Rebecca Vivian, from CSER, recently presented a Keynote on Why Computational Thinking and Computing Education is important for the Professional Excellence and Innovation Centre (PEIC) “Computational Thinking Conference” on June 22, 2015. This event was held in the beautiful and sunny Port Macquarie (NSW).

PEIC had organised a showcase of exciting projects that students had created using Digital Technologies. Dr Matt Bower was another Keynote, who shared with the teachers a presentation about Computational Thinking – including a number of resources and research about teachers’ perceptions. There were a number of hands-on and interesting workshops from teachers and industry – such as Intel’s Galileo board, Rasberry Pi, Edison robots, Makerspaces, curriculum integration and more. Rebecca also presented a workshop “Algorithms plugged and unplugged” where teachers managed to create algorithms, design an algorithm flowchart and have a taster of visual programming all in 1 hour!

There was definite excitement at the event and there were such a great group of teachers present (from 3 states across Australia!). We look forward to teachers taking these ideas back into their classroom to inspire students to be creators and makers of Technology!

The event was supported by Google’s CS4HS program grant. Congratulations to Meridith, Chris and Janet who organised a fantastic event for educators. For more information about their work, visit: http://www.peic.com.au/#peic