Today, K-12 educators from all over Australia are gathered at Google Sydney for a bit of school. They weren’t there to brush up on their spelling or geography, but to learn a new subject, Australia’s new Digital Technologies Curriculum.
While the new curriculum will allow our new generation of students to engage with and excel in computer science, we realise there may be implementation challenges that emerge from the changes to the this curriculum. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the University of Adelaide to develop a free open online course to help primary school teachers across Australia bring computer science and computational thinking (a set of problem-solving skills and techniques that software engineers use) into their classrooms.
It will also provide resources and example learning activities for the Digital Technologies section of the new national curriculum, from Kindergarten to Year 6. The University’s Computer Science Education Research Group is using Google’s open source platform to build the course.
The course will run for 8-10 weeks and will be open for access at any time once released online. Participants will complete a portfolio of activities to be assessed, with feedback, and a certificate for successful completion. Any educator interested in participating can register here.
We believe successfully implementing this curriculum will be an important first step in preparing students to become the creators and innovators of the future and want to do our part to support Australia’s teachers.
Posted by: Sally-Ann Williams, Engineering Community and Outreach Manager at Google