By Cameron Wilson
A little over a month ago, I wrote about the U.S. Congress passing a resolution designating the first week of December as Computer Science Education Week. As far as attention for the field goes, this was cool, but my main point was if we were satisfied with just a Congressional resolution we’d have missed a big opportunity. It was up to the community to make something of Computer Science Education Week.
This was a call to action when science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the so-called “STEM” fields) education reform is on the minds of national and local leaders. In other words, we’ve never had a better opportunity to highlight how computer science is transforming society and how students at all levels need to be exposed to computer science education.
In just over a month, the community has stepped up to bring together some really useful resources, promote the field, further strengthen an already strong community and tell computer science education’s story to the world:
* ACM pulled together a new web portal External Link for computer science education (www.csedweek.org) to serve as a central hub for the week.
* The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) issued a call to action on their blog and via their listserv, listing several things teachers can do to celebrate the week.
* CSTA’s leadership cohort (teachers that are committed to leading reforms in their states) got the State of Ohio and the State of Wisconsin to support csedweek.
* Microsoft created its own csedweek page.
* Google blogged about csedweek on its main blog.
* Congressman Ehlers and Congressman Polis, the Members of Congress that spearheaded this effort, circulated a letter to all of their colleagues announcing the week and the website.
* The message is also getting heard where it counts; in the schools themselves. The Los Angeles Unified School District issued a release in support of the week and so did the Cypress-Fairbanks school district External Link in Texas.
* Carnegie Mellon is celebrating by hosting a “Computer Science Education Day” External Link conference.
* MIT Press External Link is honoring several computer science education leaders throughout the week.
And this is just a sample of only what we’ve heard so far! We’ve seen press stories, local celebrations and teachers coming together on Facebook to ask each other what they are doing this week. My personal favorite was Mark Guzdial’s post to “hug a computer science teacher” to celebrate this week.
This is a great start to the inaugural year for Computer Science Education Week. All of these things are the beginnings of a much-needed national debate about computer science education. But this is just the start. Now we need to build on this throughout the year and make next year’s Computer Science Education Week an even more prominent part of the education landscape.
All of this couldn’t have been done without some key partnerships. ACM has been working with the cooperation and deep involvement of the Computer Science Teachers Association, the Computing Research Association, the National Center for Women & Information Technology, the Anita Borg Institute, the National Science Foundation, Google, Inc., Intel, and Microsoft on this effort and wish to thank them for their involvement.
Cameron Wilson
ACM Director of Public Policy

Cameron Wilson announced CS Education Week in his blog post October 22, 2009. You’ve had a month to think about it, so what are you going to do to celebrate this week?
My school celebrates everything. In fact, we are just wrapping up Foreign Language Week. Teachers wore buttons announcing which languages they had studied, students made posters, each day celebrated a different language offered by including a tasty morsel of information about that language in the daily announcements, and of course, each foreign language day enjoyed a “cultural experience” (secret code for food) as part of their lesson. So how do Computer Science Teachers compete with this?
Computers and computing are ubiquitous. Can you separate these thinking machines from everyday life? No! So, embrace our deep embedding in our students’ lives, and have some fun exploring computing. Here’s my plan.
First, hold a poster competition and let the faculty choose the winning posters for a computer related prize. Post those posters throughout the school so everyone can enjoy them.
Second, find some interesting trivia about the evolution of our discipline and get that question of the day on the announcements.
Third, find out which faculty members have taken a computer course. Organize a scavenger hunt that includes faculty members as well as other sources (Google) to involve the students.
Fourth, hold a show and tell day during lunch. My Alice students are completing their first major project, a self-designed Halloween video. I plan to show them during lunch.
Fifth, celebrate Grace Hopper. Her birthday is December 9. Do something really special on that day (can you say Birthday Party) to celebrate her contributions as well as others in our field.
We claim that Computer Science is a creative discipline. Use your imagination to demonstrate that computer science is more than just writing java code.
John Harrison
CSTA At-Large Board Member

