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Cross-border initiative brings computational thinking to secondary schools

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16 January 2017

A cross-border initiative backed by Google’s Computer Science for High School initiative, Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast has been launched to boost the frequency and quality of computing taught at secondary level across the island of Ireland.

CTwins addresses an unmet need in education amid calls from the government for schools to teach ‘computational thinking’ – skills for solving problems and designing solutions based on an understanding of the way computing can help.

Despite increasing calls to teach these skills, progress has been slow – largely because many educators are not comfortable teaching the subject or they lack the skills themselved.

CTwins focuses on empowering teachers’ personal relationships and competence with computing, aiming to continue their professional development in this area.

Project leader and Assistant Professor in IT in Education at Trinity Richard Millwood explained: “Computational thinking is now an essential competence in a world where computers are applied to every workplace, profession, and subject discipline. But in Ireland we currently have little in the way of qualifications to aim for at second level, and few teachers with the confidence to include computational thinking in their lessons. As a result, we are short-changing our young people.

“If we only consider jobs, then we should heed the European Commission’s estimate that there are over 450,000 unfilled vacancies for ICT professionals in Europe and that the number will grow to 750,000 by 2020. But computational thinking is also of value in any job, at home, and in leisure pursuits in the modern age.”

Schools are invited to propose two teachers from any subject area to participate in the project, which requires two hours of two face-to-face tutorials over a nine-week period.

For more information and to sign up visit https://goo.gl/forms/8AOHzStkX6aIUbec2.

TechCentral Reporters

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