Teaching, Coding and The Wiggles

Hello there. As I put the proverbial pen to paper, my daughter is staring at me with the big brown eyes that only an infant seems capable of having. You can see her here, tirelessly concentrating on dismantling her activity centre - and if history proves true she will be celebrating shortly on her success!!

I’m new here and am very happy to be a part of this community. Fellow Steemian, @mattclarke invited me to take this journey, so, here’s to building an intelligent and supportive platform. I’m looking forward to reading posts from around the world and hope that in return, I can offer something of value too.

That's Entertainment

Only two short years ago I used to enjoy quality music from a diverse range of artists, however, the birth of my son three years ago introduced the end of my music and ushered in the era of nursery rhymes and The Wiggles. Now, if you’re Australian, and have had a child in the last twenty years, you’ll no doubt know who The Wiggles are. If you don’t fit that profile, it is still quite likely that you know who The Wiggles are anyway - they’ve forged themselves quite a following overseas too.

Anyway - two years ago my son was introduced to this child entertainment act, and he has never looked back! As with every kid in Australia, under the age of maybe seven, he is a fan, which means the music of The Wiggles fills my ears often - especially when we get into the car. The average time between the engine starting and the request for The Wiggles if they are not already playing is under three seconds! His favourite at the moment is ‘Go Santa Go’ which is getting all of the airtime currently.

You know you’ve been well and truly indoctrinated into something when you can get fifteen minutes to work before you even realise you’ve been singing Do the Propeller! all by yourself, and then, when you go to switch playlists, realise that your Spotify account has only got The Wiggles albums downloaded!!

But that’s okay. The music of The Wiggles is designed to bring joy to children, and they do just that for my son, and are already starting to do the same for my daughter. I would much rather see their eyes light up and hear their little voices sing when they hear their hero’s blasting out over the speakers than anything else.

Do Your Work, Please!

As 2017 draws to a close, so does my tenth year of teaching. It is an insanely busy profession, but, as any other teachers out there can attest, it is also a very rewarding one. Watching students acquire new skills and develop existing ones is such a privilege, and being able to add value to another person’s life is a genuine thrill.

I can still remember my first year in a classroom and marvel at how I managed to survive. Not just from how busy, and subsequently, how tired it makes you - cue 7:30pm bedtimes during most of Term 4, but from how much I didn’t actually know! That first year is one roller-coaster ride! If you’re reading this and just made it through your first year of teaching: Congratulations! Don’t worry if you found it difficult - it gets easier, and before you know it, you’ve played a small part in helping many students learn something new.

Let's Get Coding

One of those new ‘somethings’ I’ve had the opportunity to teach is coding - in particular a course on full-stack web development. This has been a great course to be a part of due, in part, to the necessity of knowing how to code. Learning the technologies required to deliver such a course has opened my eyes to a the brilliant logic and creativity that comes from being a coder.

From the core languages needed to be a full-stack developer:

• HTML;
• CSS;
• JavaScript;
• PHP, and
• mySQL.

I have been able to extend my knowledge base even further, and while unable to really deliver courses on the following, due to the Year 12 curriculum not supporting them, it has been a fantastic opportunity to develop skills in more modern web protocols, including:

• The MEAN Stack (MongoDB, Express, Angular, and node.js);
• Vue.js;
• React;
• Swift, and
• The CLI (command line interface).

Unfortunately, learning is an opportunity that not everyone has, and while I thoroughly enjoy building new skills as well as the next person, I would like to see more people have access to quality education. This can take many forms - the Internet has certainly made reaching people, be it through more traditional forms like universities, or newer concepts such as Udemy, a much easier process.

Thank you...

Well… if you’ve made it this far, I must thank you for reading. It has been great fun writing this introductory post for the Steemit community and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it - I look forward to contributing some more helpful posts in the future!

You may have gleaned that this #introduceyourself post has included only some insight into the more important things in my life - obviously my family, comes first. Then, the opportunities I get as an educator and a coder. No doubt, as I post more, you will get a deeper insight into who I am and what makes me tick, so stay tuned!!

Again, a big shout out to @mattclarke. Thanks for introducing me to this community. Also, thanks to @teamsteem for your post: Hello Steemit! - Coinmarketcap.com Introduced Me!. Full of very useful tidbits on how an introduction post may look. It certainly helped me formulate this.

Again, thanks for reading.