Computer science education reform is going to come in fits and starts working on issues from the top down (national media, federal policy, etc.) and the bottom up (in schools, districts, states, etc.). This week the “top down” piece got a nice boost from Congress by passing a resolution External Link designating the week of December 7 (in honor of Grace Hopper’s External Linkbirthday) as Computer Science Education Week. This gives the community a wonderful platform to highlight the importance of computing to society and why we need to strengthen CS education — particularly at the K-12 level.
Earlier this year, Congressman Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) approached ACM with the idea of Congressional endorsement of computer science education week. His interest came from a computer scientist (who had attended a CCSC presentation by CSTA Executive Director Chris Stephenson) from his district, armed with some good facts, briefing him on both the tremendous benefit computing has and the difficult issues computer science education faces at the K-12 level.
Congressman Ehlers and his cosponsor Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) External Link wanted to call attention to these issues to help build the case that more students should be exposed to computer science education. When ACM first discussed the idea we weren’t sure that the various Congressionally endorsed weeks — Chemistry, Engineering, Asparagus, whatever — had a practical impact. Turns out that it does.
The first benefit is that it brings high-level attention and informs policy makers about the issues. Second, it gives the computing community a useful messaging platform to inform others about computer science education’s benefits and issues. This is really the key takeaway. Because Congress voted on this week doesn’t mean much if the community doesn’t do something to make the week tangible. ACM plans on partnering with key computing organizations — Microsoft, Google, Intel, the Computer Science Teachers Association, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, the Computing Research Association as a start — to develop a website and outreach materials. Third, these resources can be plugged into the schools and to a variety of audiences including policy makers, school administrators, teachers, parents and the community itself to be used in a variety of ways.
There are two lessons from all of this. First, Computer Science Education Week will be what we, the computing community, make out of it. Second, bringing issues to the attention of policy makers and making a local connection in a respectful and thoughtful way can make a difference. We’ll be working hard for the next six or so weeks to develop materials and leverage existing ones for outreach around this event, so stay tuned.
Cameron Wilson
ACM Director of Public Policy

If you’ve read a recent piece I co-wrote in Communications of the ACM (membership required), you know that the States largely drive education decisions in the US. Because of this, our community has to play “wack-a-mole” when we hear about issues that pop up in the fifty states affecting computer science education. Luckily, the Computer Science Teachers Association Leadership Cohort is building much of this network, so when Kansas the Board of Regents decided to eliminate computing courses from the core student requirements, we could weigh in with the State. ACM and CSTA sent the board a letter recommending that they put computer science back in the core.
To unpack this issue we need to review how Kansas’ education system works. The Kansas State Board of Regents External Link is a nine-member, politically-appointed body that “governs six state universities, and supervises and coordinates 19 community colleges, five technical colleges, six technical schools and a municipal university.” State law allows students automatic acceptance into one of Kansas’ public universities if they meet certain requirements. These requirements are called the “Qualified Admission Regulations,” which are set by the Board.
To meet these requirements, students are required to take four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of natural science, three years of social science and one year of computer technology. The Board then has a set of standards of content that must be included in these courses. Because of the Qualified Admission’s requirements influence over student admissions, it has become the defacto college prep curriculum in Kansas.
Recently the Board convened a task force to review the Qualified Admissions Regulations, which concluded that the technology requirement is outdated and that the content is being taught in other courses. Based on this conclusion, the Board is proposing to cut the computing technology requirement.
It turns out that while the technology requirement was intended to be a basic computing literacy course, it allowed many high schools to develop courses with computer science content. ACM and CSTA’s concern is that if the Board eliminates the computing technology requirement students will focus only on the core requirements and computer science courses in Kansas will disappear.
To ensure that Kansas’ students are being exposed to rigorous computer science courses and not basic computing literacy, we recommend that:
* the Board update the Qualified Admissions Regulations to reflect core computer science concepts. Further, that the state establish a task force to review Kansas’ current science standards (some of which can be found in “standard 5” of the Kansas Curricular Standards for Science for 8th to 12th grade) and how they could be updated to mirror changes to the Qualified Admissions standards.
* “computer science” be added as one of the approved units in either the mathematics or natural sciences Qualified Admissions requirements.
By strengthening computer science education in Kansas, the Board can ensure students are gaining the critical knowledge and skills they will need in the 21st Century.
(Special thanks to Tabitha Hogan, a high school computing teacher in Kansas, for flagging this issue for us.)
Cameron Wilson
ACM Director of Public Policy

