September 13, 2007

Introducing: Your Newest Members of the Board of Directors (Part I)

Education changes so quickly that it is often difficult to keep up with the our professional associations. So, in case you haven't had the chance to Google the newest members of the CSTA Board of Directors I decided to "virtually" sit down with the new Directors that I met in June, ask them some questions, and share these introductions with you.

Brian Scarbeau is our Board's newest 9-12 Teacher Representative. Brian is currently working at Lake Highland Preparatory School and brings not only computer science knowledge, but enthusiasm to the Board. Last year, Brian launched the "Grace Hopper Day" to be held at schools to help students and guidance counselors understand more about computer science.

Where are you from and what are you doing now in addition to being one of CSTA's newest Board members?

I am from The City Beautiful, Orlando, FL. I am a Microsoft MVP and I help teachers and professionals work with ASP.NET and XNA (both programming packages). I am also the user group leader for Dotnetnuke, which is an open source framework for creating Enterprise Web Applications.

It sounds like you have a lot of computing knowledge, what got you started in education?

I was a recreation leader for a summer job and wanted to work with kids.

Why computer science education?

I sold Apple IIe computers and the IBM PC and I've worked on all kinds of hardware. I enjoy computer science education because its challenging and fun to teach.

CSTA has a clearly defined mission statement as well as purpose listed on the front page of our website, for you personally which of the statements from CSTA's purpose has the most significance?

This statement:

Provide teachers with opportunities for high quality professional development.

CSTA has sponsored a symposium for professionals that is by far the best professional development opportunity for cs teachers. The CS&IT symposium has been an event held after the National Education Computing Conference each year. I have had opportunities to go to this event as a speaker and as a participant. I look forward to going every year.

Enough about the serious stuff, what do you like to do other than teach?

I love being with my family and like to golf.

Is there anything else you would like to mention to help the membership get to know you better?

I'm tall, dark, and handsome.

Clearly Brian will be an asset to the organization and our board of directors. If you are interested in his work with Grace Hopper Day you can check out his website at: http://sws.lhps.org/computerscienceed.

I invite you to leave a comment and ask him any questions you might have to get to know him better :) and watch for the next two installments in this series where I introduce other new Board members to you!

Leigh Ann Sudol
CSTA Communications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2006

Taking TECS to the Next Step!

Two weeks ago I was in a conference call with an agenda that included discussing possible strategies for promoting CSTA's Teaching Engaement for Computer Science (TECS) workshops for teachers. During the meeting, we talked a bit about ACM's recent Job Migration study, and also about how and when to publish our upcoming CSTA white paper on strategies for successfully developing and implementing a high school computer science—the result of a fascinating panel discussion that took place last summer during the CS&IT Symposium.

Each of these topics is a single piece of one daunting puzzle. How do we redress our country's misperceptions about the nature of computer science in order to bring our students in line with their peers across the globe?

I left the meeting with a renewed sense of purpose. I was so inspired in fact, that before I set out to tackle the action items from the meeting, I sent a quick mass email to a long list of CSTA institutional members who have expressed an interest in volunteering their time to our projects. (Some of you may have received that email.) The message was an appeal to faculty to consider hosting a TECS workshop for the teachers in their region. In the email, I described the TECS program as a tangible, proven resource for high school teachers that relies on committed volunteer faculty for its survival.

The email must have struck a nerve, because in the two weeks since I sent it, I have been inundated with dozens of letters of interest from potential TECS workshop hosts! I'm so happily occupied answering the new hosts' questions and helping them organize workshops that I've been hard-pressed to find the time to actually publicize the workshop series (the intention of the original conference call)! Of course, this is the ideal situation, since positive word of mouth is what truly makes our programs grow and grow.

I am hoping that some of you reading this blog will be interested in joining our efforts. We want to give every high school computer science teacher an opportunity to attend a TECS workshop, and to do so, we need to organize a lot more workshops!

