SIGCSE 2014 Needs More Student Volunteers

Please pass on to students you know who might want to hang out at the world’s largest conference focused on CS education:

Please please please.. have your students sign up to volunteer for SIGCSE
2014 at:

https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~sig-cse/sigcse/

It’s fun, networking, service, free food, karma, and mitvah all rolled up
into one glorious package!

Details on being a student volunteer are available at the above site. If
you have any questions, contact us at sigcse2014-volunteers@ggc.edu.

Thanks!

Pam Cutter, Sara Melnick, and Steve Wolfman
SIGCSE 2014 Student Volunteer Co-Coordinators

Are schools seeing CS as an elementary school activity?

The Atlanta Public Schools has a short article about their involvement in the Hour of Code — and it was all elementary school children.  As far as I know, there is no more AP CS in any Atlanta Public high school.  I’m wondering if the emphasis on “starting early” is having an unexpected effect.  Are schools seeing activities like Blockly and Scratch as elementary school activities, and computer science belongs there, not in high schools?

As members of the APS IT department went out to observe students throughout the district participating in the Hour of Code they observed computer science education at its finest. Students were actively engaged in challenges that required them to utilize high level problem solving and critical thinking skills.  Students identified  and found ways to correct their mistakes until they were successful in completing the activity.

Lavant Burgess, a fifth grader at E.L. Connally Elementary, stated, “I like how it made me think. I had to keep using different strategies to figure out how to get the robot to the right squares.”

via The Hour of Code 2013: APS students explore computer science skills and careers | Talk Up APS.