4fn.blog/diversity/ which had over 140 additional visits (again this doesn't include views of individual articles which we blogged separately). 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ The magazine has been downloaded a further 164 times from our downloads website in the latest reporting period. The related Diversity portal on our CS4FN blog site has had another 120 views. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/issue-29-diversity/ |
| Description | CS4FN magazine issue 28 - Cunning Computational Contraptions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This issue focused on the history of computer science and computational devices and creating the online version was part-funded by EP/K040251/2 (Ursula Martin). The magazine had additional contributions from Ursula Martin and Adrian Johnstone. This grant supported creating and distributing the physical copies. 21,000 printed copies of the magazine were sent to >2,400 subscribing UK computer science school teachers, librarians and home educators, with numbers varying between 1 (e.g. a home educator or for a school library) and 200; the most popular request is for a class set of 30. Copies of the magazine were also given away at a professional event held as part of the Imagining AI exhibition at Oxford University https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/imagining-ai organised by Ursula Martin and colleagues. At time of writing (8 March 2023) PDF copies of the magazine have been downloaded from our download site 394 times in 2022 and 68 times in 2023 (462), however the magazine is also available in web-form on our CS4FN website, with individual articles republished as blog posts. The landing page (portal) for the issue has been visited 341 times, https://cs4fn.blog/cunningcontraptions/ We also make the magazine available to our undergraduates and postgraduate students as well as visitors tot he department, and we give out copies at talks/workshops. Informal feedback indicates that teachers enjoy using CS4FN magazines in a variety of ways: leaving for pupils to read as a non-fiction resource, photocopying article for discussion in class or using articles as a springboard to teach about computer science research directly as well as teaching about or reinforcing the wider themes (ethics, diversity, that the topic has a history, that computing touches all areas of our lives even if we don't all become programmers etc). 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ The magazine has been downloaded another 188 times in the latest reporting window and the Cunning Contraptions portal has been visited another 84 times. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024,2025 |
| URL | https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/issue-28-cunning-computational-contraptions/ |
| Description | Computing-themed magic science festival stall for venue re-opening |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | For the re-opening of the 4th floor of the Electronic Engineering and Computer Science department at QMUL (the Peter Landin Building) Paul Curzon gave a version of his computing-themed magic science festival stall for colleagues, including senior managers and postgraduate students taking the opportunity to draw attention to this as an unusual way to engage people about computer science (and cognitive science) research. This was part of a Show and Tell event in which other colleagues also took part. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Diversity Day By Day portal |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This is one of our thematic portals focusing on Diversity (a major strand of our grant) and contains a mix of new content and links to previously published content on the CS4FN blog. This is a recently-begun, longer-term project which is both a novel way of highlighting the many different backgrounds of computer scientists and also lets us tap into the popularity of the 'On This Day In History' style of sharing information in its historical context. We are continuing to add to this so its initial presentation is sparse however the project has had 80 views so far. 2023/2024 ------------------ This has proved a little more time-consuming to complete than originally anticipated but we continue to gradually add more items. Our main focus remains on writing longer articles about a diversity of people, which we can also link to here. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ Interest in this is gradually increasing. The overview pages for most of the months have low numbers (an average of views) however January's has had 101 and February is already into double figures. Generally the promotion is of the relevant article about the person, rather than the month. We now have links to articles for over a third of the year with 132 linked stories (an average of 11 each month) relating to people from a wide range of backgrounds who have contributed to computer science. We have seen increasing visits to the individual articles which we promote under the Diversity Day by Day banner on social media based on the dates in the calendar version. This has helped drive our overall increase in visits to out posts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024,2025 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/diversity-day-by-day/ |
| Description | Diversity in Computing - Heroes posters for primary |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Full details are in Artistic & Creative Products: "Diversity in Computing - Heroes posters for primary". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024,2025 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/heroes/ |
