Computer Science for Leaving Certificate

Computer Science for Leaving Certificate

This comprehensive textbook is available now.  The authors Brett A. Becker and Keith Quille are highly regarded in the field of computer science education in Ireland and abroad.  Brett is an Assistant Professor in the UCD School of Computer Science. His recent paper on computing education won the “Best Computing Education Research Paper Award” at SIGCSE 2019. He is the chair of the Steering Committee for the ACM Global Computing Education Conference.  Keith is a lecturer in computing in the TU Dublin, Tallaght Campus. He also delivers computing camps in schools around Ireland with CSinc and has developed several resources for the NCCA for Leaving Cert Computer Science. He was formerly a teacher in St Conleth’s Community College, Newbridge. Karen Nolan and Róisín Faherty of TU Dublin (Tallaght Campus), and Catherine Mooney and Margueritte Barry of UCD are all contributing writers.

Suzanne Linnane was the educational consultant for the book. Suzanne teaches Computer Science for Leaving Certificate at Adamstown Community College, one of the pilot schools for the subject. Her role is to test and review each chapter with her students to ensure that the material meets the needs of pupils and teacher alike.

To see the curriculum for Computer Science for Leaving Cert click HERE.

To download a printable pdf of Getting started with Python click HERE.

Here are the chapter names for the book:

1. Getting started with Python
2. micro:bit
3. Analytics
4. HTML and CSS
5. A brief history of computing
6. Computer systems
7. Computational thinking, algorithms and data representation
8. Software development
9. More about Python
10. JavaScript
11. Databases
12. Modelling
13. Transforming society, improving lives and machine learning
14. Ethics and computing