NewsletterJanuary, 2018 (V11 N5)

Your newly-renamed CSN (nee CTN, SIGCT, SIGCS) Officers and Leadership Team provide this publication which is intended to notify you about CSN activities, ISTE 2018 conference info, upcoming events, notable news, resources, links and just about anything else that is useful for CSN members. To contribute to this newsletter, please email Joe Kmoch < joe@jkmoch.com >. Social media information (Facebook, Wiki, LinkedIn and Twitter) is located at the end of this newsletter. The entire CSN Leadership Team is listed on our wiki: http://iste-csn.wikispaces.com/home#Leadership

Table of Contents: ● ISTE 2018 News / CSN Plans

○ reminder → ISTE 2018 Registration and Housing open NOW○ CS Firehose - get drenched with CS info, resources, ideas○ CSN CS/CT Playground - interactive opportunities and playtime○ CS/CT Strand throughout the Conference○ List of activities during the Conference of interest to CSN members○ CSN Members Discussion Forum - talk with the CSN Leadership○ Additional activities including collaborations, ISTE network fair, social event

● CSN News○ ISTE Professional Learning Series Webinars Archives - five recent webinars○ CSN Webinar Series coming ○ CS K-8 Twitter Chats Jan 3 on physical computing and Jan 17 on debugging

● Computing Education News ○ new → 2018 CSTA/Infosys Foundation for CS Teaching Excellence○ reminder → Stack Exchange for CS Educators○ reminder → Careers with Code 2017 for students and teachers○ update → CSForAllTeachers News

■ Sign up for their weekly,informative newsletter■ new → blog posts, CS Open Group, ECS Open Group, CS in the Wild

● Student Opportunities○ almost done → Google Code-in 2017 continues to Jan 17, 2018 ○ reminder → NSA Day of Cyber - job shadow with the National Security Agency○ last days → ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize for HS Computing - up to January 5,

2018○ update → ACSL (American Computer Science League) - 2nd round due Feb 9,

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○ new →Robo Expo 2018 in New York City, April 21, 2018● Professional Development/Conference Opportunities

○ update → FETC-2018, January 23-26, Orlando, FL; includes CS Firehose○ new → Creative Computing for Everyone, New York City, January 26, 2018○ TCEA 2018, Feb 5-9, 2018, Austin, TX○ SIGCSE 2018, Feb 21-24, 2018, Baltimore, MD○ ISTE 2018, June, 24-27, Chicago, IL○ CSTA 2018 Annual Conference, July 7-10, 2018, Omaha, NE○ new → Logo Summer Institutes 2018○ new → Scratch Day, December 1, 2018 at Columbia University, NYC

● new → Your homework - a longer study on Computational Thinking

● new → NCWIT○ Resource:Girls in IT: The Facts

○ LOOK → Links to get the new posters and/or the C4C packet

● new → Links: Introductory Computing Curriculum using Scratch, Codesters, Stanford CS Education Library

● Appendix A○ Planning for the Winter JCT issue

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CSN - the BIG Events Being PlannedISTE 2018 Registration and Housing Now Open

update → CSN and ISTE 2018. Based on our experiences in the last two years and with your help, we intend to have the following events in the same or similar format:

● update → CS Firehose - The CS Firehose is scheduled from noon through 6:00 PM on SATURDAY, June 23, 2018 the day before ISTE 2018 officially begins. The CS Firehose 2018 is planned as an intense series of concurrent sessions of related presentations and activities which will address the many salient educational initiatives, ideas, and curricula which focus on computational thinking and computer science. A keynote from a champion of CS education will also be scheduled.The need for CS educational programs is dire with critical worker shortages throughout the field. Yet, at state and local levels, there is a severe shortage of qualified

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professional educators to teach computer science and cultivate young minds to think computationally. The goal of the ISTE Computer Science Network is to help teachers at every level to discover what is available and to provide the opportunity to immerse themselves in a variety of approaches and curricula. As such, we plan to open the valves and turn on the CS FIREHOSE! Attendance is FREE with registration on-site or via the ISTE conference website.

● update → CS/CT Playground - the last two double-sized Playgrounds have been a great success both as an opportunity to engage those registering and to increase interest in computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT); we will again request similar space in Chicago and intend to produce another great playground, perhaps even further expanded in size or time. We already know that a team from Code.org led by Megan Cicconi will be involved. Want to be involved? Contact Joe Kmoch <joe@jkmoch.com>

● CS/CT Strand throughout the Conference - we intend to seek to have a strand throughout the conference devoted to CS and CT in addition to other CS-oriented strands based in other domains

● Produce a list of activities of interest to CSN members - we will continue to produce a list of sessions, posters, panels, etc which may be of interest to all or a segment of our CSN membership; for 2017 this list exploded to about 160 such activities, about 3-4 times as many as the previous year.

● CSN Members Discussion - the CSN Leadership will again schedule the PLN Lounge where the membership and leadership can talk about the future of CSN.

Other CSN activities at ISTE 2018 will include:● Collaborators. We engage these groups: NCWIT, the local CSTA chapter,

WeTeachCS.org, CS4TX.org and Code.org in our efforts again.● Involvement in the Communities Networking Fair (Professional Learning

Networking Fair) on Sunday, June 24, 2018 from 3:00pm - 5:00pm● Activities around our CS/CT book series● Specific K-8 Activities and Discussions.● new → A CSN Social co-hosted with NCWIT at a local establishment.

