This past summer marked the addition of a full day of workshops to the CS&IT Symposium. More than 120 individuals attended morning and afternoon sessions on a variety of topics, such as BYOB Scratch, Google AppInventor, Videogame Programming, and AP Teaching. I’m happy to report that the day was very successful, with 97% of attendees rating “Session effectiveness” as either Good or Excellent, and 98% of attendees rating “Met expectations” as either Good or Excellent. Thank you to all of the session presenters who made the first CS&IT Workshop Day go so well.
The experience of chairing the workshop sessions prompted me to reflect on workshops that I have attended over the years. Many have been instructive and inspiring, but others have been demoralizing wastes of time. To me, an effective workshop has to have a significant hands-on component, but it also has to provide enough conceptual content to allow me to build upon what I have done. If it doesn’t enable me to continue learning on my own afterwards, it is really nothing more than a few hours of entertainment and/or confinement.
For example, I attended an outstanding workshop some years ago on Bioinformatics Education. The session integrated engaging hands-on exercises, but also provided conceptual background and resources for going beyond the exercises. It inspired me to dig deeper into the material once I got home, and I learned more after the workshop than I did in those few in-class hours. In contrast, a disappointing App Development workshop I attended led me through the development of some really cool applications, but no conceptual understanding of what I was doing. I left the workshop with some impressive apps, but absolutely no idea how I would do anything else.
I’m curious how other people view workshops.
What do you look for when you register for a workshop?
What features do you think are necessary for a workshop to be effective?
What are the biggest mistakes that you think workshop presenters make?
Please share your thought, and if you have a great workshop that you have attended and want to plug, have at it.
Dave Reed
CSTA Board of Directors
College Representative

Well, it’s back to school time and most of us have done some professional development over the summer to rejuvenate and enhance what we are doing in the classroom.
I had the privilege of attending MIT’s CS4HS offering in July, sponsored by Google. The focus of the three-day workshop was on using the Scratch programming language as a means to teach computational thinking skills using design based learning. Mitch Resnick and Karen Brennan of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group led the workshop and did an amazing job.
I must report, I drank the koolaid. The experience was exciting, motivating, and energizing. The forty-four educators, administrators, and researchers who participated were definitely buzzing with excitement. By the end of the workshop, there was a definite cult atmosphere in the room. The workshop was broken down into themes: art, stories, and games. Participants were given ideas and instruction on developing projects in all areas. Much time was spent on individual work related to a theme of interest.
It was a real treat for most of to have a solid chunk of time to play with Scratch, bounce ideas off of our colleagues, and to explore the possibilities. Most participants reported staying up until the wee hours of the night to work on their individual Scratch projects. It is an addictive tool, so easy to use, intuitive, and very engaging. I am excited to bring what I learned back to my school and to figure out the most effective way to implement Scratch with my high school students.
What about you?
What professional development did you do this summer that got you pumped for the school year?
Karen Lang
CSTA Board of Directors
9-12 Representative

I recently had the good fortune to participate in this year’s Creative Computing workshop at MIT. The program, which ran from July 27-30, was organized by the MIT Media Lab in collaboration with Google’s CS4HS initiative. The four day workshop provided K-12 teachers with an opportunity to explore computational thinking and creativity in the classroom.
Over the course of four days, I met with teachers from around New England (and some even as far away as California) to experiment with new educational technologies and instructional strategies to engage students in creative design activities. The workshop focused on Scratch as the vehicle for cultivating creativity and problem solving. Scratch:
http://scratch.mit.edu/
a programming language geared for children and teens, was developed at the Lifelong Kindergarten Group
http://llk.media.mit.edu/index.php
at the MIT Media Lab and was created to provide children with the opportunity to learn how to design, create, and express themselves through technology. I saw the workshop as the ideal vehicle for me to develop lessons which will motivate my students to become creators, not just users, of the technology that permeates their world.
During the workshop, I experienced first hand the joy and wonder that Scratch brings to learning. We started the program by exploring three essential questions:
(1) What is Scratch?,
(2) What is Scratch good for?, and
(3) What is good Scratch?
My initial response to those questions was pretty straightforward. Obviously, I knew what Scratch was and I believed that I knew what Scratch is good for, and I definitely thought I knew what was good Scratch. But over the course of four days, as I built new computer programs with my colleagues, toured the Media Lab, and heard from a variety of experts, I came to realize that these three questions mean more than I had ever imagined.
I discovered that Scratch is much more than a computer programming environment. It is a community. Scratch is not only good for making computer games, animations, stories, and art. It is also good for making social connections. It is a place where today’s technologically savvy students can come together to exchange sprites, remix programs, and collaborate on projects with other Scratchers. The same experience of sharing and collaborating can be found at the educator’s website, ScratchEd
http://scratched.media.mit.edu
And good Scratch, well, that is what ever you want it to be. As a teacher, I feel that my students produce “good” projects when they are actively engaged in the learning process. For the most part, every time a student builds a Scratch program, engagement takes place. I can’t wait for the school year to begin so my students can start “scratching.”
Patrice Gans
CSTA K-8 Representative

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