“98% of Google engineers were exposed to computing at school”
Peter started his talk with this
statistic to re-emphasise the fact that we cannot simply expect students to
learn computing at home on their own, they must be exposed to it at school. But
what happens, if as an ICT teacher you have little/no computing skills. Well to
start with, it’s never to late to start learning. Peter started learning
Blender a Free 3D animation program which is similar to Maya /3D Studio Max. He
then exposed his students to it and they created this stunning animation for
the Manchester University Animation Competition. Based on Peter’s introductory
course as to how to make a cup, students taught themselves and relied on
Peter’s network to create their animation in less than 3 months:
Peter’s expert which
helped facilitate the course was called Tom. He is a Doctoral Researcher in AI
at Queen Mary Universtiy. Of course, this was a great help, but what if we
don’t have a large network?
2)
Sign up to
www.computingplusplus.org which
links professionals with school. There is no shortage of professional
volunteers, but there is a shortage of schools! Computing Plus Plus also do CRB
checks for you through STEMNET.
3)
STEMNET
Has lots of groups such as BT IT ambassadors, Girl Geeks, Video Games
Ambassadors, E-Skills UK. Which will all be willing to offer help and advice
for your students
4)
Your local
university
5)
Universtiy
Ambassador Scheme e.g. KCL and 15+ other universities have student volunteers
doing outreach work with schools all over the UK
Peter’s advice for how
to write to professionals is to simply be bold and ask. People are looking for
solutions, not problems. Give them a date and what you need from them. The
worse they can say is “No”.
Peter restated that
for Outstanding computing, we need just 3 ingredients:
1)
Experts
2)
Teachers
3)
Resources
All of these were
outlined in his excellent talk.
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