Attended a breakfast meeting this morning with a bunch of other Technology related teachers and IT professionals. This loose group sort of started last year with an initial aim to connect schools with people in the local IT industry. Out of that gathering came a desire from schools to get some better info from industry about what they were looking for in employees. At today’s meeting Joy Cottle from the Institute of IT Professionals gave a presentation about her oranisation’s work in this area.
The IITP offers presentations for school to attract students to pursue IT as a career. There is apparently a significant skills shortage and this is one way the industry hopes to address this. They offer 4 presentations:
- General presentation to a captive audience about how awesome ICT is
- Voluntary presentation by a local IT professional
- Voluntary presentation by another local IT professional
- Voluntary presentation by a person associated with a local tertiary trainer
Sounds all good and would definitely be useful at this time of the year when students are considering option choices.
