Everyone remembers a good teacher. They nourish our interests and fuel our passions. Many of us have ended up in the careers we’re in because of an influential teacher we met along the way.

So it’s critical that teachers are equipped to give our kids the skills they need for the economy of the future. And when you look at how different fields from medicine to banking are rapidly digitising, it’s clear our teachers need to be able to teach computational skills.

Australia and New Zealand have some wonderful people teaching computer science, like Graeme Breen from Mountain Creek Secondary School in Brisbane, who teaches computer science to high school students. Graeme has been teaching since 1989 and says he wants to gives his students the technology skills they need to one day start their own companies.

We need more Graemes. To help this, Google funds workshops that equip teachers to teach computer science. The program, Computer Science for High Schools (CS4HS), provides teachers with the skills and resources they need to teach computational thinking and computer science concepts in fun and engaging ways. And we’ve just announced the latest batch of funding recipients (see the list below).
Graeme doing what he does best

Globally, we’ve helped train more than 12,000 teachers and reached over 613,000 students in more than 230 locations since we started this program. Closer to home, we are supporting 25 organisations across Australia and New Zealand who will provide this important training to K-12 school teachers. This year, we hope to reach around 3,000 high school, primary school and pre-service Aussie and Kiwi teachers.

In addition to the workshops, we are also providing free online professional teacher development in partnership with Adelaide University.

If you want to know where computer science can take kids, have a look at Careers with Code. In the future, young Australians will use computer science to do great things. And it will all have started with a great teacher.

2015 CS4HS Funding Recipients 
Australia 
Australian Catholic University
Code Club Australia
Central Queensland University
Griffith University
Information Communication and Technology Educators of NSW
Information Technology Educators ACT
La Trobe University
Macquarie University
Mark Oliphant College
Queensland Society for Information Technology Educators
Queensland University of Technology
St Columba Anglican School
Swinburne University of Technology
Tasmanian Catholic Education Office
The University of Adelaide
The University of Melbourne
The University of Newcastle
The University of New South Wales
The University of Queensland
The University of Tasmania
The University of Western Australia

New Zealand
Robotics Education NZ Trust
The University of Canterbury
Unitec Institute of Technology
Victoria University of Wellington

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