Out of work teacher to retrain as what?

[hopeonhorizon]

Hi,
Since moving to N I I cannot even get supply teaching work and am considering doing something else. I am a single parent with 3 kids so need to be earning enough money to cover childcare costs. The recession has hit NI very badly and recovery will be slow here. However there is a skills gap for IT professionals and they are funding masters degrees in software development which should be a lucrative field. Although does one need to be mathematical to work in ICT? I have a degree in languages and PGCE. I am also thinking about a 2 yr course in physiotherapy but 2 years is the maximum time I could spend studying. One year would be better. Suggestions anyone

Sounds tough. What are your languages? Can you do some detective work and identify companies that do business in relevant countries and write to them to tell them how marvellous and multi-skilled you are? Copy-editing/writing? Are you a TU member and, if so, might they at least have talk boards/some kind of advisory line?
Best of luck.

For software devt I'd say yes, you need more of a mathematical leaning than a language leaning. But IT development needs project mgmt skills, too, which could be an option. prince2 is the qualification for this and can be gained in a week or two - you can google for courses. That might be more suited to your background and experience - all about guiding teams and time management and organisation. NI is becoming quite a hotspot for software devt as you say, but the worry of those going into the region (our business is one) is the lack of mgmt skills, not the number of IT professionals in general.

Thanks Jk my languages are French and Italian so I'm going to contact some agencies in the new year. I love writing but not sure how to get paid work in this area.
Interesting Squiffy I will google prince 2.

There may be a NI-France or Italy chamber of commerce, which would be worth contacting. Or French/Italian software/other services companies that have some kind of operation or connections with NI. It's worth trying to think as widely as possible about connections that would allow you to use your languages. Does Queen's teach French and Italian and, therefore, have some kind of network based there as well, e.g. former students?

IT with languages would be employable. You might not get a job engineering hardware, but you should certainly be able to do stuff like project management. You may well be able to do software development too, with training, but it will help if you have a logical way of thinking. Mind you, I went into IT because it was like learning another language, and one of our DBAs said he also did that.

There are Masters conversion courses, which are designed for people whose first degree is not IT-related - it can be an intense year, though. I've known people with backgrounds in history, languages, philosophy, as well as various sciences. Actually, I know at least 3 historians (including me) who are now in IT.

I think it can be an advantage not to have a purely scientific background - your communication skills are likely to be high, which will be useful in any business.

But I don't know what the job market is like in NI, so it may be worth looking at the sort of jobs around and training accordingly?

The Italian dept in Queen's closed a few years back but they have a strong French dept. I am not that close to Belfast though which again means that if I commute transport costs go up as well as childcare costs. Ideally I would like to work locally or from home on a part time basis which is why I thought about IT. There seem to be lots of software development jobs advertised and Queens offer the Masters conversion course. I am quite logical although very average at maths. I googled the prince 2 course but am wondering about doing it without any business background.

This is the sort of thing I do and I'm a former teacher

I googled the prince 2 course but am wondering about doing it without any business background.

I'm not sure that would be much impediment, going by some of the PMs I've had to work with...

Sorry, I didn't mean that you should try to work at Queen's, more that they might have networks you could tap into.

Yes JK that's a good idea.
Slug that looks very interesting. IT seems to be the way forward.

The other thing about doing an MSc conversion - I wasn't sure if I wanted a career in IT still not sure 18 years in, and I figured that I was only committing myself for a year, and whatever I ended up doing, having more IT knowledge wouldn't be any sort of handicap these days, even if I ended up not directly using it.

Go for it hope. I did an MSc conversion course part time while teaching glutton for punishment and, while I spent a small amount of time in the IT industry, learning technology has been a really good fit for me. I don't do any programming in my current job, but having a working knowledge of how databases work and a knowledge of what is, and what isn't possible within a development environment is really useful.

What really makes me employable is my ex-teacher status. A lot of what I do is training academics and developing the virtual learning environment. Because I can look at it with a teacher's eye, I can often anticipate and deal with issues before they arise. I can also have sympathetic conversations about the trials of marking etc and gently suggest solutions that don't take too much time or effort to get working and make their lives easier.

But the best thing is:
regular hours
lunchtimes
NO MARKING
I go home at 5pm and leave work at work

Thank you slug I will apply anyway and take it from there. In the meantime I'm looking into online tutoring.