Strange Loop

Shaping our children's education in computing

Few things matter more to us than the education we give our children, to equip them for life in a rapidly changing world.

In our subject discipline, everything is in flux. England, for example, has radically overhauled the school computing curriculum, and is now facing the challenge of helping our teachers to teach an entirely new school subject. Most other countries are in the midst of a similar revolution.

But our childrens' education is much too important to leave to governments and policymakers. There is much to play for, and we need to roll up our sleeves and get involved. How can we do that? In my talk I'll share a bit about our journey in the UK, and talk about what we can do, including some concrete examples: Project Quantum, and Excel.

Simon Peyton Jones

Microsoft Research

I'm a researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England. I started here in Sept 1998. I'm also an Honorary Professor of the Computing Science Department at Glasgow University, where I was a professor during 1990-1998.

I am married to Dorothy, a priest in the Church of England. We have six children.

I'm interested in the design, implementation, and application of lazy functional languages. In practical terms, that means I spend a most of my time on the design and implementation of the language Haskell. In particular, much of my work is focused around the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, and its ramifications.

I am chair of Computing at School, the group at the epicentre of the reform of the national curriculum for Computing in England. Computer science is now a foundational subject, alongside maths and natural science, that every child learns from primary school onwards (background here).