| Description | Festival of Communities 2022 and 2023 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Festival of Communities was an annual event organised by QMUL's Centre for Public Engagement (Platinum Engage Watermark from NCCPE) in which all departments across the university participate, in partnership with the borough of Tower Hamlets. Curzon and Brodie ran a stall in June 2022, engaging with visiting families about computer science research. We hosted a number of fun activities including close-up table magic illustrating the links between magic and computer science, colouring in (making a half-human, half-computer 'cyborg' hat) and Pixel Puzzles. We also gave away lots of free material to primary and secondary-aged children and their families and chatted with them about computing stories in the news, and answered their questions. We also had with us a 3rd year undergraduate student as a helper and we got her involved in doing some of the magic tricks and explaining the science, and engaging with families too. Workshop at QMUL's Festival of Communities Curzon also delivered in 2022 an interactive fun family magic show for approx 30 people in Tower Hamlets Park, demonstrating how magic is linked to computer science and how magicians and computer scientists actually think alike. QMUL's Festival of Communities is a two-day engagement event. On the first day QMUL staff go into the community and put on an event in the park, on the second day we invite the community to come to QMUL with events on campus. https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/05/25/colour-in-a-computer-and-see-the-magic-of-computer-science-at-qmuls-engageqms-festival-of-communities-11-12-june-2022-free-family-fun-jb/ 2023/2024 update Festival of Communities 2023 We were successful in our bid to host a large stall and received additional funds both from QMUL's Centre for Public Engagement as well as local funding from our department with Curzon's time from the grant. This let us develop a new activity and pay for two PhD students to take part in the event, supporting our young guests and gaining confidence in engaging with the public. 'Program A Postcard' (see Creative Works) was a fun activity (based on Paul Curzon's Christopher Strachey letter text-generating workshop) which we used to illustrate how Chat GPT / AI tools can work using autocomplete. The activity provided guests with a partially filled postcard containing several sentences (for older children they could pick from a range of sentences and make their own post card) and then complete the task by adding nouns, verbs, adjectives, from piles that were shuffled for randomisation. The end result was an amusing nonsensical post card which families could then post to themselves or someone else (putting the post card in our specially created CS4FN post box; we then posted these through Royal Mail). The cards had a link to a page on our website and participants were given a brightly coloured sticker. It was a very enjoyable event and we also gave away lots of magazines, booklets and colouring-in puzzles. The suite of pages and blog posts relating to this activity has had over 200 views. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ Although our proposed activity* was accepted for inclusion in the 2024 Festival unfortunately it was cancelled, and the event has been stopped in 2025. We took part instead in a schools event at the Centre of the Cell doing the planned activities. We will however be taking part in King's Festival of AI Family Day in May 2025, with our Program A Postcard activity. *'Find the words': a game to discover how computer science can help people with disabilities, and how people with disabilities have contributed to computing. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2023/05/22/free-family-festival-fun-in-stepney-green-from-qmul-t... |
| Description | Festival of Open Research in AI |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Paul Curzon was invited to talk about "Public engagement with AI through CS4FN" and how to promote public outreach and accessible participation in computer science research as one of the speakers at an afternoon event at QMUL on transparency and openness in AI research. (Others spoke about open source / open data, artefact preservation, reproducibility and scientific misconduct.) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.com/e/festival-of-open-research-and-ai-queen-mary-university-of-london-ticket... |
| Description | Foreign language translations of our classroom activities |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We are regularly contacted by people who wish to translate our material into other languages and most recently in 2023 three of our activities have been translated into Dutch. We have a dedicated page for foreign language editions where copies of our translated material can be found. 2023/2024 update The page has had nearly 3,000 views (in total) as of February 2024. Since the grant began it has been viewed nearly 700 times. A new request is for part of an activity to be translated into Italian for a STEM book. Languages include • Spanish • German • French • Dutch • Italian • Greek • Russian • Welsh • Chinese 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ Our page has been visited another 226 times during the latest reporting period. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024,2025 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/interdisciplinary-computational-thinking/computing-and-language/ |
| Description | I'm A Scientist - British Science Week 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | For British Science Week 2024 (11-15 March) "I'm A Scientist Get Me Out of Here" co-ordinated hundreds of live, fast-paced, online, text-based chats for UK schools. Jo Brodie took part in multiple live-chats answering teachers', schoolchildren's and young people's questions about computer science, science in general and her career. Typically each chat had 30 pupils involved and Jo chatted with around 500 people over the week. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://imascientist.org.uk/profile/jobrodie2/ |
