The ripple effect: an outreach project for high school teachers using a cell phone programming tool

This paper describes the development and delivery of an outreach program that targeted secondary school Information Technology (IT) teachers. Like many westernised nations Australia has also seen a dramatic decline in school student interest and uptake of computing courses. This in turn appears to have a flow-on effect to student enrolment in university computing courses. Providing tools and strategies for secondary school teachers to create an interesting curriculum is a strategy showing success in other countries and was trialled in our university. The outreach activity described in this paper was evaluated via pre- and post-surveys of attendees and reflections of student facilitators. The evaluation assessed the transferability of programs into a different education environment. An important finding was that school teacher enthusiasm for new and creative curricula is often limited by time constraints and resource availability, indicating a niche where strong school and university partnerships could be developed.