Mark the calendar, gather up resources, and make some plans!
Computer Science Education Week (December 4th through 10th) is the opportunity to be part of a unified force of CS teachers across the US and around the world to impact CS education.
What did you do last year?
What ideas do you have for this year?
We would love to hear about your 2010 CSEd Week successes, how you plan to build upon them this year, or your great new ideas for CSEd Week 2011. A few stories will be selected to feature in the November issue of the CSTA Voice newsletter.
You will find posters, flyers, classroom activities, videos and more on your own CSTA website:
http://csta.acm.org/
If you are looking for ideas and resources, check out the CSEd Week website:
http://www.csedweek.org
On the “Pledges” page you can read about these cool projects and many more!

Leisa Thompson (NCWIT) Included a message within her email signature to promote CSEd Week.
Tell us about CSEd Week in your school!
Pat Phillips
Editor, CSTA Voice

This summer I was able to attend three Computer Science conferences this summer which were CS4HS:
http://www.cs4hs.com/participating-schools-2011.html
at two different locations and CS & IT:
http://www.csta.acm.org/ProfessionalDevelopment/sub/CSITSymposiaSite.html
CS4HS is offered at several different college and university campuses throughout the world and is sponsored by Google. CS & IT is the annual conference organized by CSTA that “provides professional development opportunities for high school and middle school computer science and information technology teachers”. This year the sponsors were Microsoft Research, Google and Anita Borg Institute.
The first CS4HS I attended was on the Cal Berkeley campus and hosted by Dr. D. Garcia. To attend a CS4HS held in the state where I am teaching was definitely an advantage. The conference attendees educated me about websites that are only available for California teachers. One website was Calaxy which hosts a website of tools and free Moodle hosting. I had been using Moodle but my current host informed me that they would begin charging for the service so this was a website I definitely did investigate. Additionally, I entered into a discussion about recruiting and was given a suggestion about using my students to recruit students through their membership in ethnic clubs on my campus. I also learned about BYOB which is an extension of Scratch. I have been practicing with BYOB this summer to use with my students when school begins in a few weeks.
The second CS4HS I attended was on the Carnegie Mellon (CMU) campus and hosted by Tom Cortina. The participants were treated to: An introduction to AppInventor, a presentation from Eric Nyberg about Watson, a hands-on presentation about Finch Robots
http://www.finchrobot.com/
introduction to CS Unplugged activities and a presentation about Raptor (a free flowchart interceptor):
http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/
I purchased a Finch Robot and plan to have my Data Structures students review Java with the Robot and I plan to use Raptor to have students verify their logic.
Finally, I traveled from CMU to New York for the CS & IT Symposium. The conference was held over three days. The first day, the attendees could choose at most two workshops, the second day the attendees could choose at most four sessions and the third day the scheduled included 3 speakers and entrance to the Imagine Cup.
In the morning I attend the workshop about BYOB. Dr. Dan Garcia and Josh Pauley presented a hands-on workshop about BYOB. If you haven’t had an opportunity to try out BYOB, it is a free download from:
http://byob.berkeley.edu/
The site also has links to the slides from the conference and sample lessons.
The afternoon session I attended was trying out some labs using AppInventor presented by Hal Abelson, Betsy Dillard, Pauline Lake, Ralph Morelli, and Chinma Uche. You can download a copy of the slides from the presentation from the CSTA website.
The second day of the conference began with a keynote speech by Douglas Rushkoff the author of Programmed or Be Programmed: Ten Commandments for a Digital Age. He was a very dynamic speaker and gave us some ideas to think about regarding the web and how we are manipulated by it. The closing keynote speaker was Ken Perlin, Professor of Computer Science NYU Media Research Lab and Director, Games for Learning Institute. He was another dynamic speaker who discussed, among other things, using Kinect to communicate with a computer.
I also attended four great sessions during the day. You can review the slides of the sessions on the CSTA website as well as slides and videos from previous CS & IT Symposiums. In addition, Alfred Thompson:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2011/07/12/cs-amp-it-conference-day-1-2011.aspx
and Doug Peterson:

CSIT Symposium 2011

discuss their experiences at CS & IT on their blogs. Additionally, I exchanged contact information with other CS teachers. I hope to collaborate with them on lesson planning during the school year.
Another source of PD for me is Twitter. Through Twitter, I discovered Socrative:
http://www.socrative.com/features.php)
It is a “smart student response system” using web enabled devices. I plan to use it for “Checking for Understanding” and Exit Slips.
Finally, my next step then is how to incorporate what I have been exposed to this summer into my computer science curriculum. That is the best part of summer professional development, relating it all back to the students.
What PD have you participated in this summer?
Myra Deister
CSTA Board of Directors
At-Large Representative

Recently, Stephanie Hoeppner, CSTA Ohio Vice President, and I met with Dr. Rob Williams at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Fairborn, Ohio, to learn about a program that Wright-Patterson is currently conducting with high school and undergraduate students. The program is summer based and centers around research projects in Virtual Worlds, Smart Phones, and Robotics. Dr. Williams is looking to expand the program to teachers and students during the school year through a virtual world which the students in the summer program have developed.
This exciting program opens up connections between the computer science classroom and the work world. Students in the program work with mentors from the Air Force Base to create applications which might be of interest to the Air Force. CSTA Ohio is currently working with Dr. Williams to find CS teachers who might like to work with Dr. Williams on a collaborative effort which could bring this program to others areas of the state during the school year. Participants in the no cost program could participate during the school day or as an afterschool activity.
As CS teachers come in contact with exciting opportunities such the one mentioned above, we need to share the ideas with others within our community. While this program is currently localized to Ohio, there may be others who could bring a similar program to their area providing more opportunities for CS students.
What collaborative opportunities for CS students exist in your area? The CSTA Blog is a great site to gain attention within the CS community about the programs being conducted in your area.
Dave Burkhart
Governance Task Force Chair

Many of us who teach college level computer science have been happy with the latest news about computing and IT related jobs. With the promise of fast growth in these job areas through at least 2018, we can expect to see our enrollments increase. And hopefully this will be the end of the spate of CS department closures that has been the response of some colleges to the current tight economic situation.
At the same time, those of us who teach CS in liberal arts colleges sometimes have to argue vociferously for our place at the table. We’ve been challenged by colleagues and administrators. How dare we bring something so “vocational” into the liberal arts setting?
A commentary in the Christian Science Monitor
(http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0725/Liberate-liberal-arts-from-the-myth-of-irrelevance)
argues for the value of a liberal arts education. One key point: employers want to see analytical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills. These are all things that we focus on at liberal arts institutions, particularly the smaller colleges. Another key point: students need to graduate with “transferable skills” so that they will be able to adapt to a changing job landscape.
I would add to this my own view that it is precisely CS students and those students who have experience with applications of computing in their own disciplines who are best prepared to adapt to the technology driven developments we will continue to witness in the coming years and decades. They will be well prepared to offer up innovative solutions to difficult problems. Consider disease spread, drug development, and the push to digitize medical records. A biology student who has experience with computing, who has taken courses in visualization, modeling and simulation, and bioinformatics will better understand and contribute to progress in these areas than will the student whose curriculum has remained static. The medical researcher whose undergraduate exposure included computing will be well equipped to collaborate with the computer scientist whose undergraduate exposure included bioinformatics. The interdisciplinarity, cross-fertilization, and critical thinking that are hallmarks of a liberal arts education will create graduates who are ready to embrace technology and utilize it to advance a host of fields.
Valerie Barr
Computational Thinking Task Force Chair