St Malachy’s teacher wins IT Educator of Year gong

St Malachy’s teacher wins IT Educator of Year gong

AFTER 40 years of teaching, Eamonn O’Hare has won an inaugural award for his work in stimulating students’ interest in computing.

The St Malachy’s High School teacher is the first winner of the British Computer Society’s (BCS) IT Educator of the Year award in Northern Ireland. Mr O’Hare is director of ICT and computing at the Dublin Road school.

The award was sponsored by Esri Ireland and recognises a teacher who has gone above and beyond in raising awareness and deepening the understanding of computing and computational thinking.

Mr O’Hare said that he was surprised to be nominated for the award, let alone being announced as its first winner.

“I actually don’t know who nominated me and I was surprised that I was one of three teachers to have been shortlisted. But then to have won has been a real surprise,” said Mr O’Hare.

He has taught at St Malachy’s since 2000 after leaving St Mark’s High School in Warrenpoint.

Mr O’Hare is a firm believer in instigating an interest in computer science and computational thinking in girls and boys from a young age.

He has been behind introducing two project with teachers and pupils from local feeder schools into St Malachy’s.

He organised the Barefoot Computing project which equips teachers with the confidence, knowledge and skills to deliver computer science in schools.

From that, he brought Digital School to Northern Ireland to help both primary school teachers and the pupils build confidence in computer science.

However, Mr O’Hare’s real aim is to equip students to develop computational thinking — that’s having the ability to problem-solve by breaking complex problems down into smaller ones.

“I’m a firm believer in the saying that if you give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for life.

“My aim is to show our students how by recognising patterns and using computational thinking, that they can problem-solve. And if they can problem-solve, then life will be much easier for them.”

Mr O’Hare’s award was one of three made by the BSC for the first time.

Dr Irene Bell, one of the judges and chair of Computing at School, said: “It is wonderful that a prestigious professional organisation as the British Computing Society is recognising through this award that fantastic work that teachers in Northern Ireland are doing to move forward the computing agenda in their schools and classrooms.”