Narelle Allen is a self-starter. She held down jobs while at school, managing a shop part-time, selling telephone contracts and even organising a conference for 25 Finnish business executives who visited Armagh.
Today she is PwC’s education outreach manager, writing and supporting two free innovation education programmes for schools.
“I was never an academic at school. I remember very clearly going into a parent teacher meeting and the teacher saying ‘she’s okay, she’s average’. And I thought ‘hold on a wee second, no, I’m not average, I think differently from other people.’”
It took years for her to realise that the teaching at school didn’t cater for her learning style. “I’m very visual, creative and kinaesthetic.”
A farmer’s daughter not afraid to calf cows or lamb sheep, she was drawn to studying Computer Science when her Dad bought a PC for home and she sat down to figure out how it worked.
“I was naturally good with it because it was so visual and hands on. It was one of the subjects I excelled at in school and so I did a Computer Science degree at Jordanstown, and worked in Thales Air Defence for my placement year.”
Narelle struggled with the chalk and talk style used by the university to teach programming: “I’m dyslexic and I just couldn’t get my head around it. But when I taught myself I understood how it all worked.”
“That’s the difference now in my education programmes: I come from such a different angle and I cater for that aspect. The programmes are very visual and everything slots together.”
Narelle went on to complete a Master’s degree in Communications with Strategic Management and Marketing through Queen’s University Belfast and CAFRE at Loughry Campus. She loves learning and recently completed another Master’s “on the side”, this time in Biomedical Engineering!
With an ILM Level 5 in Leadership and Management and a PCGE, she taught ICT, Maths, Drama and Business Studies – “a real eclectic mix” – in schools in England before returning home to Northern Ireland.
She worked in Belfast MET as Head of Department running their ICT programmes with 200-300 students working towards AS, A2 and one-year A-Level qualifications. From there she moved to Queen’s University Belfast where for three years she taught Fundamentals of Programming to undergraduates using Java, Swing and Android. While there she wrote and delivered a C# course to upskill Northern Ireland teachers.
Joining PwC in 2016, Narelle has written two free innovation education programmes for schools “using all my experiences from teaching and what I learnt on the ground.”
“Hive Hackers is a primary school programme that teaches the fundamentals of coding to key stage 2 pupils (P5–P7) through seven weekly lessons or a more intensive three day delivery model.
“The key thing about Hive Hackers is that it’s built for teachers, to be delivered by them, and then to be experienced and learned by pupils. So the teachers are given a full lesson plan, PowerPoints, worksheets, training and our support to confidently teach the material.
“The teachers deliver the sessions and we support them during the first seven weeks we will go out to the school, which will normally have three or four classes running concurrently with the material. I will go from classroom to classroom supporting and jumping in wherever they need me. It’s about embedding this into the curriculum so the teachers can do it again in the future without our help.”
In its first year, Hive Hackers has been delivered to over 2,000 primary school children. Stripped down versions have been used with P1–P4 children too.
The course uses the code.org website and Blockly drag and drop programming along with the design thinking methodology. At the end of the seven week programme, the students come to PwC headquarters in Belfast to be awarded certificates and medals by senior management.
“It’s all linked into CCEA’s ICT curriculum so that when schools are doing the programme they’re ticking off their ICT tasks at the same time and it’s not adding extra work. So that hour and a half that the teachers give us every week is worth their time.”
Hive Tech Academy has been written for secondary schools, and aims to inspire children to keep their minds open to different careers in technology.
“Running over four days, small groups of students come up with a problem based on the Internet of Things. They design think it out and once they’ve got the problem they look at the data analytics and assess revenue streams. They spend time thinking about the security of their idea: we cover all about privacy online and cybersecurity, different types of hackers and online threats, and how these risks can be mitigated.
“Next they go through a virtual reality and augmented reality workshop, using Google Cardboards as well as an HTC Vive and a Microsoft HoloLens. We get them to play about so they come out with a clear understanding of the difference between what’s mixed, virtual and augmented reality. Then they look at artificial intelligence and robotics. After each of these sessions they go away and ask ‘can I use this in my problem?’
“They pull it all together in a big prototyping session and do lightning presentations. The students get used to working in teams, assigning roles, prototyping, doing lots of crazy sketching and tying their Lean Canvass together. We take them through a pitching workshop where they create their pitch, we give them one-on-one guidance and then they refine their pitch, practicing in front of PwC staff who volunteer to listen and give them feedback.
“Finally they go into the dragons’ den where they’ll all get up and pitch their ideas and the dragons will thoroughly grill them about their business ideas. Every member of the winning team gets a £50 Amazon voucher and trophy, and everyone who participates gets a medal and certificate.
“It’s giving them that wider understanding of technology and the tech industry, giving the young people an opportunity to develop those 21st century skills: collaboration, team working, delegation, negotiation and creativity with everybody working together towards a common goal.”
Narelle was part of the Tech Educators panel at the recent Women Techmakers conference held in W5. One of the panel’s discussion points was the plethora of tech-related initiatives aimed at school children: STEM Ambassadors, Raspberry Pi clubs, Coder Dojos, Hive Hackers, …
“Ithink everybody interested should be in the same room and share the same goal of working together to take the best of what everybody has to offer. We need to sort out materials and see how they link into the different parts and different levels of the curriculum.”
Outside of work, Narelle has a passion for giraffes and a love of drama.
“I starting doing drama when I was three and I got my teaching diploma in drama aged 17. My Drama For Kids (DFK) Performing Arts Academy http://www.dramaforkids.org.uk has been running for 18 years now. I put a floor down and painted the walls of my daddy’s old cow shed. It’s now moved into Ardmore Recreation Centre in Armagh and we’ve got 70 young people coming along each weekend. It’s a volunteer thing for me, my way of giving back to the community and we’ve raised more than £20,000 for charity through it.”
It’s clear that Narelle’s love of learning and her drive to teach is very personal.
“For me, coming from a culture where I was deemed ‘average’, I want to inspire people that they can achieve and be brilliant.”
