ICT teacher Erin Russouw, 30, explores ways to turn her students’ interest in coding into passion
🔎 The quest of a teacher
Erin Russouw is a computer science teacher from George, South Africa. She grew up in the United States and received her higher education in South Korea. Spending her formative years in the most technologically advanced countries has left its mark – digital transformation in education is the core of Erin’s professional ambition.
In programming education, the pedagogical approach is just as important for the teacher as subject competence. In the eyes of many, the former is in fact more important than the later. For Erin, the measure of her own success in the classroom is the motivation of her students.
📚 Courses with Code School Finland
Erin first came across Code School Finland in May 2023. She took part in Teach Your First Coding Lesson – a digital teacher training event Code School Finland organised for South African teachers. The webinar attracted only teachers but also educational leaders from all 9 provinces of South Africa, with over 150 people taking part.
‘As an ICT teacher, it was great seeing so many people joining the training.’
Erin Russouw
Course participantLast month (July 2023), Erin also took part in Teach an Animated Art Project – a course focused on training teachers to give students a strong introduction to visual programming. Both of the courses are implemented on Scratch, a visual programming environment for beginners.
‘I believe it is a great starting point for teachers.
Firstly, Scratch is free, there are no additional costs involved down the learning path.
Secondly, part of Code School Finland’s pedagogical approach involves unplugged activities with students which further reduces the need for additional resources.’
Erin Russouw
Course participant📈 Plans for the future
Erin is planning to incorporate her new knowledge into the programming curriculum at Holy Cross Primary School She typically uses free resources such as Code.org to look for supporting materials, but they too come with caveats. Freely available resources can be numerous, but they are essentially much like each other, and their pedagogical potential can be quickly exhausted.
Erin’s ambition is to advance digital skill education not only in her own school but also in her local area.
🖱 You can also start right away
Tailored webinar experience:
Teach your first coding lesson
This is an online training course for a group of teachers or instructors. It provides a teacher’s introduction and a detailed lesson plan for teaching a Coding Class for beginners.
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