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.