| Description | Livestreaming the Ri Christmas Lectures on Artificial Intelligence |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Through the project partnership, the Royal Institution invited our department (QM EECS) to be one of the livestreaming venues for the 2023 Ri Christmas Lectures, on artificial intelligence. We were one of around 25 venues selected. We provided a catered and wheelchair-accessible 'satellite' venue for all three streaming events and welcomed a general public audience to watch the recording of the lectures, for the BBC, as they were given live at the Royal Institution. Our classroom activities were also shared by the Ri with the other streaming venues, along with other activities which could be used during downtime in the recording (e.g. when a piece needed to be re-recorded). The audience enjoyed seeing 'the making of' Prof Mike Wooldridge's "The Truth About AI" lectures and we sent reminders to attendees that they could watch the end result during the Christmas holidays on BBC Four. This also prompted us to create an overview page of 'AI at Queen Mary' which was shared with all participants https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2023/12/26/ai-at-qmul-artificial-intelligence-at-queen-mary-university-of-london/ and QMUL has also created an overview page for students https://www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/course-info/ai-hub/ with a series of talks planned for prospective students. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/free-livestreaming-events-the-christmas-lectures-from-the-royal-... |
| Description | Lunch and Learn: CS4FN and Diversity in Computing: Supporting diversity representation in computing in UK schools through CS4FN |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Jo Brodie was invited by QMUL's EDI team to give a lunchtime presentation about the work done by the CS4FN project on Diversity in Computing. This was an opportunity to inform colleagues in our department, and in others, about our work and the free resources we've made available for teachers who are trying to increase diversity representation in their computer science classes in the UK. The talk focused mostly on our work for Black History Month and referenced issue 29 of the CS4FN magazine, as well as our wide range of diversity posters. It also covered our many articles both about Black computer scientists but also about things like biases in algorithms and devices that are designed with too-narrow a demographic in mind. It provoked an interesting discussion, with colleagues saying they'd also use our resources in their undergraduate teaching or tell their children's school. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/lunch-and-learn-supporting-diversity-representation-in-computing... |
| Description | Portals on the CS4FN blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We have created a number of curated portals on our blog / website to help readers access our information organised by topic, and to increase usefulness for calendar events. This also lets us re-surface older posts by linking them together thematically with others, into a single themed page (which we can share on Twitter, in addition to individual posts). We have explicitly created a wide range of diversity portals as part of our diversity programme. These are all linked from an over-arching diversity portal. The full set of portals created during the project are listed individually below, also found here https://cs4fn.blog/portals/ June 2022 Computer science in space: https://cs4fn.blog/computer-science-in-space/ Victorian computer science: https://cs4fn.blog/victorian-computer-science/ - interdisciplinary portal with history July 2022 Wearable computing and fashion: https://cs4fn.blog/wearable-computing-and-fashion/ Lego computer science: https://cs4fn.blog/lego-computer-science/ Dec 2022 Natural language processing: https://cs4fn.blog/natural-language-processing/ Mini beasts and computer science: https://cs4fn.blog/mini-beasts-and-computer-science/ Christopher Strachey: https://cs4fn.blog/christopher-strachey/ - also part of our LGBTQ+ portal Jan 2023 Alan Turing: https://cs4fn.blog/alan-turing/ - also part of our LGBTQ+ portal LGBTQ+ Computer Science Greats: https://cs4fn.blog/lgbtq-computer-science-greats/ - ready for LGBT History Month in February Feb 2023 Diversity Day By Day: https://cs4fn.blog/diversity-day-by-day/ Teachers https://cs4fn.blog/teachers/ - highlighting the resources that we offer March 2023 For teachers we've created two Women portals (for International Women's Day). One on the Teaching London Computing website https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/women/ and another on our downloads site which gathers all our free material relating to Women in Computing https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/women/. We've also created one for students https://cs4fn.blog/the-women-are-still-here/ Combined, the portal pages have been viewed over 600 times - this includes the post-June 2022 viewing figures for Cunning Computational Contraptions (the page was set up before EPSRC funding began, https://cs4fn.blog/cunningcontraptions/ ready for the magazine being distributed on the grant). 2023/2023 update We have added another twelve portals to the CS4FN site, and updated the content in these and our previous portals. • A CS4FN look at Computer Science PhDs (10 April 2023) • Diversity in Computer Science (11 April 2023) • Disability in Computer Science (14 April 2023) • Black History, Present and Future (5 May 2023) • Asian Computer Science Stars (6 May 2023) • Muslim, Middle Eastern and North African Heritage (6 May 2023) • CS4FN Magazine Issue 29 : Diversity (18 May 2023) • Bias (27 May 2023) • Jewish Computer Scientists (28 May 2023) • Career paths in computing (29 May 2023) • Computing in the Americas (29 May 2023) • CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar (1 December 2023) Combined, the portal pages have now been viewed 2,800 times (excluding views before the project began). 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ Another 14 portals were added, itemised below. As we transfer and update older articles from the original CS4FN site, and write newer ones we organise them together thematically. March 2024 Internet of Things: https://cs4fn.blog/iot/ Time: https://cs4fn.blog/time/ April 2024 Computing and... Medicine & Health https://cs4fn.blog/computing-and-medicine-health/ May and June 2024 A new Puzzles portal was created in May and populated with information about our puzzle booklets as well as Egyptian survey puzzles, Coordinate Conundrums and Word searches. July 2024 Computer science & research https://cs4fn.blog/computer-science-research/ Materials Science https://cs4fn.blog/materials/ Networks and Telecommunications https://cs4fn.blog/networks-and-telecommunications/ August 2024 Computer science and 3D (including virtual reality) https://cs4fn.blog/computer-science-and-3d/ Neurodiversity and Computer Science https://cs4fn.blog/neurodiversity/ September 2024 Data Visualisation and Sonification https://cs4fn.blog/data-visualisation-and-sonification/ Quantum computing https://cs4fn.blog/quantum-computing/ November 2024 Cyber Security https://cs4fn.blog/cyber-security/ Tech Entrepreneurship https://cs4fn.blog/tech-entrepreneurship/ December 2024 Logic and Deduction https://cs4fn.blog/logic-and-deduction/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/portals/ |
