I hope everyone had a great holiday break is leaping back into the school year with renewed drive and energy. With all of the chaos of the new year, you might have missed the call for nominations for the CSTA Board of Directors. There is no better way to contribute to CSTA’s mission of empowering and advocating for K-12 CS teachers than to serve on the Board. There are five open positions this year, four representing specific perspectives and a fifth, at-large position.

K-8 Representative: A classroom teacher who is currently teaching computer science at the pre-high school level.
9-12 Representative: A classroom teacher who is currently teaching computer science at the high school level.
International Representative: An international (outside the United States) classroom teacher who is currently teaching or promoting computer science at the pre-collegiate level.
State Department Representative: An educator or administrator who reports to a state department of education and oversees, in some capacity, computer science education.
At-Large Representative: An educator with responsibilities for K-12 CS education.

To apply for one of these position, you simply need to submit a resume and a brief application form – details can be found at http://www.csteachers.org/news/379241/Announcing-the-CSTA-Board-of-Directors-Elections–Nominations-Period.htm. The deadline for submissions is January 31 (11:59pm PST), so don’t wait too long. Questions can be directed to [email protected].

In case you were on the fence about applying for the Board, here are answers to five of the most common questions that potential candidates ask:

Q: How much work is involved in being a Board member?
A: You have probably seen the phrase “the CSTA Board is a working board” in several places. What this means is that members of the Board are expected to help carry out the business of the organization – not just advise or supervise. This includes monthly virtual meetings and two face-to-face board meetings, one held in conjunction with the CSTA Annual Conference and another held in the late fall. While these meetings are packed and productive, most of the Board’s business is conducted throughout the year by committees, with individuals working from home and coordinating via phone conferences. The time commitment can vary by task, e.g., the work conducted by the Elections & Nominations Committee is concentrated around setting up and running the annual elections, and is light during other times of the year. On average, I would guess that the workload averages out to 2-3 hours per week.

Q: Are Board members expected to cover their own travel expenses to meetings?
A: No, expenses for travel are reimbursed (within reason) following CSTA’s travel policy guidelines. This includes travel, hotel, and meals at Board meetings. It also includes expenses related to attending the CSTA Annual Conference, since Board members are expected to attend this event and help out by proctoring sessions and assisting with registration. A copy of the travel policy is provided to all newly elected Board members.

Q: Why are there different positions on the Board, such as 9-12 Representative and International Representative?
A: The mission of CSTA is a broad one, promoting K-12 CS education and supporting the interests and professional development of our 26,000+ members. It is essential that the Board have a diversity of perspectives and experiences to address the issues and challenges that arise in the organization’s business. Each position has requirements to ensure that key perspectives are represented on the Board. For example, the 9-12 Representative is required to be a “9–12 classroom teacher who is currently teaching computer science at the high school level.” Once on the Board, all members are equal in status and welcome to contribute to all initiatives.

Q: If I apply for a position, does that automatically mean I will be on the ballot?
A: Unfortunately, no. According to the CSTA bylaws, the election ballot will list at most two candidates for each open Board position. If more than two qualified candidates submit applications, the Elections & Nominations Committee is charged with selecting the two most outstanding candidates to be placed on the ballot. Committee members independently rank the candidates using a rubric that considers factors such as leadership skills and experience, understanding of core issues in CS education, and alignment of goals to CSTA’s mission. While this model does sometimes mean that highly qualified candidates do not make the ballot, it does allow for us to keep the ballot size manageable while still providing detailed statements from each candidate.

Q: Why should I consider running for the CSTA Board?
A: Serving on the CSTA Board of Directors is an extremely rewarding opportunity to give back to the teaching community. Board members help to set the vision for the organization and work to promote CS education on a global scale. Their work supports and provides professional development for CSTA’s more than 26,000 members worldwide. In addition, working closely with other amazing educators is rewarding in itself.

JRN, Journalism, Media, Computing faculty members

Last week, I had the interesting experience of giving evidence at a hearing of our House of Lords Artificial Intelligence select committee. The House of Lords is the (entirely unelected) upper house of the UK’s legislature, so for me, this was quite a big deal.

Their lordships were interested in the applications of AI to education in general, but they seemed much more interested in the opportunities that England’s computing curriculum would provide for our students to learn about AI.

