Once again this year, CSTA will be holding its annual Computer Science and Information Technology conference. It will be a fabulous event and the people who attend will give it rave reviews and will tell us it is the best professional development they have received all year and, for some people, ever. But as happy as I am that people will be glad they came, I cannot help but wonder and worry about the people who did not attend.
Every year CS&IT provides great workshops with content you can take directly back to your classroom. It provides great sessions with relevant information from experts and peers. It also provides downstreaming video of the sessions so attendees can catch any session they missed when they return how It provides opportunities for you to network and share strategies with others who understand and care about what you do.
So if this is the best opportunity you will have all year for great professional development, why aren’t you coming?
And what could we do to make it more attractive and accessible to you?
Chris Stephenson
Executive Director
You could include a link in the post to the conference details and registration page. Searching your bolded text suggests that it’s in Irvine during early July, but (in my sadly personalized Google results) that was the fourth link down the page, after International CSIT conferences in Chengdu.
Like many K-12 CS teachers, my professional development happens almost exclusively through my web/hobby/PLN connections.
Last year at this time, I read some great posts form Helene Martin about the PLT/Racket workshops and decided to make that a part of my summer. It was a great experience, and put me in touch with another semi-hidden community of passionate CS teachers.
Where are the personal testimonials from teachers who attend CS&IT and come back inspired, with great tools and ideas. Is this the conference that regularly hosts the Nifty Sessions? Collect and publicize those first-person accounts, in some form longer than a single sentence verb. Stream sessions and keep the archives current and accesible throughout the year. Provide enough value and inspiration from *last* year’s conference that I feel like missing this year’s is unthinkable.
Move the location year over year. Going to the West cost is cost prohibitive for many.
Actually, the conference venue does move every year, alternating east coast and west coast locations.
Sorry, it is too cost prohibitive to attend.
This is a bit confusing since the CSTA conference is much less expensive than any other national conference for teachers? Is it just that any conference is too expensive?
I attended the CS&IT conference last summer at Columbia. It was fabulous – very worthwhile. Unfortunately, this summer I have a conflict with a CS4HS in Rochester NY. I highly recommend attending workshops such as these to all CS teachers and those interested in teaching CS in the future.