| Description | Primary Puzzle Books 1 - 3 and certificates |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Full details are in Artistic & Creative Products: "Primary Puzzle Books 1 - 3 and certificates". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024,2025 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/puzzles/ |
| Description | Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science (and Maths) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We work closely with the Royal Institution to provide a range of events as part of their Masterclasses in Computer Science scheme. 1. QMUL / Ri Masterclass in Computer Science which take place on QMUL campus 2. Other Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science or Maths which take place at different venues and online 3. Royal Institution's Holiday Workshops which take place at the Ri in London 1. QMUL / RI MASTERCLASSES These consist of six consecutive Saturday morning interactive workshops for around 20 fourteen year olds run by QMUL academics including Curzon who runs one unplugged event. These workshops encourage young people to learn about computer science research beyond the curriculum. Curzon was invited (initially in 2015) to support the Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science programme by hosting a series at QMUL and we continued to do these. However the activity was stopped in 2020-2022 because of Covid. The grant has supported us in restarting the programme with Brodie part of the organising team in 2023. These are hugely popular sessions and feedback is excellent. • 4 March 2023 'Artificial Intelligence - but where is the intelligence' for 15 teenagers, given by Paul Curzon • 20 April 2024 Prof Curzon gave the final masterclass on 20th April (after a break for Easter) on "Artificial Intelligence: But where is the intelligence?" for 22 visiting teenagers. 2. OTHER RI MASTERCLASSES • Saturday 18 June 2022: Ri Masterclass at Gladesmore Community School The Royal Institution hosts Ri Masterclasses at a variety of locations. Curzon is occasionally asked to step in at the last moment to give his magic or AI workshops at a weekend event for young teenagers. • 21 January 2023: Ri Masterclass at Gladesmore Community School An AI workshop for approximately 20 teenagers. • 18 March 2023 'Artificial Intelligence: The Mind of the Machine' - at Trinity School Croydon ~50 students/teacher/RI staff KS3 mixed gender, ethnicity. Positive feedback from teachers and some students in break and as they left. • 15 June 2023 'Searching To Speak' - Maths Ri Masterclasses held online via Zoom for several school classrooms (~ 50 children and their teachers), hosted by the Ri. The workshop is based on https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/searchspeak/ • 11 May 2024 Paul delivered his "Artificial Intelligence: but where is the intelligence" workshop for 23 Year 9 students as part of a Royal Institution Masterclass held at Trinity School, Croydon (mixed gender, ethnicity). • 12 October 2024 Paul Curzon gave an adapted version of his 'Searching to Speak' workshop for 30 primary school pupils with very positive feedback. This was part of a Royal Institution Masterclass in Primary Maths. Paul also created a new resource page to accompany this, on how people can use maths and computer science to help people with severe disability - the page discusses algorithms, averages, tallying, histograms, data visualisation and frequency analysis https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/searching-to-speak-primary-maths-masterclass/ • 8 February 2025 Paul was again asked to give his adapted 'Searching to Speak' workshop for primary maths; this time at the Royal Institution for 32 pupils, again with positive feedback. 3. HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS • Monday 15th, Tuesday 16th and Monday 22nd August 2022: six workshops at the Royal Institution Curzon gave six workshops to primary aged children as part of the Ri's Holiday Workshop programme. He gave three different workshops twice on each day, one for children aged 7-9 and one for 10-12 year olds. Approximately 80 people attended (combined). - The magic of computer science x2 - AI, but where's the intelligence? x2 - Becoming a usability expert: Why are gadgets so hard to use? x2 https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/08/08/paul-curzons-doing-some-holiday-workshops-for-young-people-ri_science/ • 5 April 2023 'Ri Easter Holiday workshops' Magic of Computer Science 1 of 2 (for 7-8 year olds), mixed, 24 Magic of Computer Science 2 of 2 (for 9-11 year olds), mixed, 24 Children spontaneously doing magic in corridors to parents outside. • 15 July 2023 'The Illusion of Good Medical Device Design' - at the Royal Institution, Faraday Lecture Theatre for 200 students (parents in an overflow room). This was a last-minute addition as a previous speaker had to drop out. It was live streamed and more watched online >100) Audience wanted to take photos, asked questions and parents involved in conversations too. The talk is based on https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/the-illusion-of-good-medical-device-design/ • Monday 14 August 2023 'Holiday workshops: Artificial intelligence, but where is the intelligence?' at the Royal Institution for ages 7 to 8. https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/artificial-intelligence-but-where-is-the-intelligence/ • Monday 14 August 2023 'Holiday workshops: Artificial intelligence, but