In my new role as CSTA’s Publications Committee Chair, I have spent the last week thinking a lot about communication, specifically about what types of communication make an organization work and what types of communication our members might want.
Right now, CSTA communicates with its members (you) in a couple of different ways. This blog is great for letting you know what we are thinking and working on. The CSTA Voice is great for sharing articles, highlighting trends or best practices in CS education, and informing you of new research or upcoming events. Our current focus, however, is finding an effective interactive tool for communicating more immediately and directly with our members and helping our members connect more easily with each other.
My favorite form of communication is face to face. Unfortunately with 4500+ members spread across the globe its kind of hard for all of us to get together in one place at one time. And even then I believe that a formal “program” would be needed to help introduce people, connect people who are interested in the same topics, and start to build a community of our members.
One of our primary tasks when producing a community is interaction. How can those who have questions ask them? How can those who have knowledge share it? How can the leadership of the organization share important membership benefits and receive candid feedback about them? And how can we as a leadership understand what is most important in your little corner of the world?
I am working on some ideas, but I would love to hear yours. Please comment on this post, even if it is just encouragement to say that you are interested in an interactive tool.
Leigh Ann Sudol
Well I happen to think that blogs are a great way for people, especially teachers, to connect. There are already a lot of great free places for teachers to blog but it may be that finding a way to connect those blogs via a blog roll, a list or a wiki might be one way that CSTA could help.
In fact a general purpose wiki where people could list resources and ask questions might be a great thing in it’s own right.
Thought my dream has long been a national conference just for HS (and maybe middle school) CS teachers. It seems like real CS gets lost in the large conferences like NECC, TCEA and FETC.
Our elementary school is looking for a part-time technology coordinator to help integrate technology into the curriculum. It would be great if CSTA had a place where people could post jobs like this, connecting computer science teachers with schools looking for them.