Official Google Australia Blog: January 2014

Australia Blog

News and notes from Google Down Under

CS4HS training program for teachers supporting the Digital Technologies Curriculum in Australia

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

CS4HS is an annual grant program promoting computer science education by connecting educators to the skills and resources they need to teach computer science and computational thinking concepts in fun and relevant ways. Dozens of universities and hundreds of high school teachers across Australia have taken part. As we get closer to the new Digital Technologies Curriculum being rolled out to classrooms across the country, we’re expanding our CS4HS program from high school level only to include primary teachers, with workshops closely aligned to the new curriculum which extends down to K level. Our experience at Google shows us that an early introduction to computational thinking provides the strongest possible pathway for students to engage in computer science later in life, and we think that by focusing on practical workshops for teachers, we can best support them as they bring this new material to their classrooms.
In addition to the CS4HS workshops, we’ll continue to support the rollout of the new curriculum with a partnerships with Adelaide University to deliver free online professional teacher development in teaching computational thinking.
Applications are now open for our 2014 CS4HS program in Australia & New Zealand and are open until February 17, 2014. To qualify, you must be affiliated with an accredited university, college, technical school or an official non-profit organisation.
If you’re not a university faculty member, but still want to be involved, reach out to a local area university and encourage your computer science or education chairperson to apply. There are also some great classroom resources on our K-12 educators page.
Sally-Ann Williams, Engineering Community & Outreach Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand