About The Smith Family
The Smith Family is a national children’s education charity that works with children and young people to overcome educational inequality caused by poverty – so they can thrive now and into their futures.
The Smith Family
Research shows that many young Australians from families experiencing disadvantage have less opportunity to develop digital skills, and are more likely to be digitally excluded. As education becomes more dependent on technology, those without digital skills will also fall further behind. These barriers can include a lack of STEM and ICT resources in schools, limited training opportunities for teachers, and digital literacy challenges.
The Smith Family’s YICTE Accelerator program is designed to help students in schools in low socioeconomic communities to participate in the Young ICT Explorers program, a STEM-related project competition, by providing;
- Teacher Professional Development: Mixed online and face-to-face delivery of Professional Development about digital technologies and education
- Hardware for students to create projects: Provision to each school of Micro:Bits or Circuit Playground Express
- Industry mentoring support: Skilled volunteers to support teachers with technical advice and troubleshooting
- Support to enter the Young ICT Explorers competition
The Young ICT Explorers competition is open to primary and high school students in Years 3-12 to solve real-world problems or showcase their passion using technology. That could be anything from creating better ways to recycle to supporting people with disability, from creating virtual reality worlds to building entire operating systems and robots from the future. The program aims to get students excited about working with technology, using their imagination and igniting their interest in the world around them to create projects.
