While it has been great to see the computing media/business media coverage of ACM’s new Job Migration study, I worry about how much of the important information in this report is actually filtering down to students.
The most pervasive misconception about computer science, especially among students and their parents, is that there are no longer any job opportunities in this field. Media coverage about offshoring has played a major role in spreading this misinformation. My hope is that media’s coverage of the Job Migration study may help undo some of the damage that has been done.
Contrary to what many people now believe, employment in IT in the U.S. is at an all-time high. As ACM President Dave Patterson noted in a recent column in Communications of the ACM (February 2006, 49(2), pp. 41-41) it is even higher than it was at the height of the dot-com boom. Contrary to the situation in other industries (think manufacturing!), annual job losses due to offshoring have been no more than 2-3% of the U.S. IT workforce.
As Patterson also indicated, there are also several types of IT work that are not likely to be offshored, including:
* Work that has not been routinized
* Work that is critical to a company’s control over its own operations
* Work involving data security, data privacy, intellectual property, or proprietary information
* Work that relies on a combination of application-domain knowledge and IT knowledge.
Beyond the information about jobs in the IT sector, ACM’s report raises some interesting ideas about curriculum which should be of direct interest to K-12 computer science educators.
Keeping students competitive in this new global IT economy is going to take more than drilling programming concepts into their heads. Our students need to become better problem solvers, to be curious, innovative, and creative. They need to see the connection between what they are doing in the classroom and real problems in the real world.
We also need to think seriously about making the so-called “soft skills” an integral part of our curriculum and our pedagogy. Students need to build team work and communication skills, and also to develop cross-cultural understandings that will allow them to function as citizens of this new world.
Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

If anyone happened to ask me, I would say that the biggest problem we face in all of computer science education right now is addressing misconceptions many people hold about our discipline, both as an educational endeavor and as a career path. Recently, however, I am beginning to see efforts by respected computer scientists to address this challenge head-on.
In an effort to address the misconception that computer science is programming, Jeannette Wing, the head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University has taken on the thorny issue of what computer science is and is not.
In a recent issue of the Communications of the ACM (March 2006, 49(3), pp.33-35), Wing puts forth the opinion that computer science is really the study of computational thinking (what can be computed and how to compute it) and that computational thinking is a fundamental skill, not just for computer scientists, but for everyone because it involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior.
Computational thinking, Wing argues, has the following characteristics:
* It is about conceptualizing, not about programming
* It is about how humans solve problems with the aid of computing devices
* It draws on both mathematical and engineering thinking to build systems that function in the real world
* It is about ideas that touch everyone’s lives
* It is everywhere
When we think about computer science in this way, the realm of possibilities for doing interesting and important work is shown to be limitless and the idea that computer science is sitting in a cubicle all day worrying about 1 and 0s is suddenly shown to be, as one student said to me, “so ago”.

If our experience at the recent SIGCSE Conference in Houston is any indication, we are on the verge of a major positive shift in the relations between K-12 computer science educators and our colleagues at the college level.
To be honest, relations between high school and post-secondary computer science educators have always been a little fractious. University folks have bemoaned the fact that students coming into their classes are not adequately prepared for the rigor of the discipline at the college level, and high school teachers have complained that the university folks have no idea of the environment in which K-12 people teach or their desperate need for information and support.
Over the past few years, however, there has been something of a sea change. More and more colleges and universities have established outreach programs to the high schools, providing teachers with much-needed opportunities for professional development and mentoring. The success of CSTA’s JETT program (over 60 workshops held nation-wide) and the booming interest in our TECS workshops are also proof of the willingness of colleges and universities to step in and step up, using their own resources to build bridges and support community.
On March 3, Robb Cutler (CSTA Chair) and I had the opportunity to give the plenary session at ACM’s SIGCSE Conference. Our goal was to provide our post-secondary colleagues with a better understanding of the challenges that K-12 teachers face, and to suggest new and improved ways that we can work together to address the issues confronting computer science education along the pipeline.
The fact that SIGCSE so generously allotted us a major session at this highly respected conference is, in and of itself, indicative of not just a shift of consciousness among post-secondary educators, but a major pledge of support for CSTA’s efforts to promote and support computer science education in K-12.
The response to this session has also opened our eyes to the incredible potential of stronger ties and real partnerships between CSTA and organizations that have long supported post-secondary computer science education. A number of ACM’s SIGs have offered to work more closely with us on key issues. Some pretty important people have also come forward to volunteer their time and expertise.
Our task now is to find ways to harness their incredible abilities in support of our common goals. The issues that we share all along the educational pipeline are complex and challenging, but this growing realization of our common interests and goals and, more importantly, this commitment to working in harmony rather than in isolation, are important and exciting.
Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

We have known for hundreds of years that chemistry provides the building blocks of our world. Pick up the item nearest to you and you will find that it was made with chemistry.
Computer science provides the building blocks of our increasingly technological world. After you put together the silica, etch it with acids, and treat it with other chemicals, you use computer science to make it do cool things. Where would my daily run be without my mp3 player? Where would my friendships across the country be without the wonder of free wireless internet at the local cafe? These were made with computer science.
Introductory chemistry is (fairly) straightforward; as a society we believe chemistry is valuable for students to understand. Of course we don’t expect all our students to become chemists, but we want adults in our society to know about chemistry in order to be competent individuals who can cook, use common household products safely, and make informed voting decisions. It isn’t until the second year in college with organic chem that it becomes an intensely challenging “weed out” course. And it isn’t until medical school that we truly force our students into intensely challenging conditions, in part because “that is the way we have always done it.”
Why is it, then, that computer science has adopted an attitude more like medical school than introductory chemistry? Why don’t we provide an accessible and fun introductory course that gives students the building blocks of the discipline? It seems that we teachers have the attitude that the way we learned computer science was through programming, and it was hard, and that is how we should teach.
I would like to see a new model, one where computer science is accessible to all students, where it is a standard part of the core curriculum, and where it is fun! This is part of why I am so excited about the Level 2 curriculum outline and the whole ACM Model Curriculum for K12 Computer Science. But it will take more than the new curriculum – teachers have to use fun tools and games like Sudoku and role play to engage students. We can make computer science accessible without dumbing it down if we just try.
Michelle Hutton
CSTA Equity Chair
Girls’ Middle School