In early August, the U.S. Department of Education released the proposed structure of the $4.5 billion Race to the Top Fund. In short, this fund will distribute billions to states for improving education in the K-12 space:
http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html
The ACM Education Policy Committee, along with CSTA, the Computing Research Association, and the National Center for Women & Information Technology filed a detail set of comments on the proposed structure of the fund including a number of recommendations geared at ensuring that the final grant structure specifically includes computer science education and recognizes the critical role computer science must play in STEM education reform.
Specifically, our comments argue that the Race to the Top legislation should go further in addressing the challenges currently facing computer science at the K-12 level. It should ensure that resources can be dedicated to computer science education and not erect unintentional barriers to improving this subject area. Further, the final notice should place STEM education on equal footing with the required reform areas. We have offered the following specific recommendations to address these issues.
1.A. Add “computer science” after “study in…mathematics, sciences,” to the Proposed Priority #2 (for STEM education) clarifying that a state application can support reform of existing computer science courses, introduce new rigorous computer science standards and courses, and support computer science teachers.
1.B. Make Proposed Priority #2 (for STEM education) an absolute priority where a state application would have to describe how the state intends to improve STEM education (with appropriate selection criteria, minimum proposed evidence and proposed performance measures).
2. Coupled with our recommendation (1.B.) add a new section (A)(4) containing selection criteria for subjects in STEM areas, including computer science, that may not be part of the “common set of K-12 standards” but are critical to ensuring student competitiveness in the 21st Century.
3.A. Add an evaluation measure to the minimum proposed evidence (C )(1) “Providing alternative pathways for aspiring teachers and principals” that a state demonstrate to what extent its alternative certification program for STEM teachers, including computer science, draws upon nationally recognized models.
3.B. Independent of the final notice, the Department should use federal funds to create a clearing-house of best practices for teacher certification in STEM fields that should facilitate the information sharing between states on effective certification and endorsement models.
4. Add “computer science” after “…including mathematics, science” in section (C )(3) “Ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals.”
5. Provide flexibility in the reporting requirements in section (C )(4) “Reporting the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs” for new credentialing programs developed in areas where assessment data is limited, such as computer science.
You can view the complete response document at:
http://www.acm.org/public-policy/race_to_the_top_comments_final.pdf
Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director

CSTA is very pleased to announce the availability of a free curriculum now available on the CSTA website. The Exploring Computer Science (ECS) materials avalable at:
http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/ExploringCS.html
provide daily lesson plans and resources which support the teaching of six instructional units:
1) Human Computer Interaction;
2) Problem Solving;
3) Web Design;
4) Introduction to Programming;
5) Robotics; and
6) Computing Applications.
The curriculum adopts an inquiry-based learning model and each unit concludes with an in-depth project.
The instructional materials have been developed for high school classrooms in Los Angeles Unified School District as an instruction tool for introducing students to the “computational thinking” of computer science. Funded by a grant from the NSF, this curriculum is part of a University-District partnership to attract and retain more females and students of color in rigorous computing courses. Importantly, this curriculum was designed to accompany a model of professional development that focuses on both the content and pedagogy of the course. We strongly urge teachers to participate in related professional development before implementing any of these lessons in the classroom.
The University of California has notified us of their support for Exploring Computer Science curriculum and their intention to grant college admissions elective credit for students taking the course.
We would appreciate if you could keep us updated as to how/if you use this curriculum or distribute it to others. Our research team would like to be able to track the impact of this curriculum.
For more information on the Computer Science Equity Alliance, visit the CSEA website at:
http://intotheloop.gseis.ucla.edu/.
For questions about the curriculum, please contact Joanna Goode at:
[email protected]
Joanna Goode
CSTA Board of Directors

