30 years on, I have taught, been part of a Senior Leadership Team and a Director of IT as well as, for a few years, working in industry with RM PLC, Deloitte Consulting and Dan Computers. I am now freelance.
Over three decades the tectonic shifts in technology have been huge. In addition to my established Physics teaching, I added IT and Computer Science as additional strings to my digital bow. Seeing the evolution from coding to IT and back to coding has given me an interesting historical perspective of the ideas and technologies within the current syllabuses.
In terms of Computer Science, I’ve developed my coding experience to include Python, VB.net and C#. And as a teacher of IT, in the old days, I really enjoyed integrating a Computer Science curriculum with creative tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Flash (Animate) and Fireworks. My students really enjoyed graphic and web design and many of them found themselves in the digital marketing arena! Of course now, many of my A-Level Computer Science students did degrees in the subject and have either entered the tech world or, in some cases, finance.
As a Digital Strategist, I relate well to the younger members of staff as well as those who are, like myself, of a certain vintage. I have an unusual blend of sound technical knowledge and a broad educational experience, which give me a high level of understanding of school systems. I am good at engaging a diverse staff team and understand the importance of bringing them along on a transformative project.
I recently did a case study for Firefly which involved interviewing schools who were using Microsoft and Firefly and the new Teams integration. I successfully helped my last school adopt Microsoft Cloud services and Firefly in time for the first lockdown in March 2020! I enjoy nothing more than inspiring, enabling and motivating others to use technology, whether they be staff, parents and students or the broader school community.
Change can be scary and intimidating! I like to think that my pragmatic, thorough, humorous and patient approach has enabled the schools I’ve worked in to manage this change as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
And now, I tutor a number of students across the world and at home in Physics and Computer Science. I also support the Computer Science team at the wonderful British School of Brussels together with their Year 13 students, in particular their NEA projects.
If you think I can help you in any way, please get in touch!
After graduating in Applied Physics, and joining the advanced research lab as a graduate engineer at Rolls Royce, Derby, I decided to enter the world of teaching.
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