Less than a week to go before I can start looking at the submissions for CSTA 2016

Posted on September 25, 2015 by admin

Less than a week to go before I can start looking at the submissions for CSTA 2016. The submission deadline is October 1!

If you are reading this you probably teach computing. You probably also have (at least) one special practice or bit of curriculum, or general teaching approach that you think works really well for you. That it works well for you means it is worth sharing with other computing teachers at CSTA 2016. We’ll be meeting next July 10-12 in sunny San Diego!

Submitting a proposal is easy. Just go to the conference portal (https://www.softconf.com/h/csta2016/), click the “HERE” link in the “For authors:” section, read the legal stuff about expectations, and start entering your proposal. You can check the system out without having to sign up or anything. (I always look at the information they want and write it up in a text editor, then copy and paste it into the web page.) I can’t guarantee your proposal will be accepted but it certainly will get serious consideration.

You might also consider volunteering to review submissions. That goes double for folks who have attended CSTA some time in the past. To volunteer to become a reviewer, please complete the following form: http://goo.gl/forms/xc5UAbFMd7 by September 27. If you have questions, please contact: [email protected].

I’ve had the privilege of being involved in the planning of all the CSTA conferences. Back in the old days a bunch of knowledgeable people and I would get together and identify topics and speakers, which is impossible with the size of the conference today. It would also make for a less diverse, energetic, and useful to participants conference than we get with proposal submissions and peer review.

So, please consider submitting a proposal or volunteering to review. You can propose a 20-minute session, a 60-minute session, a 3-hour workshop, or a birds-of-a-feather.

I look forward to seeing your proposal!

Thank you,
Philip East
CSTA 2016 Program Chair

The CSTA Curriculum Committee

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Deborah Seehorn

The primary purpose of the CSTA Curriculum Committee is to provide K-12 computer science teachers with access to high quality, standards-based curriculum resources. The committee has vetted several crosswalks that have been submitted by curriculum providers with the CSTA K-12 CS Standards. The crosswalks that have been vetted by the committee include those submitted by Linux, Oracle, Google, Tech Corps, and Mobile Makers iOS. With approval by the curriculum provider, vetted crosswalks to the standards are posted on the CSTA website.

A major publication for the CSTA Curriculum Committee is the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards, released in 2011 and available on the CSTA website. The purpose of the standards is to delineate a core set of learning standards designed to provide the foundation for a complete computer science curriculum and its implementation at the K–12 level. The standards allow the Curriculum Committee to support our CSTA members by informing them of quality standards-based curriculum resources. To better support and assist CS educators, the CSTA K-12 Standards have been cross-walked to these national standards: Common Core State Standards, Common Core Mathematical Practice Standards, STEM Career Cluster Topics, and the Partnership for the 21st Century Essential Skills Standards. The CSTA K-12 CS Standards are also available on the CSTA website en español.

A major undertaking for the CSTA Curriculum Committee during 2015-2016 is the revision of the K-12 CS Standards. The process began last week with a request for input from educators and other stakeholders about the standards. Read the blog post from earlier this month.

The current members of the CSTA Curriculum Committee are:

Laura Blankenship, The Baldwin School, [email protected]
Debbie Carter, CSTA Board Member Emeritus, [email protected]
Fred Martin, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, [email protected]
Tammy Pirmann, School District of Springfield Township, PA, [email protected]
Deborah Seehorn, CSTA Past Chair, [email protected]
Lissa Clayborn, CSTA Deputy Executive Director/Chief Operations Officer, [email protected]

Frequently, the Curriculum Committee collaborates with other CSTA committees on projects of interest to both committees. Occasionally, the committee solicits assistance from experts with a particular area of computing curriculum expertise. We welcome your comments and suggestions on ways the CSTA Curriculum Committee can better meet the needs of our CSTA members.

Deborah Seehorn; CSTA Curriculum Committee Chair

Website Links:

Completed Curriculum Crosswalks: http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/CompletedCrosswalks.html

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards: http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/K12Standards.html

CSTA Advocate Blog: https://advocate.csteachers.org/

CSTA K-12 CS Standards: We want your input!

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Deborah Seehorn

On December 1, 2011, the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards were released. These standards have been instrumental in assisting many schools, school systems, and states in implementing and promoting computer science education in the K-12 classroom. Nearly four years have passed since the 2011 CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards were released. CSTA is ready to take a thorough look at the standards to see how they can be updated and/or improved.

We realize that many CS educators are quite eager to work on revising the CSTA K-12 CS Standards. Unfortunately, the CSTA K-12 Standards Revision Task Force must be limited to a small representative working group of CS educators. However, we are seeking input from all educators who have used the standards and/or who have worked with them. This will provide us with informed input to guide our revision process. The more useful the input we receive, the higher quality standards will emerge from the 2015-2016 revision process. Effective K-12 CS standards will greatly benefit the expansion of K-12 computer science education.

