We are a charity that’s focused on helping high school teachers develop their confidence and competence in teaching computer science.

It’s our second month out of stealth mode, and it’s been a good one for us. We’re exploring becoming part of RMIT University, and SEEK and REA became supporters of our programme. We have committed donations from generous supporters, and the first year of our programme is completely funded. We’ve been learning from a similar programme in the US that’s supported by Microsoft. We’ve refined our plans, with a sharper focus on Year 7 teacher professional development. We’ve signed up seven schools into our free pilot, and we’re in discussion with three more — we are pretty much at capacity for 2019!

Summary

We’ve launched a charity that’s focused on helping teachers confidently teach computer science to high school students in Australia. Today, most schools struggle to teach coding: there’s a shortage of teachers who feel qualified to teach computer science, and most successful coding classes are run outside of school hours. We believe that today’s teachers can effectively teach coding if they’re supported through in-class professional development. A somewhat similar and successful programme exists in the US, and we want Australian teachers to have this opportunity.

Many of the important and best paid jobs of this and the next generation will require computational thinking. Even if a student doesn’t study computer science at university, it’s essential they have the basics because just about every job will be changed by technology. We want every student in Australia to have this opportunity.

In 2019, we are piloting a programme with up to ten schools, and studying how successfully we can help teachers ramp-up their skills. Beyond 2019, we plan to launch this programme broadly.

We’ve had an exciting August. In summary:

• We’ve signed-up seven schools into our 2019 pilot, and we’re speaking to
  two or three more
• We have committed donations from generous supporters, and the first year of our programme is completely funded
• We’re exploring a partnership with RMIT University
• We’ve made progress on becoming a charity
• We’ve signed up corporate supporters
• We’re developing a roadmap for what happens from now until we start the programme in February

Programme

Our programme continues to evolve. We’ve refined our goals to:

• Trial a novel teacher professional development pilot programme in 2019
• Work with between five and ten schools in 2019. This means we’ll work with between seven and twelve school teachers who’ll teach over 1,000 students
• Study how effectively we can develop computer science teaching skills
• Develop teachers who can continue to independently teach computing in 2020
• Make this programme free for schools in 2019, supported by generous donations

Our plans to deliver the programme are as follows:

• We will hire two or three teachers who have a computing background, and they will be paid by generous donations to our charity
• Our teachers will be paired with teachers from the schools in the pilot, and will meet for background workshops between November and January
• From February, our teachers will work in the classroom with the teachers from the
  schools in the pilot
• In our first term (or semester) working in a school, our teacher will deliver the syllabus to the students and the school’s teacher will learn through observation and by providing some student support
• In our second term (or semester), it’s anticipated we’ll switch the roles: the school’s teacher will be the primary driver, with in-class support and training from our teacher
• We’re hopeful that beyond the first two iterations, the school’s teacher will be independent, and require limited support from our programme

Our pilot is focused on:

• Helping Year 7 teachers in Victorian high schools
• A one-term (or semester) Year 7 computing subject of two or three hours per week
• Providing everything that’s needed to teach the subject, including lesson plans, assignments, hardware, and software
• Covering the “harder parts” of the Victorian DigiTech curriculum, especially the coding skills. In total, we’ll together deliver around half of the recommended 40 hours of the curriculum, and expect that the other half is delivered in other subjects

August Update

We have made significant progress in August, it’s been an exciting month.

SEEK Australia and Real Estate Australia (REA) have endorsed our plans.  We’re now able to tell schools that SEEK and REA stand behind what we’re doing, and endorse the industry relevance of our programme. We’re also meeting and learning from other organisations, including Google and Microsoft.  In particular, we’ve been meeting Kevin Wang at Microsoft who developed the
incredible TEALS programme in the US; it’s likely we will visit Kevin later this year.

We are hopeful of joining forces with RMIT University, and have met twice this month with Vice Chancellor Martin Bean and several times with his leadership team. This would be an amazing outcome, helping us in several ways:

• It’d enhance our credibility, opening doors more easily to schools, academics, and
  government institutions
• It’d improve the breadth and depth of our pilot, by giving us easier access to relevant academics, policy experts, and education professionals
• We’d have access to facilities, including an office, meeting rooms, payroll support, and rooms for running teacher workshops
• We’d be a “Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) Charity”, a desirable status for receiving donations
• We are optimistic we will finalise this arrangement and announce it at the end of September.

We have signed up several more schools. With some help from good friends, we’re now working with three schools on the Mornington Peninsula: Toorak College, Mount Erin College, and McClelland College. We are working with two schools in Sale: Gippsland Grammar School and the Sale Catholic College. We have also signed up two suburban schools,  Greensborough College and Haileybury. We are in discussions with three other schools, including two public schools and one large private girls school. We’re excited to have a mix of public, private, Catholic, city, and country schools to work with — we know this’ll help us better understand the effectiveness of our programme and provide a more persuasive argument as we go forward in 2020.

We’ve begun to work on our roadmap from September to February. This includes planning for hiring, syllabus development, and teacher workshops.

We look forward to an exciting September, and sharing even more progress at the end of the month. Thanks for reading all the way down here!

Cheers, Selina and Hugh.