I would like to start this article by telling you a few things that I have learnt this week by attending an Ingenuity Day event in London. This event is organised by the Digital Schoolhouse and I could not be prouder to be one of the few schools in the South of England that is a Digital Schoolhouse itself. My friends and colleagues often ask me if there is a principal reason why I became a teacher lead at the Digital Schoolhouse and if so, what is it?
Well, there are two main reasons: one of them is for my own professional development and the other one is that it benefits all my students.
It is good for my own professional development because I am getting the latest news on Computer Science Education on a daily basis by the people who are leading the future in education. I get involved in many interesting conversations, but to mention a few, this week we talked about the future changes that will possibly be made to the curriculum in Computer Science by the government, the proposals being made for teaching in a safe AI environment, the best teaching practices in programming and the trends in research for my subject. So, it is an opportunity to be part of this movement that is constantly changing and it evolves very quickly, making it almost impossible to keep up to date with the knowledge that is required to impart knowledge in an excellent academic environment. However, the reason for students’ benefit might be even more important.
Students have to make big decisions at an early age, it is well known that by the time they arrive at secondary school all of their preconceptions about a subject have already been formed, including Computer Science. They know what their favourite subjects are, what their best skills are and what are the things they enjoy doing the most. Unfortunately, it is difficult to know if you like something or not if you have never done it before, or if it has not been taught previously, and this is what happens with Computer Science. The children in our society are great consumers of technology but their understanding of how it works is still very limited. I like to think of our computer science students as little creators of technology that have an active attitude in their learning process. In our secondary school, for example, students get to learn about Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, networks, two programming languages, how the computer works, physical computing… you name it! And they take part in all of these topics by ‘doing’ the learning.
As teachers, we spend most of our time in the classroom, and when we are not teaching, we dedicate a great amount of time on how we can get better at it. And, this is when I ask myself if it is worthwhile to spend a day out of school in the busy city of London travelling one hour each way, and the answer is always ‘yes’, it is totally worth it! Whilst is not ideal to take a day out, days like this ensure that we get CPD to get up to date and teach cutting-edge technology. In this frantic era where the development of technology is advancing so rapidly, having a meeting with industry experts around the world, specialised teachers whose expertise vary in different areas, and having workshops in the palm of your hand is a rather spectacular opportunity that I cannot miss!
In our meeting we had several presentations and workshops, but my favourite one was about the use of VR in professional business environments. The presentation was led by Bradley Woodward, RIVR (Reality in Virtual Reality), who talk about the virtual opportunities in pedagogy and the current deployment of the latest headsets currently used by the NHS, the fire brigages and the MET police. Mr Woodward talked about the fact that in five years’ time, everyone will have a VR headset at hand, whether is at your home, at school or at work, we are not sure yet, but this is a technology that is here to stay, and it will be the children that are currently at school today the ones who will be coding the new pieces of software of the future. Who knows, perhaps one of our Computer Scientists at The Abbey will be the new ‘Bill Gates’ of this new technology!
Ms Mogio
