In Toronto, Talking About CS Ed and CS4All

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Toronto, Ontario.  (This year, it seems like I can’t stay in the US for too long.)  I’m visiting the University of Toronto for the next couple of days.

Tomorrow, I’m giving an informal talk on my view of the State of CS Education Research.  I’m excited about this talk.  It’s not a well-practiced, well-groomed talk, e.g., it has the most slides with just bulleted text of any talk I’ve given in years.  They scheduled a couple hour block for me to tell stories of my recent students’ work, and about the work that I want to do next, which is not something I do in my standard DLS/keynote talk.  For you who read this blog, you already know what I’m going to say — it’s about my students’ work, about worked examples and phonics, and about why textbooks are bad for CS Ed, and why distance education is important for CS10K.

On Tuesday, I’ll give my talk on “Meeting Everyone’s Need for Computing” where I’ll argue that teaching everyone on campus about computer science is an old but good idea.  I’ll update a version of the talk that I gave in Jinan — various versions of the talk are at http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediaComp-plan if you’re interested.

When I get back (somewhere in the boundary of very late Tuesday and very early Wednesday), I’ll be recovering, and then it’ll be the American Thanksgiving holiday.  (I understand Toronto had its “Santa Claus Parade” this morning, so it’s officially already the Christmas season here.)  I expect to spend less time blogging this week than usual.  Happy Thanksgiving!