where is the intelligence?' at the Royal Institution for ages 9 to 11. • Friday 18 August 2023 'Holiday workshops: The magic of computer science' at the Royal Institution for ages 7 to 8. • Friday 18 August 2023 'Holiday workshops: The magic of computer science' at the Royal Institution for ages 9 to 11. • 14 October 2023 'Searching To Speak' at Royal Institution, Conversation Room for 32 students, rated 4.9 out of 5 in the feedback, example comment: "Today was amazing! I had so much fun! I have learned loads! :-)" November / December 2023 Paul contributed suggestions for activities that could be distributed to venues who were livestreaming the Ri Christmas Lectures as they were recorded. • 9 April 2024 Paul Curzon ran his regular Holiday Workshops at the Royal Institution in central London, for different age groups. "The Magic of Computer Science" - a morning session for 7-9 year olds and an afternoon session for 9-11 year olds, 48 children in total who were enthusiastic about the sessions. There was a good mix of genders and ethnicities. • 13th - 19th August 2024 Paul Curzon ran a series of six Holiday Workshops held at the Royal Institution, for children aged 7-8 and 9-11 on 'The Magic of Computer Science' and 'Artificial Intelligence, but where is the intelligence?' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024,2025 |
| Description | School Talks/ Workshops (various) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Curzon is regularly asked to run unplugged computing and other workshops (including magic shows about computing) for primary and secondary aged children. • Tuesday 14 June 2022: Magic of CS workshops at Chingford C of E School Two in-person workshops / magic workshops about the Magic of Computer Science for 60 pupils. 2023/2024 Update • 19 June 2023 'Artificial Intelligence: The Mind of the Machine' at Cranmore School for 120 Year 8 and Year 9 students. • June 2023: Magic of CS workshops at Chingford C of E School Two in-person workshops / magic workshops about the Magic of Computer Science for 60 pupils. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------- 5 July 2024 Paul gave "The Magic of CS" workshop at Chingford C of E School to 60 students/teachers Y5, mixed gender, ethnicity, with positive feedback afterwards 4 December 2024 Paul Curzon gave his "Artificial Inteligence but where is the intelligence" workshop at Chingford C of E School to 30 Y6 students of mixed gender and ethnicity. 7 December 2024 Paul ran a "Conjuring with Computation" tabletop session at a local independent bookshop for a general public audience, based on our workshops and related to his book of the same name. 11 December 2024 Paul Curzon gave his "Artificial Intelligence but where is the intelligence" workshop twice to Chingford C of E School for 2x30 Y6 mixed gender, ethnicity |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024 |
| Description | School talk: "The illusion of good medical device design" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Paul Curzon has given this talk based on his research a number of times in schools and at Science Festivals, generally for sixth formers. • Friday 10th June 2022: Talk given to approx 100 older secondary school pupils and their teachers, for the Barts and Queen Mary Virtual Festival https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/the-illusion-of-good-medical-device-design/ • Thursday 30 June 2022: TCS Digital Explorers An online talk given to approx 100 Y10 - Y12 students and their teachers as part of a careers event organised by TATA Consultancy Services https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/06/10/tcs-digital-explorers-2022-y10-y11-y12-teachers-free-tech-careers-event-27-30-june-with-tcs-paul-curzon-cs4fn-speaking-on-30-june-jb/ • Wednesday 6 July 2022 - Isaac Discovery Day event: Humans and Machines Isaac Computer Science held an in-person discovery day for 100 A level students at QMUL and Paul was the keynote speaker giving the talk on good medical device design and human computer interaction. March 2023. Gave talk to ~400 boys (across three 1-hour talks) at Salvatorian College in Wealdstone on "The illusion of good medical device design", on the topic of human-computer interaction and design. He received very positive feedback from staff and pupils with follow-up questions about career options. 2023/2024 update ------------------------------ July 2023 - the talk was also given as part of a Royal Institution Masterclass hosted at the Ri, in the Faraday Lecture Theatre for 200 students; details in the Ri Masterclasses section. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ • 15 March 2024 Paul Curzon gave 3 consecutive online talks to over 500 students plus teachers hosted by Salvatorian College. "Illusion of good software design" for Year 7 and two sessions of "Searching to Speak" (see 15 June 2023 for link) for Year 8 and Year 9. Each group had around 150 students from that year, plus some younger pupils and their teachers. The students asked lots of questions, about the workshops and about programming. • 24 June 2024 Medical Device Design and Human Error - Paul Curzon spoke (online) to around 60 sixth formers and their teachers for the Barts and Queen Mary Virtual Festival. This also resulted in the creation of a Machines & Medicine portal on the CS4FN website which gathers together some of our articles about the intersection between computing and medicine, and also provides a selection of archived jobs in that area https://cs4fn.blog/machines-and-medicine/ • 7 November 2024 Paul Curzon delivered "The Illusion of Good Software Design" to a sixth form computer science talk at University of Warwick, chaired by a Professor in Computer Science at Birmingham University who mentioned that he'd been inspired by CS4FN as an undergraduate student. Audience was mixed gender and ethnicity, positive feedback including a nice comment from a teacher on LinkedIn. • 27 November 2024 Paul delivered the good software design workshop to 700 sixth formers (mixed gender / ethnicity) at the Emmanual Centre London with positive feedback. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/the-illusion-of-good-medical-device-design/ |
