Nerd by day, diva by night, Courtney’s two great loves in life are technology and music. She spent the first 15 years of her professional career in the IT Consultancy industry as developer, project manager and business analyst before retraining as a specialist Digital Technologies teacher.
Courtney has a passion for bringing realistic experience into the classroom, regularly using her industry knowledge and connections to achieve this. She is especially passionate about being a role model to women wishing to pursue a career in STEAM areas. When she is not geeking out over cool code and gadgets, she can be found as a mezzo-soprano in the WA Opera chorus.
Teaching the next generation to code is equal parts rewarding and chaotic. As a Digital Technologies and Computer Science teacher for Years 7–12 in WA public schools and former Head of Education at a national edtech “learn to code” platform I’ve seen the full spectrum: from kids writing elegant algorithms to others creatively crashing Python in three lines. In this talk, I’ll share the surprising highs and frustrating lows of teaching coding to young people, including what actually works in the classroom, what adult developers often get wrong about how kids learn, and why syntax is only a small part of the story. We’ll also look at how teaching code can foster problem-solving, resilience, and ethical thinking in tomorrow’s technologists. Whether you’re an educator, developer, or just curious, you’ll walk away with fresh insights, a few laughs, and a new appreciation for how the next generation is learning to code and how it might reshape how we all do.
for free. You
can too.