24 February 2021

Get young people tech inspired for National Careers Week

Written by

Computing at School

It’s National Careers Week, running from March 1 to 5, and we’ve pulled together resources to help inspire young people about the opportunities in tech.

Firstly, Computing at School is thrilled to be hosting the Festival of Computing on Friday 5 March 2021, in partnership with the University of Plymouth. This online festival has a full programme of events to inspire teachers, but also includes a student programme which highlights the range of careers and higher education opportunities in technology, engineering, cybersecurity and more. This festival will be opened by Beverly Clarke of CAS and Dr Shirley Atkinson from the University of Plymouth, with a keynote speech from Julia Adamson, Director of Education at BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.

Beverly Clarke, National Community Manager for CAS said; “We’re thrilled to have packed so much variety into the festival programme and that so many different speakers are taking part. We hope that you join us for an enjoyable day at this, our first online digital festival.”

Dr Shirley Atkinson, Associate Head of Computing at University of Plymouth, said; "I am delighted that we continue to support the CAS community and the teachers in schools. This is so important and has been important to us in the six or so years that we have supported the community.”

We’ve listed student events here (For details of the full programme see here.):

Festival of Computing – Student events Friday 5 March

10am What is a career in Computing really about?

11am BigData/Recommendation Algorithms

12pm Artificial Intelligence

1pm The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC)

2pm Coding Challenge

The Festival of Computing isn’t the only event for National Careers Week. BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT also has a wealth of resources about careers in digital. Look out for their guide to t-levels, as well as BCS’ series of Career Inspiration videos, featuring young people talking about their careers in everything from app design to defending companies from cyber-attacks.

The National Centre for Computing Education (NCC) has put together a new webpage for National Careers Week, detailing careers resourced to help support students to better understand how digitial skills will benefit a wide range of future career choices. The page includes signpost to access resources, videos and job profiles on the STEM Learning website which help teachers to link the computing curriculum to many careers. There's also a STEM careers guide for teachers and advice on linking curriculum learning to STEM careers courses.

Neon is another source of good careers resources to inspire young minds. Neon draws together the UK's best engineering experiences and careers resources to help teachers bring STEM to life. Sourcing engaging activities to show how engineering is used in the real world can take time. Neon curates the brilliant experiences that are engaging for students, are linked to up-to-date careers information and highlight real-world applications of engineering. The choice of content available gives schools access to a wide range of digital and real-world experiences and resources to use now or help teachers plan their use over the academic year.

Get young people tech inspired for National Careers Week

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