Computer Science Education in New Zealand Schools Workshop

• Date: Thursday 15 April 1600-1800 and Friday 16 April 0900-1300
• Location:
  • The Thursday session is on the main Victoria campus in room Cotton 118, Kelburn Campus
  • The Friday session is downtown in the Old Government Buildings Lecture Theatre 3 (GBLT3), Pipitea Campus, Victoria University of Wellington
• Contact: Tim Bell, http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/tim.bell/, (University of Canterbury)
• Registration: If you require accommodation at the Marae, please email Tim Bell. If you don't need accommodation, then you can just turn up, but it would be helpful if you email Tim so we have an idea of numbers.

In the last year there have been some radical changes in NCEA computing that will take effect from 2011, intended to increase the academic standard of computing in schools and attract top students. These changes have been strongly supported by CS departments in NZ, but will require a lot of input as teachers prepare to teach some quite different topics that cover more of Computer Science than just programming.

We will be running a one-day workshop (from Thursday afternoon to Friday lunchtime) immediately after the conference for people interested in finding out what is happening in schools, and how they can get involved. Involvement can include helping with Professional Development (PD) for teachers, providing advice for school administrators and guidance counsellors, developing teaching resources for schools, visiting schools and helping with teaching particular topics, and changing first year university criteria and courses to be better suited for students coming from such programs.

The Thursday session will mainly be an overview of changes currently being implement for NCEA, especially relating to Computer Science, which will be in schools next year. High school teachers are welcome to join us for this session. After the talk we will have dinner at a reasonably priced local restaurant, user pays

On Friday we will look in more detail at how universities can respond to the changes. We will also have input from Lynn Lambert (CNU, Virginia, USA) on the international scene, and Niall Dinning (National Coordinator, Technology Education).

The workshop will be lead by Tim Bell http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/tim.bell/ (University of Canterbury), and others who have been involved in making these changes with the Ministry of Education.