Please take a moment to provide the CSTA Standards Revision Task Force with descriptive input that will assist us in making educated decisions about the standards. You will have the opportunity to comment about the five strands (Computational Thinking; Collaboration; Computing Practice and Programming; Computers and Communications Devices; and Community, Global, and Ethical Impacts). Are these the five essential strands or have we neglected to include a strand? You will also have the opportunity to give us detailed input on individual standards in each of the grade levels (Level 1, Grades K-6; Level 2, Grades 6-9, and Level 3, Grades 9-12).

The CSTA K-12 Standards Revision Task Force will include CS educator representatives from each of the grade levels, community college CS faculty, university CS faculty, and state representatives who have worked with K-12 CS education. The task force will analyze the input that received from the computer science practitioners prior to beginning the revision of the standards. Our goal is to release the revised standards at the 2016 CSTA Annual Conference.

We want your input. We need your assistance. Please complete the CSTA K-12 CS Standards Revision input form at http://bit.ly/1ND9xaM. The input on the standards will be accepted until October 15, 2015.

Thank you for your time, expertise, and enthusiasm in supporting K-12 CS education!

Deborah Seehorn
CSTA Board of Directors Past Chair
CSTA K-12 CS Standards Revision Task Force Co-Chair

Tammy Pirmann
CSTA Board of Directors District Representative
CSTA K-12 CS Standards Revision Task Force Co-Chair

Spotlight on the 2015 Faces of Computing Video Contest: How Does Computing Better our World?

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Mina Theofilatou

Once again I find myself writing a blog post in a hospital setting and I can’t help but marvel at the wonders of computing technology; over the past week my dad has undergone exhaustive pre-op screening to determine whether he will withstand the vascular surgery he needs. Many of these tests were performed using computer aided technologies such as CT scanning and ultrasonography, and so far the results are encouraging.

The timing is also perfect to write about our exciting new video competition: last year our Faces of Computing theme brought in a wide range of multimedia productions from schools all over the world, and it was quite a task to decide on the winning entries. This year we’ve decided to narrow the theme to “Computing for the Common Good,” in an effort to illuminate aspects of computing that are often overlooked by the younger generation. Sure, gaming and social media are a big part of our lives, and they involve a great deal of coding to create and maintain; it’s time however we gave some thought to all of the benefits society and mankind are gaining from the age of computing.

Teachers, help prepare the future generation of socially aware citizens by discussing the challenges of 21st century society and inspiring your students to seek solutions. Be it the advent of computer-aided medicine and biotechnology, volunteers crowdsourcing knowledge on the Wikimedia projects or crowdfunding donations for noble causes, robotics to the aid of disabled persons… there’s a multitude of applications that illustrate how computing is used as a tool to better our world. The entries we are looking for could resonate these tools. There may be youngsters who are involved in school communities who discuss social, gender and/or racial inclusion, or who are active in helping the recent international flow of refugees from war-ridden regions. Perhaps they could brainstorm a solution in their computer science class, and even develop it into an app (like the Neverlost group project: the page is now available in English). We’d love to see your ideas!

Entries should be submitted in the form of a video with a maximum duration of three minutes: see the competition guidelines for more information. Remember that the deadline for submitting your entry is November 7, 2015. So, get your creative juices flowing and show us how computing can play an important role in making the world a better place!

Mina Theofilatou

CSTA International Representative

Athens, Greece

This post is dedicated to the memory of my mother, who was always compassionate to those in need and an ardent supporter of positive change. Special thanks again to Dr. S. Matthaiou of Hippocrateio Hospital for helping me make the right decisions on my dad’s problem, and to Dr. N. Besias of the Hellenic Red Cross Hospital for taking good care of him and expediting the procedures.

CS Principles and Creativity

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Pat Phillips

Students will likely need exposure to, and practice with the CS Principles big Idea “Creativity” many, many times before a “creative – innovative – mindset” is comfortable and natural. You may have to undo years of “non-creativity conditioning.”

It is not enough to tell students that creativity is important; you must show students that you value creativity by actively engaging in it yourself. I don’t have to tell you that a unit exclusively “on creativity” is bound to fall flat!

So how can we build creativity and innovation into the very core of CS Principles? A few suggestions from a variety of experts:

Let students know that there are usually multiple paths that lead to understanding.
Arrange student collaborations that provide meaningful (to them) real-world, problem-solving opportunities.
Provide lots of project and performance choices that employ a variety of “intelligences” whenever feasible.
Encourage them to look for and experiment with new things and ideas.
Encourage questioning.
Be sure your grading does not penalize “less than successful” creativity. Students will not feel free to experiment if their grade hinges on some abstract measure of success. The true reward for being creative is purely intrinsic.
Encourage them to mistakes as opportunities for learning rather than failures.
Enable students to exchange, value, and build upon the ideas of others. Share interesting examples of technological creativity that you run across in the media.
Make time for informal interactions between students.
Offer a safe environment that encourages risk-taking. Avoid a competitive and extrinsically rewarding classroom, by providing a friendly, secure, and comfortable environment.

