Kia Ora koutou

Bookings are now open for the Raspberry Pi Teacher PLD sessions running as part of Digi Day, Rangitikei College, Wednesday 20th August, organised by Grant Collie.

There will be two sessions on the day:
9.30am – 12.00noon and 12.30pm – 2.30pm

The workshop fee is $120 and includes resource materials and an electronics kit to take away.
These workshops are a collaboration between DFRAG and The Skills Organisation.

A heartfelt thanks to Grant and his school for making the day possible.

Please go here for more details and to book.

We are planning more workshops around the country. You can register your interest here.

See you there 🙂

I’m pleased to announce the inaugural edition of the Newsletter Teach Young People Computer Science.

I have written this for two reasons – one is to raise awareness of the importance of teaching CS and programming in schools and to emphasis that the younger students are when they learn this, the better.

Learning to code has many positive spin-offs – developing higher order thinking and problem solving skills and laying solid foundations for accessing Digital Technologies courses in the future.

I’ve used Scratch in the classroom from Year 3 with success.  See here for examples.  I am currently tutoring a six year old and her three year old brother and it’s amazing to see their engagement and rapid progress.  Here’s Mum’s feedback.

The second reason for the newsletter is, yes, it’s a promotional tool for my Teacher PD workshops, which I hope doesn’t detract too much from reason 1 🙂

I hope you like it – please download a copy and have a read.  Pass it on to your colleagues, especially Principals in the Junior / Intermediate syndicates.  I would really like you to feed back, so I’m leaving the comments open for this one.

The Newsletter is available here:

• Teach Young People Computer Science
  Interactive pdf with link to video (1.1mb)

I’d like to make an open invitation to colleagues to contribute an article or feature.  Including Digital Technologies Teacher’s voices will further inspire other teachers to give programming a go in their classrooms. Rest assured, this newsletter, like the Teacher’s Lounge will always be free.  Please get in touch.

As most of you will know by now, I am passionate about technology’s huge potential for engaging and raising the achievement of our learners and it is exciting to have the opportunity to raise awareness about this subject.