My Challenge

How CS in Schools can help

We are a school with limited funding and resources.

All of our resources, volunteer support, and other ongoing support are free to all Australian Schools. There is no cost, thanks to our generous philanthropic funding donors.

Some teachers at our school don’t have any coding experience. Won’t this be too hard for them to pick up now?

Our resources are just as supportive for teachers as they are for students. We have extensive resources for teachers new to coding, and our content is designed for all students (young and older) to find success. Additional support is offered in the slide decks in the form of short explanation videos.

There is no space in our curriculum for Digi Tech

Fitting everything into a crowded curriculum is a challenge experienced by most Australian schools. Obviously, the best option for teachers and students is to carve out dedicated time to cover the required Digital Technologies curriculum. However, the relaxed creative commons licensing we have on our resources offers many options for schools, such as teaching coding in alternative curriculum areas. For instance, English or History, and manipulating the final assignment to reflect an area of the curriculum from that core unit. For instance, in our Introduction to Coding course, students have been asked to build a text-based adventure game around their class novel for English or to develop an experience from a period in time learned in their History class. The options here for any subject area are endless.

Our students can be quite disruptive. They will struggle to focus on something as in-depth as coding.

Often making tasks more meaningful and hands-on for students can assist in classroom management.
Bringing a volunteer into the classroom who can offer insight to the student on the purpose of this course can assist in making the learning more meaningful and purposeful. Bringing this volunteer back to the classroom two to three times provides the chance for students to begin building a mentor-mentee relationship.
Our hands-on coding activities and teach-and-release style of resources help to keep students engaged and active, minimising disruption.

We have students with very different ability levels.

Our CS in Schools resources are designed to allow all students to experience success. Your students who traditionally feel challenged with coding will be able to successfully complete activities in each lesson. Those students who would be considered advanced will enjoy the extension activities and the leadership opportunities that come with explaining coding concepts to their peers.

Our teachers are very time-poor and don’t have the space to create a new curriculum.

Besides learning the coding concepts, your teachers won’t have to lift a finger! All of the necessary resources to teach text-based Python are fully developed and waiting for your teachers to access them. Everything from supporting videos and fully developed slide decks to all coding activities and assignments with aligned rubrics are waiting for you in the Teacher Pages.
Everything you need to begin teaching this course tomorrow is available to you free of charge.