HP Unveils Online ‘STEMx’ Courses For Teachers

Interesting — HP is offering a MOOC for “STEMx” teachers (below), and Google is offering CS teacher fellowships.  Nice to see the companies stepping up.  I’m not convinced that MOOCs are the best way to reach teachers, but a bigger question is how many teachers will identify with the term “STEMx.”  We have seen that teacher identity drives teacher’s pursuit of professional development.  Will they see themselves in this term?

Coined by the HP Catalyst Initiative, STEMx covers not only science, technology, engineering and math, but also other high-technology disciplines such as computer science, nanoscience and biotech. The modified acronym also refers to the skills of collaboration, creativity, communication, problem solving, inquiry, computational thinking and “global fluency.”

The MOOC was announced by HP’s education partners, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the New Media Consortium (NMC), during the 2013 HP Catalyst Summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The meeting attracted more than 120 educators and policy leaders.

via HP Unveils Online ‘STEMx’ Courses For Teachers – Education – Online.

Heading to Denmark May 10-16

I’ll be traveling to Denmark with Barbara Ericson on May 10 to attend a conference at Aarhus University on their new computer science curriculum.  Michael Caspersen invited us out.  Simon Peyton-Jones of the Computing At Schools effort in the United Kingdom will be speaking as well.  I’m copy-pasting the program (translated from Danish) to give you a sense of what it’s all about. It’s an exciting opportunity, and I’m looking forward to learning more about the efforts to move computing into primary and secondary education in Denmark and the UK.

The purpose of the conference is to establish support for our efforts by raising political awareness at all levels of decision making in our society related to teaching computing in school (parliament, regional and city councils, high school principals, high school teachers, deans, chairs and professors in computing departments, IT organizations, journalists, etc.).

09.30 Registration and coffee

– exhibition of student projects opens

10.00 Welcome

– Peter Hesseldahl (moderator)

10.15 Digital literacy: creative and critical innovation — three perspectives

– Michael: Insight and vision through computing

– Jacob (high school teacher): Computing — a creative, critical and constructive subject

– Susanne: Why does society need digital literacy?

11.15 Break

11.45 Digital literacy in an international perspective

– Mark: Why everyone will need digital literacy in their life

– Simon: Digital literady: Why every child should learn computing from primary school onwards

12.15 Lunch

13.15 Panel: On the importance of digital literacy for high school students

– Christine Antorini, Minister of Children and Education

– Morten Østergaard, Minister of Science, Innovation and Higher Education

– Morten Bangsgaard, CEO, The Danish IT Industry Association (ITB)

– Anne Frausing, Principal and representative for the High School Principal’s Association

– Gitte Møldrup, Managing Director, IT-VEST — Networking Universities

14.30 Break

15.00 Simon: Computing at School: How the UK is radically reshaping its curriculum for the 21st century

15.25 Mark: CS10K: Providing access to computing education across the US

15.50 Wrap-up

16.00 End of plenary session

16.30 Exhibition of student projects ends