The Australian Computing Academy (ACA) 

As part of its support for the Digital Technologies curriculum, the Australian Government Department of Education and Training is providing national professional learning for several aspects of Digital Technologies. These are being managed through teacher professional associations – in Tasmania, TASITE http://tasite.tas.edu.au/ 

Digital Technologies Workshops are offered through 2019 by TASITE on behalf of the Australian Computing Academy (for the University of Sydney).

The workshop is a full-day training session to prepare teachers F-10 to teach the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies. The workshop provides an introduction of the concepts and goals of the Digital Technologies curriculum, as well as providing teachers with practical programming assistance to deliver the new curriculum in their classrooms.

The workshops will involve a curriculum overview, followed by a programming introduction using the Australian Digital Technologies Challenges being developed by the ACA.

The cost for attending a workshop is fixed at $70 including GST. This cost covers catering for the day (including lunch).   Attendees are asked to bring their laptop computer and power supply.

Example Activities 

• Advice of Digital Technologies Scope and Sequence across the grade levels
• Unpack the curriculum suited to your level of experience
• Hands on experience with free, project based, classroom ready resources that are targeted to the curriculum
• Explore various programming tools available, including text and visual based programming and object orientated approaches
• Coding in Blockly
• Coding in Python

The Presenters

Marg Meijers has taught in secondary classrooms for 17 years, and has been curriculum coordinator for ICT at each of the schools where she has taught. During her career as a secondary Digital Technology teacher, Marg was recognised for her innovative teaching approaches using games in learning at both a national and global level. Her teaching awards included a Microsoft Innovative Teacher Worldwide Award, Australian Council for Computers in Education Outstanding Teacher Award, Teaching Australia Best National Achievement, Tasmanian Society for IT in Education Outstanding Teacher Award and a Hardie Fellowship.

Dr. Stephanie Clayton is a lecturer at the University of Tasmania, based at the Cradle Coast Campus in Burnie. She has tutored several subjects in the Bachelor of Education, including the unit on Digital Technologies Education. In early 2018 she attended the National Computer Science School (NCSS) with talented young people from around Australia for an intensive course of computer programming and website development in the School of IT at the University of Sydney.