BBC News – Google funds computer teachers and Raspberry Pis in England

Sally Fincher came to the CS10K Professional Development workshop last week, and I asked her why she thought Google was doing this.  She suggested that it’s probably because the UK doesn’t gave an effort like NSF’s CS10K, so Google is trying to play that role.  (Maybe the UK should try to clone Jan Cuny — if anyone can build up a nation of high school CS teachers, she can!)

He announced that Google would provide the funds to support Teach First – a charity which puts “exceptional” graduates on a six-week training programme before deploying them to schools where they teach classes over a two-year period.

Many stay on beyond that term while others pursue places at leading businesses associated with the programme.

At present the scheme is limited to seven regions of England: East Midlands; Kent and Medway; London; North East; North West; West Midlands; and Yorkshire and Humber.

“Scrapping the existing curriculum was a good first step – the equivalent of pulling the plug out of the wall” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google

Mr Schmidt said the donation would be used to train “more than 100 first rate science teachers over the next three years, with the majority focused on computer science”.

via BBC News – Google funds computer teachers and Raspberry Pis in England.