CESI Conference 2018
This was my first year to present at CESI. I have applied before, so I was very happy to be accepted this year. CESI holds a very special place in my heat. It was the first computing society that I ever joined. As a side note, I am over the moon that CESI will be the professional association for computer science teachers (the title I am sure I have got incorrect), and I believe that it is a perfect fit.
My presentation at CESI was aimed at building confidence in budding computer science teachers. This year while delivering CPD (my own research has shown that students programming self-efficacy correlates to performance) that teacher programming self-efficacy is anecdotally low. So this talk was targeted at those who struggle to believe that they can. To do this I talked about my own experiences and journey to get to where I am today. I really have a positive attitude towards everything but at the same time had low self-efficacy towards my own ability, which I am not ashamed to share. I am so lucky that three people in my professional life helped my to overcome this, my PhD supervisors Dr. Susan Bergin, Dr. Aidan Mooney and my head of department Dr. Barry Feeny.
The new leaving certificate subject may seem intimidating, but with the right help, teachers will be more than able to teach it to a very high standard... the future is bright!
The talk was also streamed live and can been seen: here I start at 2 minutes 6 seconds.