What do you do in your classroom to build the creative capacity of your students? Share with us!

Computer Science: Dictating Careers in Digital Technology

Posted on September 4, 2015 by admin

The Computer Science Teacher Association’s Executive Director, Mark Nelson was recently featured in MediaplanetUSA’s “Careers in Digital Tech” campaign to inspire students to pursue careers in digital tech. The campaign highlights companies that are evolving and hiring the next great tech professionals. Providing tips and advice on the best path to take in order to be successful in digital careers from industry professionals themselves. The campaign was distributed in a centerfold of USA Today on September 4, 2015, and can also be viewed here: http://www.educationandcareernews.com/career-development/computer-science-dictating-careers-in-digital-technology.

Certification Committee Update

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Tammy Pirmann

The Certification Committee of CSTA is responsible for coordinating efforts around computer science teacher certification in the United States.

The CSTA Wisconsin Chapter is part of a consortium with University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and Marquette University to provide an alternate path to certification for teachers who already hold a valid certificate in another discipline. It uses a combination of existing courses and training opportunities along with MOOCs and a faculty observer to provide a CS add-on certification.

If you have anything interesting happening in your state around computer science teacher certification, we would like to hear about it!

Tammy Pirmann
Chair, Certification Committee
CSTA Board Member, District Representative

The Growing ECEP Alliance

Posted on August 27, 2015 by admin

By: Mark Guzdial

The NSF Alliance Expanding Computing Education Pathways has expanded dramatically over the last few months. There are now 11 states in our cohort: Alabama, California, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. The participants in the state cohort are leaders in their state to improve CS education and broaden participation. They are teachers, policy-makers from state education departments, higher education faculty, and industry.

The state cohort has monthly calls where we discuss progress in each state, share experiences, and make suggestions in other states. Each call has a guest speaker who addresses an area of concern for the cohort. Jane Kraus from NCWIT talked to us about working with high school counselors to promote computer science degrees and careers. Heather Carey from Constant Contact talked to us about how to engage with industry. We will be having our first annual meeting with our expanded cohort the day after the RESPECT conference (see web page) in Charlotte.

We held a session at the CSTA 2015 Conference in Grapevine on “Changing Computing Education in Your State.” We talked about the kinds of changes happening in Massachusetts (Rick Adrion), Georgia (Mark Guzdial), and California (Debra Richardson) — what’s been most successful for promoting change, and what’s been the most challenging. (Slides are available here.) Then we broke the audience into small groups by region (e.g., Midwest, West, Southeast) to talk about how to make change and find opportunities to collaborate. The session was videotaped and will become available at the conference archive.

Some of the common issues that we heard:

Some states are choosing to grow CS at the elementary and middle school levels. Nationally, ExploringCS and CS Principles are growing, but there is less pre-high school CS curriculum available.
It’s challenging to develop curriculum/learning standards for CS and teacher education programs and teacher certification. They interact (e.g., you want teachers to get credentials for taking the education programs that prepare them to teach to the standards) and they all take a lot of time to develop. The processes have to be timed right so that they interact and inform each other productively.
Each state’s policy works so differently, at all of the elementary, high school, and post-secondary school levels. There aren’t any good guidebooks for “How Education Works In My State.”
Higher education faculty should be able to play a role in policy and advocacy, but that’s not how their job is defined and they don’t always know where and how to play a role (see previous point).
We heard from some states where there is interest in writing a landscape report (see our page of resources to help in writing a landscape report) and organizing a group, but it’s hard to find a leader, a plan, and to organize the effort.
Texas was highlighted as a state with a lot of sticks (e.g., requirements from the state to implement policies to promote computing education) but no carrots (i.e., incentives or funding to build capacity).
Several states told us about competition between funding for CTE and for CS programs. For example, there are arguments within states over whether Perkins funding (see here for explanation) can be applied to CS classes, even if they’re not classified as CTE programs. The answer is “Yes,” but not all states agree with that interpretation.

We in ECEP are excited to be working with this larger group of states. We’re learning a lot about different models for change in computing education policy. We are pleased to be working with CSTA members and chapters in our cohort states because of their passion for computing education and their insights into the school systems in their states.

RESPECT for Diversity (in Computing)

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Deborah Seehorn

Last week I had the honor and pleasure of attending the 10^th annual STARS Celebration collocated with the first annual RESPECT Celebration in Charlotte, NC. STARS Computing Corps is a community of practice for student-led regional engagement as a means to broaden participation in computing. RESPECT is the acronym for Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology.

