2023-10-27 –, track 3
My old high school needs help with some research projects that involves coding. Instead of just helping, I convinced them to offer a python programming class instead! This talk will discuss the journey on how this whole idea began and how it was executed. We will also discuss my grand plan of having every high school in our city to add a python programming class!
In order to understand the core problem, I will first give a glimpse of the education system here in the Philippines. This is to cement the underlying need for implementing a programming class for high school students.
There are a lot of factors that we need to consider when we were planning this class. It might seem simple and straightforward but we had to adjust the coverage and scope of what we want to offer due to the needs of the students and the school.
We encountered a lot of problems including how to pick the correct teachers and how to teach the teachers themselves. As for the students, we want to make sure that they can use what they will learn in their research and projects.
It has been a couple of years since the school added programming classes and they were able to offer it to different grade level already. We have some insights on how it affected the students and how it made them more inclined towards STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths).
Moving forward, my grand plan is to make all the schools in our city teach python and programming. I am in talk with the other schools and I want to make sure that they can implement a python programming class as well. I want to make this as an opportunity to show other schools and the local government how adding a python programming class can actually improve the quality of research output for students.
The talk will focus on the following main key points:
- Education challenges in the Philippines in the context of tech and programming
- How did we came up with the idea of adding python programming to the curriculum
- How did we implement it?
- What are the key takeaways and how do we plan to improve the python programming class
- The grand plan of spreading this to all the schools in our city!
Hi, I'm Ninz!
tldr;
Software Engineer to Machine Learning Engineer. Finished masters with research focus on agriculture and image processing. Very active in the community, helps local school with research and programming, and occasionally talks at events. Usually out in the trails or just casually looking up in the night sky.