We can all agree that it is essential that computer science teachers have adequate preparation and professional development to teach computer science successfully. We can probably also agree that there is currently a crisis in computer science teacher certification.
Within most educational systems internationally, the task of ensuring that teachers are adequately prepared to teach a given discipline at a specified level rests with the bodies responsible for teacher certification. Unfortunately, as it relates to computer science teacher certification, there is a lack of clarity, understanding, and consistency with regard to current requirements. Where certification or endorsement requirements do exist, they often have no connection to computer science content.
As a result, there are exemplary computer science teachers whose state provides no certification in their chosen discipline. There are individuals who have knowledge of the discipline who want to teach computer science but lack the pedagogical training to survive and foster learning in a classroom environment and they have no place to get it. And, most disturbingly, there are teachers who have no computer science background being assigned teaching positions that require substantial knowledge of the discipline.
The result of this current situation is that students, teachers, and the discipline itself suffer. It is absolutely essential therefore, that all computer science teachers, new and veteran, have appropriate training. It is equally important that a model for teacher certification in computer science be instituted.
The challenge then, is how do we construct a sensible system of teacher certification that makes sure that everyone has the knowledge they require and yet does not drive skilled and dedicated teachers away from the discipline or the classroom.
In an extensive new report on the current state of computer science teacher certification, CSTA proposes a certification model that addresses individuals from four constituencies: 1) new teachers; 2) veteran teachers with no computer science teaching experience; 3) veteran teachers with computer science teaching experience; and 4) individuals coming from business with a computer science background.
Ensuring Exemplary Teaching in an Essential Discipline: Addressing the Crisis in Computer Science Teacher Certification provides a comprehensive examination of the complex issues of certification. It looks at the research is available and provides a detailed look at what is needed to meet the needs of teachers in each of these constituencies. The report is available online at http://csta.acm.org.
We believe that this is a critical discussion for our professional community right now, so tell us:
* What are your experiences with certification/endorsement in computer science?
* What were the qualifications required of you when you were assigned to teach your first computer science class?
* Were you adequately prepared?
Fran Trees
CSTA Chapter Liaison

As much as we would all like to get away and go to as many conferences as we can during the year, often we are restricted to one conference or workshop based on what is close, or what we can afford. This is one of the reasons I love web 2.0. Right now the How To Organize Your Teaching Conference is going on at http://k12onlineconference.org.
Want something new to use in your class? Thinking about encouraging students to blog about their solutions or code? Or want to just see what new ideas exist? Head on over to the site and take a look at the schedule. All of the presentations can be viewed at any time, so you don’t need to schedule yourself out of class.
There is a first-timers area (see links in the near-upper right hand side of screen) which brings you to the wiki that explains the conference and how to navigate the sessions, as well as links to previous year’s conferences. There is also a link to the wiki as well in that area so you can read and take part in the conversations that we all know are some of the most important parts of attending any conference. There are also a series of live events, named Fireside Chats and When Night Falls.
While none of the content is specifically computer science generated (there are no java workshops). There are some great workshops that can be applied in any discipline, including ours. I encourage you to go and take a look, view at least one session, participate in one discussion and perhaps pick up one new idea for your classroom.
Leigh Ann Sudol

CSTA has just added an RSS feed for its news updates on the homepage. If you already have an RSS reader either installed in your browser or through a service like Google reader, just use the orange icon to have your reader include our news!
If you don’t have an RSS reader set up, you should consider it! It is a great way to have updates from your favorite web sites sent to you like email. Rather than having to navigate the web, you can simply choose to have your favorite news, blog posts, or other RSS-enabled information sent directly to your reader.
There are RSS reader programs that install directly to your email or you can use something like Google reader to help you organize the feeds. I suggest you check out Google reader or just do a search for RSS reader and the name of your email client in order to see what is available.
If you are interested in a way to have our CSTA news sent directly to your email, you can check out the blog post I did a while ago about RSS. It provides a link to a tool and directions that allow you to send any RSS feed to your email inbox.
Leigh Ann Sudol
CSTA Volunteer

The CSTA Membership Satisfaction Survey has now been completed and CSTA is delighted to announce that Ken Gittins is the winner of our member raffle prize.
According to CSTA President Robb Cutler, the Membership Satisfaction Survey is a key element in the association’s strategy to ensure that it continues to expand its membership benefits in a way that best serves the needs and interests of its members.”We depend upon our members to tell us what is working for them and what they need, and the survey is one of the most effective ways of collecting this information”, said Cutler.
As an incentive for members to participate in the online survey, CSTA randomly selected one member who completed the survey to receive the raffle prize. This year’s prize, a Flip Video Camera, has been won by Ken Gittins, a teacher in Highlands Ranch, CO.
Cutler says the results of the survey will be used by the CSTA Board of Directors and staff to determine how to improve existing member benefits and what new benefits will be developed in the next two years.
Chris Stephenson
Executive Director