| Description | Social Media |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We post regularly cs4fn related posts on social medias. Newly added posts (to either the CS4FN blog or the sister Teaching London Computing site) are regularly cross-posted to Social Media. This had to be switched to being done manually (after Twitter changed the rules of how automated posting systems can use its API) and sent to the 3,552 people following @CS4FN on Twitter (in addition to the 85 CS4FN and 831 Teaching London Computing email subscribers). During the project we created CS4FN accounts on Mastodon and BlueSky and now share our posts there. At the start of 2024 Curzon started to use his LinkedIn account to share posts and post other CS4FN content too, having not previously posted there. In 2 months since started to post for CS4FN his account has gained another 162 followers (baseline 557), with 18,000+ impressions overall. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ CS4FN, like many in the computer science teacher community, has migrated now from Twitter/X to Bluesky and LinkedIn (through Paul Curzon's account). We also share our own material and activities, and those of others, on the Computing At School forum. At time of writing CS4FN currently has 568 followers on Bluesky. On LinkedIn Paul's account has 1,391 followers and engagements have increased by over 730% to 2,543 with nearly 110,000 impressions (up 582%). Many items posted there have been liked, commented on and shared. We also post information about some of our free resources (we are explicit that home educators are welcome to use our material) and other relevant information about family-friendly computing-themed events on Mumsnet https://www.mumsnet.com/search/advanced?query=cs4fn&username=JoBrodie&type=all?ics=&page=1&sort=created_at:desc#/ |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024,2025 |
| Description | Talks for teachers (various) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Curzon is regularly asked to speak at events for teachers . Talks since the project began and supported by it include - • Tuesday 28 June 2022: Digital Schoolhouse An in-person workshop for teachers on "Semantic Waves and Teaching Computing Unplugged" with examples including research-linked unplugged activities (eg Create A Face) that teachers might use in their classroom to teach computing concepts https://twitter.com/dunoongs/status/1541724546809692160 (includes brief video of the session). • Saturday 25 February 2023 - invited keynote talk (detailed in Awards section) Organisers from the "I Love Computing 2023" STEM Learning conference asked Curzon to give a talk at the event, for 126 teachers. His talk, on Christopher Strachey's programmed love poems included a workshop element where teachers created their own poetry supported LGBTQ+ month. Curzon also interacted with teachers at a stall giving out CS4FN magazines and diversity posters. • 20 June 2023: Digital Schoolhouse An in-person workshop for teachers on "Semantic Waves and Teaching Computing Unplugged" with examples including research-linked unplugged activities (eg Create A Face) that teachers might use in their classroom to teach computing concepts 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ January 2024 Curzon and Dr Jane Waite gave three talks at the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) conference for educators in South Africa (more details in "Awards & Recognition: LCT5 - Legitimation Code Theory conference 5 in South Africa". 23 April 2024 Curzon was an invited speaker at the ICT for Education event at QMUL for about 40 educators. His talk was on the use of pixel puzzles as a fun way to teach computer science topics. There is more detail about this event in "Awards & Recognition: Keynote speaker at ICT for London conference", including that it led to an article in ICT's newsletter and the creation of a set of 'Arecibo Message' themed classroom activities (funded internally by QMUL's Centre for Public Engagement). 24 June 2024 Curzon gave two talks for teachers attending the Playful Computing (Conference Day 1). One was a general talk for new Digital Schoolhouse teachers, the other was "CS Unplugged: Semantics and Autonomy" for 30 teachers as part of Digital Schoolhouse training. 17 September 2024 Curzon, along with Dr Jane Waite, delivered a talk, shared via YouTube, for an online LCT conference for educators. More information in "Awards & Recognition: Tear and Share: Research-to-practice activities with semantic waves". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| Description | Teaching London Computing - Newsletter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This is a regular newsletter emailed to our subscribing UK computer science school teachers (primary or secondary). Informal feedback includes people sending thanks, forwarding to colleagues who then ask to be subscribed. People also suggest items for inclusion. The content typically includes information about CPD courses or workshops, events that are about (or adjacent) to computing research that teachers might like to attend themselves, or might take their pupils to. A number of these events will have been blogged on the Teaching London Computing website, so the newsletter gathers them together and adds anything new. Some of the workshops or talks are organised externally, some are our own. The November 2022 newsletter in particular included a recommended book list for A level students thinking about taking up computer science at university as well as a focus on Christmas-and-Computing-themed activities that teachers could deploy in the week before schools break up. These activities are designed to be fun first and foremost but which also give the opportunity to talk about certain aspects of computer science, or to draw links and parallels with computing themes. Also included was a link to a website where we are collecting permanently searchable and browsable copies of job descriptions and person specifications for jobs in computer science and jobs that use computer science skills (intended as a sort of horizon-scanning / situational awareness of the computing job market for careers discussions about 'what's out there' and what skills are needed). A copy of the newsletter is also placed on our public website increasing its reach. Periodically the collection of newsletters (and the interim blog posts that feed into it) is used as a marketing tool to increase our subscribers' list. 2023/2024 update Another two newsletters (#12 - Summer 2023 and #13 - Winter 2023) were published, highlighting our own and others' events, courses and resources. These are emailed to around 500 subscribing teachers, placed on our website and shared through our social pages. 