Meet the Teacher - Fraser Christie

Fraser Christie is Principal Teacher of Computing at St Paul’s RC Academy in Dundee. He’s been involved with Apps for Good since teaching our Innovate for Climate Change course as part of a lunchtime club and has even supported us in producing some of our content. We spoke to him about his experience of Apps for Good, the benefits of Industry Engagement and his thoughts on our new AI for Good course.

I came across the Apps for Good course as a colleague used the program a few years ago, and when I had an extracurricular club starting for a group of girls, who were quite driven, I thought it could be a good platform for them to make an app and work together. I looked at the Apps for Good site, and I could see that the general app development product was really just plug and play, it was great. I didn't have to do a lot of preparation beforehand. It's just that easy to get started. It's clearly presented, very professional looking. And so it was great. I found it really useful to just dive into.

With computing and STEM, it's a real push to try and get more and more of our female students engaged and not just to think of computing as someone who likes to hang about and play games. So I just thought of Apps for Good because this group of girls had lots of energy, and they had loads of good ideas. It was great to just let them loose on it. I think they really enjoyed the process. They got a real buzz out of the Industry Engagement session where they got to meet with the software developer. Then the fact that they could take their idea from paper and put it on App Lab, as part of the course. To actually create a working prototype that they could show off to people and get feedback. It was a good mixture of creative and technical.

One of the students creating the app is dyslexic so they wanted to make an app that would help people with dyslexia, to support users with their reading and their confidence in class because it was quite a big thing for the student herself. The app was designed to try and help people with dyslexia become more confident and practise their reading out loud, and she drove the team on. I think the fact that it was a real, very relevant issue to them, it just gave them a bit more drive, to push on with it and produce a really nice prototype.

I think the students really enjoyed the chance to develop in terms of their teamwork. One student was the natural leader of that particular team and was a good teacher. However it really did build all of their confidence, some of the students in that team you don't see in front of the camera often and it really developed their technical skills. They couldn’t have done it without those behind the scenes, focusing on the details. It also needed the student’s soft skills pushing it forward and managing the project. Getting the chance to work with different people they came on leaps and bounds. I think they would jump at the opportunity to do it again.

It was a real big boost for their confidence because it was a real life, live experience, and getting actual feedback from industry professionals at the showcase - the whole panel were lovely, and very positive.

Jane Doe was very generous with their time. They got two sessions, the first was to talk to them about what they do for a living, opportunities in software development, and what a typical working day looks like for them. That gave them an opportunity to meet and talk to someone that they might not have access to, who might not be in their local community, so that was great. Then they had to pitch their idea to Jane, which was good for them. Jane was gentle but as a professional was giving them some blunt feedback, which was good for them, because that's real life. They had to think about the security of the app, about different fonts and things like that, and the detail. It was good for them to get some feedback and reflect, improve and move on. So I think it was a really good experience for them not just to listen to an old geezer like me, that's been out of the private sector for years and years.

Generally pupils nowadays aren't going to sit for half an hour for a lecture on something, even if the content for us as adults is gold dust. So I suppose just chunking it up. Keeping it visually stimulating as well would be quite good. Some visuals and keep it short and sweet. Make sure they've got opportunities to feed back, and to show what they've done as well.

It was a really interesting opportunity. It forced me to have a look again at the Scottish curriculum, and compare it with the other nations as well, the Welsh and English curriculum. It was really impressive to see the level of quality assurance and care that Apps for Good takes over their material. The materials are very professional and there's a lot of thought that goes into every little tiny detail.

I think it's really important for them to understand the potential scope and the potential risks involved in AI. To get to know the language, the jargon, and the technical side of that as well as the different ways in which AI applications are developed, in comparison to the traditional apps they might be used to using. It’s great keeping it current for students. One thing I definitely know as a computing teacher is that technology moves on all the time, so you've got to keep upskilling and as a teacher, it's great.

Looking at the course has made me look a bit deeper and consider things that I wasn't really aware of myself. It was a learning curve for me looking at the course, and it will be very relevant to them, it'll be very relevant to the computing curriculum, because it's an area that we should be looking at. Apps for Good is great, it gives me confidence, the materials are visually stimulating and the language is up to date. They’re not having to look at a textbook with pictures of CRT monitors. It’s bang on trend. I think the fact that it's AI that will hook them and give them something to get their teeth into.