Some of the most popular activities at CS&IT conferences in past years have been mini-workshop sessions – in-depth, hands-on sessions where attendees could learn about teaching tools, new pedagogies, funding opportunities, or whatever. Unfortunately, attending one of these sessions meant missing out on other talks taking place at the same time.
To help address this, the upcoming 2011 CS&IT conference, to take place July 11-13 in New York City, is expanding to include a full day of workshops. The call for proposals will be coming out soon, but it’s not too early to start thinking about taking your innovative ideas and practices and developing them into a CS&IT workshop.
In the meantime, I’m curious what characteristics you look for in a workshop. Think about the best workshops you’ve attended:
How were they structured?
Did you leave feeling you had a blueprint of something you could apply, or was it more the inspiration that the workshop provided?
Likewise, what characteristics kill a workshop, turning it into hours of pain and tedium?
Are there particular topics you would like to see covered at a CS&IT workshop this summer?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Dave Reed
CSTA Board of Directors
When I attend workshops I am looking for curriculum or teaching strategies that I can use immediately in a high school setting. If I don’t implement the new ideas relatively soon after the workshop I will forget about what I just learned. I am also looking for curriculum or strategies that are inexpensive and can be set up easily in the school’s computer lab.
One non-example: At 2010 CS & IT Symposium I attended a workshop about AppInventor. I wanted to do some AppInventor lessons but after working for 6 hours on my day off trying to set things up for my students, it would not run for them even though it ran for me. It seems AppInventor is difficult and time consuming to configure for a high school computer lab. I did not feel that was addressed in their session.