2024/2025 update Another two newsletters have been published (#14 - Spring 2024 and #15 - Winter 2024) have been published. These have been used to tell teachers about our own latest free resources, as well as others' resources and activities and job adverts. The sign-up page for new subscribers has also been refreshed. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/2022/11/14/teaching-london-computing-newsletter-11-november-2022... |
| Description | Teaching London Computing website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The Teaching London website is our most popular site and is aimed at teachers and home educators. It has been in existence since 2014 and there is a back catalogue of classroom resources, CPD material as well as regular blog posts highlighting events, others' resources and useful information about all aspects of computing education in a UK setting. We have added to it during the ICT PE Champion project funding. During the ICT PE Champion project's EPSRC funding we have had 330.9k visitors who have viewed our pages 566.9k times and downloaded files 312.5k times (note that several of the items downloaded in the current timeframe would have been created before this EPSRC grant). The majority of views (255k) were referred by search engines. We have been visited by people from 221 countries with the United States now* as our top visitors (172k) then the United Kingdom (155k). Between 1 June 2022 and 4 March 2025 we have published a total of 167 posts (101) and pages (66). *Before 2022 most of our visitors came from the UK (91k UK visitors and 84 US visitors in 2021). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015,2016,2017,2018,2019,2020,2021,2022,2023,2024,2025 |
| URL | https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/ |
| Description | TechDev Jobs website - a repository of information about digital jobs |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The website is a collection of job adverts, job descriptions and person specifications for a selection (currently just over 40) of 'tech' and tech-adjacent jobs including software engineering, data analysis, web development, IT support etc. The idea is to provide anyone interested with a curated, time-saving, 'ready to print' way of showcasing the range of different types of jobs and the different types of organisation and sector that digital and other skills (sociotechnical). As the information is stored on the website itself it's accessible beyond the short timeframe in which a job is advertised. Although the website was initially created before EPSRC funding began we are also now using this site in the project to support the careers programme and including research jobs. We have created a page (linked below) that organises the jobs by sector (universities, health charities, journalism, community groups etc) and are now actively sharing the website with teachers through our own newsletter and via the CAS (Computing At School) forums. Brodie was also asked to write a blog post about the resource for the CAS (Computing At School) website https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/news-and-blogs/2023/february/free-collection-of-job-ads-andjds-and-pss-for-computingplus-jobs 2023/2024 Update ------------------------------ Another 28 job adverts, job descriptions and person specifications have been archived on the TechDev Jobs repository since March 2023. We are beginning to link these in to blog posts about computing research on the CS4FN site that are more linked to careers. For example we have written Dr Heather Turner's "Sustainability and EDI (Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion) in the R Project" EPSRC #EP/V052128/1) and linked that to several roles on the jobs site about Research Software Engineers. Similarly our article about Dr Mei Yii Lim and Prof Ruth Aylett's AMPER project ("Agent-based Memory Prosthesis to Encourage Reminiscing (AMPER)", EPSRC #EP/V056131/1) was linked to some job adverts for PhD roles in the Netherlands on the Dramaturgy for Devices project, mixing robotics and theatre performance to improve the behaviours of social robots. We are also planning to expand a page on both the CS4FN and Teaching London Computing websites about careers information in computer science aimed at young people and teachers respectively. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ Another 23 new posts have been added to the site 16 of which are job descriptions (including undergraduate placements in AI and quantum). Also included are posts about free courses, general advice on work experience for school-age and general job-seeking advice for undergraduates and recent graduates. We have added a 'Career paths in computing' portal (https://cs4fn.blog/career-paths-in-computing/) to the CS4FN blog which includes articles about people's jobs and the different routes they took to get there as well as including different experiences (for example Black computer scientists and autistic ones). This complements 'A CS4FN look at Computer Science PhDs' which contains articles about the work of PhD students who are researching various computer science projects. We've had another 250 visitors in the last reporting period (a 200% increase). The site has been used by QMUL colleagues when running careers events for sixth formers and undergraduates. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024,2025 |
| URL | https://techdevjobs.wordpress.com/jobs-organised-by-sector-theme/ |
