Today we hosted a visit from Minister Birmingham, Minister for Education and Training, and Minister Pyne, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, to announce a new funding agreement expand our work with the CSER MOOCs  to a national support program for Australian teachers within the Digital Technologies space!

Minister Birmingham confirmed, in his announcement, “Closing the digital divide for disadvantages students‘, that the Australian Government is providing $6.9 million over four years to the CSER at the University of Adelaide to support the roll out, on a national basis, our CSER MOOCs 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.

Ministers Birmingham and Pyne visited us on campus today, attending a coding outreach program for children being run as part of the University and CSIRO Bright Sparks STEM holiday program.

All of us at CSER are very excited to be starting this new program – it’s going to be fantastic to continue our work with the Department, our colleagues at Google, and our amazing network of teachers to expand our program in the coming years!

Minister’s Pyne and Birmingham at the University of Adelaide