The CSTA Computer Science Advocacy Specialists play a huge role in advocating for K-12 computer science education at the state and national level.
Here is Sock Monkey helping Computer Science Advocacy Specialists Stephanie Hoeppner with some brainstorming.

Here is Sock Monkey with Michelle Hutton. Michelle is stepping into her new role as CSTA Past Chair after serving for two years as CSTA Chair (President). She will continue serving on the CSTA Board for another year and will be advising new CSTA Board Chair Steve Cooper.
Here Sock Monkey is thanking Michelle for all her years of service as a CSTA volunteer leader.

Sock Monkey met Cameron Wilson, ACM Director of Public Policy, at a meeting Cameron organized for several of the organizations working on K12 learning standards. The purpose of the meeting was to brief these organizations on CSTA’s new standards for K12 computer science which will be released before the end of this year.
CSTA President Michelle Hutton call Cameron “Policy Man” because he is CSTA’s education policy superhero.

While in Atlanta for an AP Computer Science meeting, Sock Monkey had a chance to meet Fran Trees, CSTA’s Chapter Liaison. Fran helps volunteers through the chapter application and formation process. Thanks to Fran, CSTA’s list of local chapters continues to grow.
If you want to see where the chapters are, you can visit the CSTA chapter webpage at:
http://csta.acm.org/About/sub/CSTAChapters.html

Last week Sock Monkey attended the spring meeting for the National Center for Women in Information Technology and had a chance to meet with Karen Peterson of the National Girl’s Collaborative Project.
CSTA and NGCP are currently working on a project called the Computer Science Collaborative Project which is dedicated to improving computer science content in informal education programs across the country.

There is almost no one in our community that has been a better friend of computer science education than Jan Cuny of the National Science Foundation. Here, Sock Monkey is showing appreciation to Jan for her work on broadening participation, the development of the AP CS Principles course, and the 10K Teachers project.

Here, Renee Ciezki is showing Sock Monkey how a knitting pattern is actually an algorithm. Renee is a member of the CSTA Leadership cohort. She teaches in Arizona.

Last week Sock Monkey attended the National Science Foundation Working Group on High School Introductory Computer Science where he had the pleasure of meeting Mitch Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab.
Here Mitch is Introducing Sock Monkey to Scratch.

Today, CS Sock Monkey launched an important initiative to support and promote computer science education in K-12.
In this role, Sock Monkey will have the opportunity to meet with many leaders in our community and to provide key insights on CS K-12 issues.
Here, sock monkey is congratulating Dr. Mark Guzdial, Professor, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology on winning (along with his wife Barbara Ericson) the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award from ACM.