| Description | The CS4FN blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This is primarily a blog website which publishes medium-length articles about (1) computer science research, (2) computer science topics and (3) computer scientists (people) (4) computer science history, written in our CS4FN-style, aimed at a school-age audience and teachers. An emphasis runs through the blog on diversity and careers. The aim is to provide reading material covering the full range of the computer science discipline as a research topic, school subject and hobby / entertainment. It is also a primary way we engage teachers with research topics. The blog posts can be used in different ways: for general interest and informing about a particular aspect of research or a particular topic, use as a springboard to discuss a topic in class (e.g. the dark side of algorithms), highlighting the sheer variety of subtopics within the genre of computer science and the variety of people who 'do' it. We're also sharing our own enthusiasm for the topic. There are also static pages (portals) which focus on a particular theme, such as diversity, LGBTQ+ computer scientists and the use of Lego as a learning (and teaching) tool. The portals are expanded on as a separate engagement activity submission. We are in the process of reposting (as blog posts) older articles from our original CS4FN website as a way to resurface our back catalogue including from the original EPSRC cs4fn grant, as well as writing new content. Some of the newer articles will also become published in a later edition of the CS4FN magazine. All blog posts and themed pages are tweeted and our tweets are regularly liked, commented on and retweeted by teachers. Visitor numbers and views since the project began are below (views in brackets) Q1 June-Aug 2022: 1,031 (1,872) Q2 Sep-Nov 2022: 1,191 (2,003) Q3 Dec 2022-Feb 2023: 1,769 (3,501) <-- this includes December which is generally our most popular month The majority of our visitors are from the UK (2,000+), with the US coming second (1,000+). We have visitors from many countries with India, Canada and European countries typically sending 100+ visitors. Our UK visitors (Jan - Dec 2023) were 5,490, US visitors (3,203). We have also started to make use of TES (formerly Times Educational Supplement) as a way to reach teachers who are looking to download classroom activities and who may not already know about CS4FN / Teaching London Computing. This has given us another 440 downloads of the 10 items we've added there so far. 2023/2024 update ------------------------------ Q4 Mar - May 2023: 1,818 visitors, 2,879 views Q5 Jun - Aug 2023: 1,745 visitors, 2,742 views Q6 Sep - Nov 2023: 1,912 visitors, 3,361 views Q7 Dec - Feb 2024: 2,753 visitors, 5,289 views Across the project we have published 221 blog posts and 45 pages (266 published items), just over 3 items published every week. From June 2022 - February 2023 we had almost 4,000 visitors, from June 2023 - February 2024 we had over 6,000. 2024/2025 update ------------------------------ The most striking thing is the doubling of our visitors and views in 2024 compared with 2023. In the full calendar year for 2023 we had 7,705 visitors making 13,228 views and in 2024 this was 14,263 visitors and 22,283 views. Across the full run of the project to date (1 June 2022 to 4 March 2025) we have had 28,528 visitors viewing our pages a total of 45,375 views. Q8: Mar - May 2024: 2,567 visitors, 3,773 views Q9: Jun - Aug 2024: 3,409 visitors, 4,690 views Q10: Sep - Nov 2024: 5,022 visitors, 7,600 views Q11: Dec - Feb 2025: 4,706 visitors, 7,004 views Across the CS4FN blog project we have published 309 blog posts and 90 pages in total (399 published items (133 new items in the last reporting window, an average of 2.5 items per week). Combined with our Teaching London Computing site stats (see the "Teaching London Computing website" section) of 167 published items during the funding period (566 items published in total over 33 months to Quarter 11) we are publishing new information over 4 times a week. We are also regularly publishing posts on the TechDev Jobs and PEEECS websites too. The majority of visitors to the CS4FN website across the project have been from the United Kingdom (17.1k) with the United States in second place (~12k). Overall we have had visitors from 169 countries. Sites referring visitors to the CS4FN blog include schools, universities, discussion forums (such as Mumsnet), ChatGPT (& Open AI & Perplexity AI) and UKRI. The largest referrers were Google, our Teaching London Computing sister site, Twitter and LinkedIn. The most popular destinations were our other sites such as Teaching London Computing and the CS4FN downloads site. In total visitors to CS4FN have downloaded local files (eg activity and puzzle sheets) from that site 7,216 times. Visitors to our main CS4FN file downloads site for our magazines and booklets (https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com), where the majority of our free material is stored, have downloaded copies of back issues of our magazines and booklets 47,351 times over the lifetime of EPSRC funding. Our TES 'shop' has also been useful as a way to share resources with teachers of other subjects who might not come specifically to a computing-themed site (our material is as interdisciplinary as possible to widen its reach) from which we've had a further 1,080 downloads with 2,175 views (https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/JoBrodieCS4FN). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024,2025 |
| URL | https://cs4fn.blog/ |
| Description | UNESCO World Logic Day event at QMUL |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | The Centre for Fundamental Computer Science research group in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science hosted an afternoon in-person and online event at QMUL on 14 January 2025 to celebrate World Logic Day. There were a variety of speakers and Paul Curzon ran a stall on the Magic of Logic - explaining logic and computational thinking through close-up magic tricks at several breaks between sessions. Jo Brodie also helped arrange the smooth running of the event, including advertising it to schools groups (who were able to see some of the talks online, though the magic was in-person only). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://sites.google.com/view/wld25/home |