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A new event to help encourage primary and secondary-level students to consider a careers in IT and technology will begin today.
The first Tech Week Ireland, which is run by the Irish Computer Society and supported by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and ICS Skills, will run until Friday 2nd May and will see 42,000 people taking part.
The week is designed to give students and parents opportunities to learn about third level and career options in computing and other technology fields.
Events will be held across the country such as digital media and coding competitions as well as talks, and classes.
The final day will feature a number of competitions taking place such as the F1 in Schools National Final – which sees secondary school students to design, create and race miniature air compressed air-powered racing cars – and the Tech Entrepreneur ECO Challenge – which asks students to come up with ways to address environmental challenges using technology.
Last week, the minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation, Richard Bruton launched a three-year plan for SFI’s Smart Future’s initiative, to to increase the uptake of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects at second and third-level by 10 per cent by 2016.
The strategy includes a number of measures to help increase awareness of STEM career opportunities such as offering industry opportunities to participate in more student outreach activities and building a database of volunteers to deliver career advice to all secondary schools throughout the country.
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Would prefer to see an actual curriculum for computer studies …… Like every other country in the EU
There seems to be a ‘missing link’ as it where, with maths at primary level and secondary. I don’t know if it’s just the practical nature of the maths you learn in primary (and the resources that are in place if you have difficulty) but I know from my own experience and that of other people I’ve spoken to, that I went from maths being one of my strongest subjects, to one I really struggled with. I’m a long time out of the system now, so maybe this has changed.
Also, I do take pride in the fact that wven without IT on the curriculum, that we do by some miracle manage to churn out a reasonable number of graduates in the field. Not an excuse for not having it on the curriculum though.
Agree with you on the maths scene although its possibly down to the poor teaching i had in national school due to our teacher being off pregnant for a long time and the replacement being worse than useless but i remember going to secondary and wondering how maths had suddenly become so difficult
Yes, I think some of the teachers I had where good mathematicians but not necessarily good communicators of their knowledge!!
Before doing the leaving cert, I did maths grinds in a class with 60 people but the teacher was really able to the point across. Got a B in ordinary level but that was nothing short of a miracle for me.
Their “tech week_2014″ logo is based on an electrical schematic drawing of a circuit but the only component is a battery and they drew a continuous line from positive to negative creating a short circuit – does not bode well
Great news hopefully it encourages more young people to get into technology
Remember ecdl European computer driving license, what a laugh, that thing was fit for pensioners, if you put that on your c.v you’d probably be called for interview so they can take the piss!!
A career in IT is like smoking it will kill you.
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