New Wellington technology groups

After a manic few months in my new position at VUW, I've finaly got a few minutes to detail exactly what I've been up to and where I hope it's going to go in the future. this blog will serve to keep track of what I've been doing, as well as to act as a summary point for all the tutorials that I have written/will write.

For those that don't know me, my aim to to encourage students to pursue careers and studies in engineering science and mathematics. Half of my time for my current position at Victoria is spent visiting schools (I tend to focus my attention on high schools but I also do visit intermediate and primary schools as well) to this end, and the other half of my time is spent providing pastoral support for the Victoria University first year Engineering students specializing in physics, mathematics and general digital engineering.

Currently, in addition to my regular school visits, I run two local technology groups for high school students that meet weekly. <tek ctrl/> at the Lower Hutt Memorial library on Thursday afternoons from 3:30pm till about 5pm and DFSLIA (a girls-only technology group) that meets at the National Library in Thorndon from 3pm-5pm on Wednesday afternoons (with the assistance of the wonderful Kate Henderson). The purpose of these is for me to spend as much time as possible with interested students (I simply don't have enough time to visit all of the 40-odd high schools in the Wellington region regularly enough!) to work on interesting projects and encourage them to learn more and experiment with modern technologies.  Attendance is free and while the groups are aimed at Year 11-13 students (i.e. 16-18 year olds) interested younger students are also welcome to attend.

If you would like me to come and visit your school, don hesitate to get in touch with me via my Victoria University staff page (yes I can occasionally travel outside the Wellington region). If you're a teacher interested in Python professional development I also run small group (<4) Python PD sessions for NCEA DT levels 1,2, and 3.

I'm also trying to grow a high-school technology community base alongside the TechXperts from Wellington East Girls College, the first meeting of which will be held at Victoria University on Saturday the 14th June 2014 in AMLT102 from 11am-3pm.

What specific technology do we look at? For starters take a look at the tutorials page of this blog, but in general I'm happy to work with anything related to science, technology or mathematics. I tend to focus on python, android, blender, arduino and linux projects simply because students and schools are budget constrained and so free/cheap technologies mean more people can access them. I also work (a little) with VEX and Lego Mindstorm kits.