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Georgia Tech Looks To Shift Unemployed IT Pros into Teaching Careers

The College of Computing at Georgia Tech is looking to transform economic lemons into educational lemonade by shifting unemployed technology professionals into teaching careers.

Dubbed "Operation Reboot," the program is designed prepare IT professionals to teach high school computer science. It kicked off Sept. 1 with an initial set of 30 technology workers and is expected to operate for the next three years. It's being funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Combining the Georgia Teacher Alternative Preparation Program with the university's high school computing teacher training program, the initiative will pair computing teachers with IT professionals to teach at least two CS courses together for one year. The IT workers will become familiar with classroom teaching environments and will receive a teaching certificate and computer science endorsement.

"A teacher's motivation, self efficacy, job satisfaction and commitment to teaching are closely linked with their professional identity," said Barbara Ericson, director of computing outreach at the College of Computing and principal investigator for Operation Reboot, in a statement released this week. "Through the teacher workshops at Georgia Tech, courses needed for certification, co-teaching and mentoring we will transform these IT worker's identity into that of a computing teacher."

According to information released by the university, Georgia Tech will publish findings from the project and "share materials with other states to serve as a model on how to successfully transform unemployed IT workers into high school computing teachers." In a news release, Georgia Tech said that the project may result in 30 percent more students receiving CS educations in high schools that receive the benefits of the program.

Further information about Operation Reboot can be found here.

About the Author

David Nagel is the former editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal, STEAM Universe, and Spaces4Learning. A 30-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art, marketing, media, and business publications.

He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrnagel/ .


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