Let me quickly describe the program. TECS workshops provide one, two, and three-day workshops for high school computer science teachers as well as high school teachers from other subjects who are curious about learning, and/or teaching, computer science. The workshops are hosted by college and university CS faculty members, who volunteer their time and effort. The workshops cater to teachers within reasonable driving distance of the workshop sites.

Hosts build their workshop curricula from a broad and flexible list of modules that range from the relationship between math and computer science, to principles of computer organization, to an introduction to programming languages! Additionally, at every workshop, hosts address issues of equity and ethics in computing. As part of our program, all hosts agree to provide follow-up community building activities after each workshop, allowing teachers to solidify their relationships with one another.

TECS is grass roots community building for CS teachers, executed on the local level, resulting in a multi-tiered mentoring infrastructure of educators from secondary teacher to university instructor.

We are literally reinvigorating CS education in the US, one workshop at a time.

(If what you are reading sounds familiar, you may be have heard about JETT, our workshop series focused on preparing AP CS teachers to teach Java. Indeed, the TECS program works the same way, but with a different audience of educators. JETT, for the record, is still going strong!)

TECS exists because we believe that we in the importance of working together to support K-12 comptuer science education. Our program relies on your interest and involvement! If you would like to learn more about hosting or attending an upcoming TECS workshop, please feel free to call or email me! I would love to hear from you.

Jennifer
JETT and TECS Coordinator
wroblewski@hq.acm.org
212 626 0507

Posted by cstephenson at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2005

Worth the Cost of Membership

CSTA has now just reached its first birthday and, looking back on the year, I am feeling very good about what our dedicated staff and volunteers have accomplished.

We began the year with a big to do list.
* Start new organization for computer science teachers
* Get members
* Do good stuff for members
* Reach out to K-12 teachers across the world
* Reach out to university folks to help ease communication and bride gaps
* Convince corporate sponsors that this organization is worth supporting
* Write a strategic plan
* Write grant proposals to ensure long-term viability

Because we really wanted to give our members a chance to get to know us, we instituted a one-year free charter membership for both individual (teacher) and organizational (school districts, universities, research organizations, corporations) members.

Here are some of the things that we promised our members that we delivered on.
* Provided a free copy of A Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science
* Provided a free "csta.acm.org" email forwarding address
* Provided online training courses through the Sun Academic Alliance
* Provided access to the Career Resource Center
* Provided Table of Contents alerts for new material in the ACM Digital Library
* Provided online access to Crossroads magazine and the TechNews and CareerNews online IT digests

Here are the things we were not sure we could promise, but we did them anyway.
* Created the Voice, CSTA's quarterly newsletter to all our members
* Provided 60 workshops for AP teachers in partnership with The College Board and universities and colleges across the country
* Provided two of several planned virtual e-binders of research on key issues in K-12 computer science education (Equity, Teaching Strategies)
* Provided two full-day Computer Science and Information Technology Symposia for over 200 teachers
* Set up an Advisory Council of high level leaders in academia and industry to help guide us and keep us connected with the professional world around us
* Organized an international panel on K-12 computer science curricula in the US, Canada, Israel, Scotland, and South Africa for NECC
* Provided new support documents for the ACM Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science Education to help teachers effectively implement the curriculum
* Created a new position on our Board of Directors for someone who would advise us on how to reach out to computer science educators around the world and how to better support our international members

And here are just some of the things we are planning to do this coming year.
* Develop a national web repository of classroom learning resources and professional development materials
* Provide localized workshops for pre-AP teachers across the country
* Provide new resources to give students a better idea of the kinds of opportunities computer science provides and why it is important to take computer science in high schools
* Create an on-line repository of teacher-created learning materials focusing on cyber education
* Create a database of teacher certification requirements by state
* Produce more resource documents to help implement the model curriculum
* Present a even better Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium
* Continue to work with other organizations and with our corporate partners to support computer science education

In the next little while we will be asking our members whose charter membership has expired to renew their membership in our organization. To encourage them to do so, we are offering two years of membership for the price of one ($30).

We hope we have done enough to earn their continued support.

Posted by cstephenson at 08:19 PM | Comments (6)