TEACHERS and students from Ilkley took part in a Middle East conference and exhibition last week to help educators and academics gain an insight into how to develop their practical teaching methods.

Hosted at the Work Trade Centre in Dubai, the conference brought together more than 10,000 educational professionals from 45 countries.

Ilkley Grammar School was selected as a lead school to present within the digital education strand. It involved IGS students talking to the conference via Skype, explaining how they used iPads and the type of software employed.

Vicky Brides, the school's director of E learning, joined assistant headteacher, Andy Calvert, and a group of KS3 and KS5 students to present the computing curriculum to delegates. Students spoke articulately about their learning and the programming concepts they had mastered, throughout their schooling.

Vicky said: "This was a fantastic team effort from all staff and students involved. We were proud to show the world what we can achieve together and the difference technology can make to our progress!"

KS3 students demonstrated their coding skills using Touch Develop for the BBC Micro:bit, Scratch to create retro games, HTML and CSS to create websites and Javascript to mock the effect of a computer virus.

Girls from the school's KS3 coding club did an excellent job of showing their sophisticated joke machines, coded with Python and the Tkinter module to create a graphical user interface. KS5 developers showed off the apps created using X-Code and Apple’s Swift language, whilst they tested the apps’ functionality on their iPads.

Ilkley Grammar School students also presented during the ‘Curiouser and Curiouser’ session. Year 7 students explored the use of Makey Makey boards to act as computer inputs that would interact with their Scratch coded, space invaders game. This demonstrated their creativity to use themselves, fruit and graphite to conduct electricity and use a range of objects to act as a joypad or keyboard.

Year 8 students showed the use of technology in science during the ‘Creativity Projects’ session. Students have been using StopMotion and Google Classroom to demonstrate their understanding of chemical titrations and modelling electric current.

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