Equipping and empowering educators to confidently teach digital technologies in the classroom provides students with lifelong skills that enable them to solve problems and develop critical analysis skills.
Google’s Computer Science for High Schools (CS4HS) program has been running in Australia and New Zealand since 2011 and in that time has trained more than 9,000 teachers.
Through hands on professional development workshops the program provides teachers with the skills and resources they need to teach computational thinking and computer science concepts in fun and engaging ways.
The impact of these workshops goes beyond the individual teacher to their whole school and community. Bianca Audet, a primary teacher and assistant principal at Kahibah Public School in NSW, attended her CS4HS Workshop at the University of Newcastle in 2015. Bianca says the workshop helped her “to understand that Computer Science was not as intensive or difficult as I thought and that students would be able to follow some simple initiatives, such as Scratch coding.”

Bianca Audet leading a session at the 2016 University of Newcastle CS4HS Workshop

Bianca returned from the workshop and introduced the materials into her classroom to great success. In 2016 she returned to the CS4HS workshop, not as a student but as a teacher to equip other primary teachers with her expertise and experience of implementing digital technologies at her school with practical tools to enact in the classroom.
Bianca’s CS4HS experience has also had a significant impact on her school, with Kahibah Public now offering dedicated STEM class time with a focus on engineering and robotics for students.
We’re excited to announce the 2017 CS4HS Awards that will continue to inspire and empower teachers like Bianca around Australia and New Zealand.

2017 CS4HS Funding Recipients 

Australia
Australian Catholic University
Bentley Park College 
Catholic Schools Office, Lismore
Coding and Innovation Hub
Design and Technology Teachers’ Association
Griffith University
ICT Educators NSW
John Monash Science School
Macquarie University
Pedare Christian College
Regional Development Australia Hunter
Southern Cross University
St Bernard’s Primary Bateman’s Bay
St Columba Anglican School
Swinburne University of Technology
Tasmanian Society for Information Technology in Education
The University of Adelaide
The University of Melbourne
The University of Newcastle
The University of Sydney (MadMaker)
The University of Western Australia
Victoria University

New Zealand 
Auckland University of Technology
NZACDITT
The University of Canterbury - Primary Workshop
The University of Canterbury - Secondary Workshop
Victoria University of Wellington

Posted by Sally-Ann Williams, Engineering Community & Outreach Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand