We are seeing more and more good articles and the beginning of some motion towards us being able to teach kids programming and related technical skills in school. Things such as this article from the guardian. We see role model comments and I was also doing my bit by introducing all sorts of accessible future tech on kids TV.
However I thought I would look at me doing a bit more, I have already signed up as a STEMnet ambassador and I do a lot of talks for people. People have often suggested and commented I would make a good teacher. So I thought with all this need for experience, technical awareness, future thinking I would see what options there might be for me to move into teaching.
Surely, all this talk of closer links to industry, bringing experience into the classroom etc would be there on the home page of the Department for Education Teaching Agency?
But no 🙁 Good encouragement to be a Maths teacher, A physics teacher, chemistry or Modern Foreign Languages (MFL). All good subjects. Also active encouragement to convert to teaching from the armed forces.
Nothing about the business of powering and using technology.
Now most subjects do need to use tech so it could be excused as all this will be part of the entirety. However the specifics of computer science are not represented well or at all.
So which teachers are going to be the ones showing kids about open source projects, online etiquette, contributing to projects, building hardware with arduino, rasperry Pi, creating virtual worlds with OpenSim, games design, virtual good markets, social implications of computing etc…. Who are the teachers who are helping the next generation of makers with 3d printers?
I am sure it will come, but right now it is not there in any official capacity. Should I try and create it ? or wait until called? Maybe I need to send someone a Fax to ask?
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