The celebrations highlighted the widespread and diverse efforts to broaden participation in computing (BPC). NSF was a proud sponsor of the celebrations along with Google, IT-ology, Duke Energy, Bank of America, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of South Carolina, UNC-Charlotte, and others. In addition to the many rising “stars” in computing education from the colleges and universities as well as high schools, the attendees included many well-known computer science educators. The sessions for the RESPECT attendees included engaging presentations of research on diversity in computing, a panel discussion on why we can and should keep diversity in focus during the college/university surge in CS enrollment, and lightning talks. Friday evening’s highlight was a STARS and RESPECT reception at Discovery Place—featuring food and fun with interactive science exhibits in addition to the RESPECT poster session.

The STARS attendees had ample choices among sessions addressing mentoring, professional preparation for students, outreach, and sessions of interest to faculty members. The STARS participants also participated in a Career Fair sponsored by IT-ology and a parallel STARS poster competition. The Saturday sessions for STARS participants focused on topics in mentoring, professional, outreach, grad school, sustainability and a track for faculty as well as a track for high school students and teachers. Several CSTA members were in attendance on Saturday and brought their students with them to participate.

The opening keynote address was delivered by Richard Ladner, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, who presented a fascinating discussion about accessibility in computing education (you may have met Richard at the CSTA Annual Conference in Dallas). Richard is the PI for the NSF-funded AccessComputing Alliance dedicated to increasing participation of students with disabilities in computing fields. He is also a PI for the NSF-funded AccessCS10K, which has a goal of preparing K-12 teachers to be more inclusive in their computing courses, particularly ECS and CSP, of students with disabilities.

The Friday lunch featured a BPC Fireside Chat presented by representatives from Special Technical Community on Broadening Participation (STCBP), Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W), CDC, the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI), the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, AccessComputing, Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT), STARS, the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), and the Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences (IAAMCS). The presenters represented the multitude of organizations devoted to broadening participation in computer science and the collaborative relationship among the organizations. Conference participants were given an overview of each organization and the resources that each organization provides to broaden participation.

The keynote on Saturday was presented by Teresa Dahlberg, Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. Teresa was co-founder of the STARS Computing Corps and presented a brief history of the organization.

This was a great conference for me. In addition to thoroughly enjoyable and interesting presentations, the conference served to bring broadening participation in computing back to the forefront—though it has never been far from it. This is a critical focus for computing for many reasons. Working together, we can accomplish the BPC goal. As you begin another academic year, take some time to reflect on how you are broadening participation of women and underrepresented minorities as well as those with disabilities, in your computing program. If you are a K-12 educator, have you considered partnering with a STARS member at a local university? Have you attended Tapestry Workshops? Have you taken time to visit the websites of the groups mentioned in this blog post to see what resources may be available to you? If you are a college or university educator, have you considered adopting the STARS Leadership Corps model for service learning? Have you joined the STARS Online Community? In short, what are you doing to actively promote broadening participation in your computing program? This post provides you with ample resources to do just that.

Deborah Seehorn, CSTA Board of Directors Past Chair

Websites:

http://www.starscomputingcorps.org/

http://respect2015.stcbp.org/

https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503593

http://www.discoveryplace.org/

http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/home/accesscomputing-homepage

http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/accesscs10k

http://stcbp.org/

http://cra.org/cra-w/

http://cahsi.cs.utep.edu/

http://expandingcomputing.cs.umass.edu/

http://www.cmd-it.org/

https://www.ncwit.org/

http://www.iaamcs.org/

Bottom-Up Advocacy

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Tammy Pirmann

If you look back through American history for examples of successful grassroots movements that led to policy changes you may notice a few common threads. Trade unions emerged due to the industrial revolution, urbanization, and the reduction of family farms. The civil rights movement followed occupational and geographic changes for black families. The anti-war movement rose due to the draft that affected every 18 year old male in the United States to fight in an unpopular war. In each case there was a period of growing expectations that was followed by widespread disappointment.

If there is a grassroots movement for widespread adoption of computer science education, are we in the growing expectations phase or the widespread disappointment phase? Can we get to substantial policy changes without the disappointment phase?

What has to happen in order for the average parent to demand rigorous computer science education in the K-12 public school system? If parents were to persist in demanding it, it would happen within a short span of years in most school systems. Looking back through history for how the average citizen was moved to act, we see that a few impassioned people at the local level have had an amazing impact, most notably in developing and inspiring local leaders. Trade unions, civil rights, the anti-war movement, all started with local leaders who inspired others to demand change.

Make it a point to attend your local CSTA chapter meetings this year, or if there is no chapter near you, start one.