$6.9M Federal Funding for CSER Digital Technologies @cseradelaide @UniofAdelaide @birmo @cpyne @sallyannw

Our research group, the Computer Science Education Research Group, has been working to support teachers involved in digital technologies for some time. The initial project was a collaboration between Google and the University of Adelaide, with amazing work from Sally-Ann Williams of Google to support us, to produce a support course that was free, open and recognised as professional development for teachers who were coming to terms with the new Digital Technologies (draft) curriculum. Today we are amazed and proud to announce $6.9 million dollars in Federal Funding over the next four years to take this project … well … just about everywhere.

You can read about what we’ve been doing here

I’ll now share Katrina’s message, slightly edited, to the rest of the school.

Today we hosted a visit from Ministers Birmingham and Pyne to announce a new funding agreement to support a national support program for Australian teachers within the Digital Technologies space.

Ministers Birmingham and Pyne confirmed that the Australian Government is providing $6.9 million over four years to the Computer Science Education Research Group at the University of Adelaide to support the roll out, on a national basis, of the teacher professional learning Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) supporting Australian primary and junior secondary teachers in developing skills in implementing the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies.

The CSER MOOC program provides free professional development for Australian teachers in the area of Computer Science, and supports research into the learning and teaching of Computer Science in the K-12 space. As part of this new program, we will be able to support teachers in disadvantaged schools and Indigenous schools across Australia in accessing the CSER MOOCs. We will also be able to establish a national lending library program to provide access to the most recent and best digital technologies education equipment to every school.

The Ministers, along with our Executive Dean and the Vice-Chancellor accompanied us to visit a coding outreach event for children run this morning as part of the University’s Bright Sparks STEM holiday program.

Here’s the ministerial announcement.

Senator Birmingham, Minister Pyne, Professor Bebbington (VC of the University Adelaide) and A/Prof Katrina Falkner with one of the Bright Spark participants.