In terms of the uses of AI in schools, we’re already seeing a fair few applications of machine learning and other aspects, and I think these look set to continue in the short to medium term. I certainly don’t see AIs replacing teachers any time soon, but I think there are plenty of aspects of the teacher’s role where some support from smart machines might be quite welcome, for example in assessment, with marking essays, judging the quality, rather than merely the correctness of a student’s code; in recommending appropriately challenging activities, resources and exercises for students; in carefully monitoring student activity, privacy concerns notwithstanding; and in responding quickly to students’ questions or requests for help.

If teaching can be reduced merely to setting work and marking work, then I would fear for the long term future of the profession: ‘Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine, should be’, as Arthur C Clarke famously put it. My Roehampton students think there’s much more to teaching than this though: teaching students how to be a person, how to get on with other people, and inspiring them to learn things that they’re not already interested in, to give just three examples. I don’t see the machines taking over these responsibilities any time soon.

More interesting are the opportunities to teach students about AI as part of CS education, or the broader school curriculum. The English programmes of study for computing are phrased broadly enough to allow, or perhaps even encourage, students to develop a grasp of how AI, and particularly machine learning, works, in age-appropriate ways from age five to eighteen. CSTA’s new standards allow scope for pupils to learn about machine learning too: between 3rd and 10th grade students should be able to use data to highlight or propose cause and-effect relationships and predict outcomes; refine computational models based on the data they have generated; and create computational models that represent the relationships among different elements of data collected.

There are some great tools out there to make this accessible to students, from Google’s teachablemachine, through Dale Lane’s fabulous, IBM Watson powered, machinelearningforkids.co.uk, to building machine learning classifiers in Mathematica (easy!) and Python (more tricky, but really not out of the question), as well as the fun that can be had building simple chatbots in Scratch or Python, and hacking Google Assistant using the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s AIY kit.

Great as these opportunities are, I am concerned that we’re not doing enough in schools to get students thinking through the ethical implications for individuals, society and civilisation of AI. Worryingly, England’s education ministers removed the wider ethical references to the computing curriculum we’d developed. Machine learning algorithms already make life-changing decisions for many of us, and the impact of these technologies on our lives seems likely to only increase over our students’ lives. Education is, at least in part, about preparing our students for the opportunities, experiences and responsibilities of their later lives, and I’m not sure we can do justice to this if we’re not teaching them how AI works, and to think through some of the big questions about how AI should be used.

Miles Berry

Throughout my professional career—academia, industry, government, I’ve been involved with many boards. Most of my experiences have be positive; most of them were part of loving, respectful, inclusive communities. I’ve served on boards that focus on teaching in higher education, boards that are charged with the welfare of a community, boards that are responsible for specific events, boards that are strictly oversight or advisory and others that are active doers.

I have recently been lucky enough to join the CSTA Board of Directors. Based on my early experience, the CSTA Board is a hybrid of doers and overseers. It’s a wonderful mix of high school teachers, higher education faculty, state and local K-12 administrators and industry representatives.

When you attend the CSTA Annual Conference, or participate in one of the many activities offered from the chapters or other members of the CSTA community, all of these people, ideas and activities have somehow, someway passed by the attention of the CSTA Board. Board members are active participants in all areas of the organization and execution of the Annual Conference, aiding the conference chairs with whatever and helping keep the Board posted on all of the great ideas and activities. The Chapters as well are encouraged by the Board, which always welcomes their creative ideas. Board members live to be enablers!

In addition, at my first (and currently only) face to face meeting, we dealt with more serious issues like the budget and strategic plans. I was impressed with the many ideas and differing perspectives offered by all of the members of the Board—this isn’t a shy group! I was also happy to see how respectful and seriously everyone reacted to divergent opinions. We’re all trying to do our best for CSTA. It’s amazing how much business gets covered in this one-day meeting. To keep up to date and keep moving forward, we also have monthly video and conference calls with full agendas, too. I appreciate well-run meetings where people do get a chance to visit and catch up but where the focus still on getting the business done. Fred Martin (CSTA Board Chair) is a master!

We all know that it’s really fun, useful and professionally stimulating to be a member of CSTA and that its members (YOU) are what make it the GREAT organization it is today. But if anything about being on a board intrigues you, if you’re interested in seeing how the behind the scenes stuff works and you have the time to invest, the CSTA Board is a pretty amazing place!

Jane Prey
ACM Representative