I received a great email this morning from Brian Scarbeau, a computer science teacher at Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando Florida, telling me about his recent encounter with Microsoft head Bill Gates.
Brian is a great person, a wonderful volunteer, and a tireless advocate for K-12 computer science education. He has presented sessions at our annual Computer Science and Information Technology Symposia, helped on CSTA projects, and even convinced the City of Orlando to officially proclaim December 8th (Grace Murray Hopper’s birthday) as as Computer Science Education Celebration Day. He is also currently running for the CSTA Board of Directors.
This week Brian attended the Microsoft VIP Summit, which included a presentation by Bill Gates, followed by a question and answer session. Brian took advantage of this opportunity to talk to Gates about the importance of Microsoft’s support for a number of key computer science education projects and elicited Gate’s promise to look into some funding cuts that Brian believed appeared to indicate Microsoft’s dwindling support for K-12 computer science education.
This encounter is a perfect example of how teachers can be great advocates. Not everyone has the chance to talk to a Bill Gates, but we all can talk to parents, principals, school administrators, and our state and federal representatives about the importance of supporting K-12 computer science education.
What we do is important. Computer science is the heartbeat of innovation, it is that science of science, and it is the career of the future. We need to take advantage of every opportunity to let people know.
Chris Stephenson
Executive Director