James Curran

9am - 10am

James Curran is the Academic Director of the Australian Computing Academy and an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science, University of Sydney. He is Director of the National Computer Science School, the largest computer science school outreach program in Australia. Last year, over 13,000 students and teachers participated in the 5-week NCSS Challenge.

James is a co-founder of Grok Learning, an Edtech startup that aims to teach children everywhere to learn to code. He was a writer on the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies, the new national computing curriculum.

In 2014, James was named ICT Leader of the Year by the ICT Educators of NSW and the Australian Council for Computers in Education.

UNPACKING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Digital Technologies within the NSW Technologies syllabuses and the Australian Curriculum has been organised around 10 key concepts:

  • Digital Systems
  • Data Representation
  • Data Collection and Data Interpretation
  • Specification, Algorithms and Implementation
  • Interactions
  • Impact

This keynote will explain the 10 key concepts with practical examples of how they can be taught in the classroom.