Daniel Hickmott

Senior Educator, Grok Academy

About Me

I am a Senior Educator at Grok Academy, a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is: "to educate all learners in transformative computing skills, knowledge and dispositions, empowering them to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of the future."

I completed my PhD in Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia in 2020. The focus of my PhD research was on the design and evaluation of a professional learning program for K-6 school teachers learning and teaching computer coding. You can read more about the program I ran on this page and you can also download my thesis from the NOVA repository.

Research Interests

  • Computing Education
  • Teacher Professional Learning
  • Online Learning
  • Serious Games

Education

  • Doctor of Philosophy (Education)

    2016 - 2020

    University of Newcastle, Australia

  • Bachelor of Software Engineering, Honours Class 1

    2010 - 2014

    University of Newcastle, Australia

Projects

Prior to joining Grok Academy, I worked on a variety of projects. You can find out more about these projects by clicking the Project Details buttons below.

MEd (Digital Technologies)

2020 - 2022

I lectured in the Master of Education (Digital Technologies) at the University of Sydney, working with the Australian Computing Academy. This program was for teachers upskilling for and leading the implementation of the Digital Technologies curriculum.

Project Details

Coding in Stage 3

2016 - 2020

I developed and ran a sustained professional learning program for primary school teachers, as part of my PhD study's data collection. My PhD project involved measuring the program's impact on participating teachers' coding knowledge, confidence about teaching coding, and plans for integrating coding across the curriculum.

Project Details

Literacy Apps

2014 - 2016

I worked with a team of educators and engineers to develop the iOS versions of the Apostrophe Power and Sentence Hero mobile learning apps. I also applied Serious Games Analytics to data collected through the Apostrophe Power app to gain understanding about how players interacted with the app.

Project Details

Coding and STEM 4 Schools

2013 - 2019

From 2013 to 2019, I worked with a team of educators and engineers to prepare resources for and co-ordinate a variety of professional learning programs for upskilling teachers for the Digital Technologies curriculum.

Project Details

Selected Publications

I have highlighted three of my favourite publications below but you can see the rest of my publications from the Publications page.

A scoping review of studies on computational thinking in K–12 mathematics classrooms

Published in Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education (April 2018, Volume 4, Issue 1)

More details

Exploring play-learners’ analytics in a serious game for literacy improvement

Presented at the Joint International Conference on Serious Games in Brisbane, Australia (September 2016)

More details

Resources and Media

I have included some different resources and media (videos and presentations) on this website. I have highlighted my favourite resources and media below but you can see more on the Media page and the Resources page.

Learning to Teach Coding Resources

A list of high-quality resources that I have collated for teachers that are looking to start teaching coding

I have created a page that has a list of resources for teachers that want to start learning coding. These resources are high quality and beginner-friendy resources that we use, or recommend, in the professional learning programs that we run.

View Resource

Integrating Coding and Maths in K-12: Research and Practice

Presentation from talk given at Google's CS Education Partner Summit in 2017

In this talk, I explained three projects that I had been involved in that had investigated the teaching of computational thinking and coding alongside Mathematics.

Open PDF

Creating Virtual Worlds Workshop Pitch Video

A winning entry in the University of Newcastle's Centre for 21st Century Humanities startup competition in 2018

This is a video that I submitted to a competition ran by the Centre of 21st Century Humanities. The competition involved creating a pitch video for a Digital Humanities startup idea that had to be less than 1 minute.

Watch Video on YouTube