If you are interested in helping develop these ideas or have additional ideas, please contact the editor of this newsletter <joe@jkmoch.com>

*** Plan on exciting times at ISTE 2018! ***

Computer Science Network Newsupdated → Webinars, Webinars, Webinars!ISTE Professional Learning Series ArchivesGo to <https://www.iste.org/events/webinars> and scroll down to view these archives. You’ll likely be interested in the following:

● Bring Coding into your Classroom - an ISTE/Verizon/Innovative Learning webinar

originally presented on November 28, 2017; access the link to the recorded archive (approx. 63 min.), related resources from the webinar, additional ISTE resources (see the December newsletter for much more detail available here).

● CoDrone and Coding in the Classroom - ● Coding for All

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● Coding in the Curriculum - ● Girls CAN Code ● Note - detail for each of these is in the December newsletter available here

CSN Webinar Series. As part of our efforts to provide professional development opportunities for our members, we plan to have 3 or 4 webinars produced by CSN. We have ideas for other webinars but we certainly invite your ideas and interest in volunteering. Please contact our Professional Development chair, Heidi Williams <heidi@stretchinstructor.com>, with your ideas and your interests. Eight webinars from previous years are at our wiki site <http://iste-ctn.wikispaces.net/Current+Webinars>***update → CS in K-8 #CSK8 Twitter Chats. These popular hour-long Twitter chats continue on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of every month at 5pm PT/8pm ET. Coming up:

● January 3, 2018 with the focus “Let’s Get Physical! Physical Computing with K-8 Students”.

● January 17, 2018 with guest Moderator Mark L. Miller, Ph.D. and the focus “Bugs are Good: Debugging & Troubleshooting as Power Ideas”.

● The February Twitterchats will be February 7 and Feb 21, 2018

The co-leaders are Vicky Sedgwick and Sheena Vaidyanathan. Also, Vicky and Sheena host a Google+ community for K-8 CS <https://plus.google.com/communities/1118dsaaa03101139836526905>

Computing Education News

NEW → 2018 CSTA/Infosys Foundation USA Awards for Teaching Excellence.

The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and Infosys Foundation USA have announced the 2018 CSTA/Infosys Foundation USA Awards for Teaching Excellence. These awards celebrate the best computer science educators across the US and the world! The deadline to submit applications and nominations is January 22, 2018, and the awards are open to K-12 computer science teachers from around the globe.

Five recipients will each receive an award of $5,000 and travel support to attend both CrossRoads and the CSTA Annual Conference. Access more information about the award criteria, eligibility requirements, and apply here.

***reminders:

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Stack Exchange for CS EducatorsCareers with Code 2017.

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new stuff → CS for All Newsletter. This excellent resource is available if you Join the CSForAllTeachers Community and sign up for the CS for All Teachers Notifications and the Newsletter. Recent blog posts, upcoming webinars and resources are noted in their weekly newsletter. Here are recent entries:BLOG POSTS:

● AP CS Principles: Interesting Computing Innovations for the Explore Performance Task published on 2017-12-04 09:54

● CS Ed Week 2017 Photo Challenge published on 2017-12-16 20:20● <Applications Due by Jan-22-2018> 2018 COMPUTER SCIENCE TEACHERS

ASSOCIATION & INFOSYS FOUNDATION USA AWARDS FOR TEACHING EXCELLENCE published on 2017-12-18 14:32

CSP Open GroupRESOURCES:

● A new report on Computational Thinking by Digital Promise. updated on 2017-12-12 21:05

● Performance Tasks Survival Guide from Code.org updated on 2017-12-22 11:40

DISCUSSIONS:● The FCC proposal to end Net Neutrality has been approved as of yesterday updated

on 2017-12-15 11:49

ECS Open GroupRESOURCES:

● Scratch - Assessment Ideas from CS Teaching Tips updated on 2017-12-21 08:16

CS in the WildRESOURCES: (sign up on CSForAllTeachers to see this - it’s free and you’ll see the link)

● CS Education after CS Ed Week updated on 2017-12-10 20:16

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Student OpportunitiesContinuing → Google Code-in 2017. Pre-university students ages 13 to 17 are invited to take part in Google Code-in: Our global, online contest introducing teenagers to the world of open source development. With a wide variety of bite-sized tasks, it’s easy for beginners to jump in and get started no

matter what skills they have. Participants get to work on real software and win prizes from t-shirts to a trip to Google HQ! The contest is running right now and runs for 7 weeks until January 17, 2018.

Reminder → NSA Day of Cyber. This is a free, online program that allows students to experience a day in the life of the nation’s top cybersecurity experts - in just three hours. Students will participate in challenging real-life cyber scenarios, discover the skills and tools used by the NSA cyber professionals and explore the vast number of careers in cybersecurity. The NSA Day of Cyber can be run anytime. Registration is now open to Universities/Schools, Organizations, Students and Adult Learners. Let us know your experiences! <https://www.nsadayofcyber.com>

****Last few days → ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing. This prize is designed to recognize talented hs students intending to continue their higher education in the areas of computer science or technology. Up to four winners will be selected annually and each will be awarded $10,000 prize which will be administered through the financial aid department at the university the student will attend. The application period is open now and will close January 5, 2018 and winners are expected to be announced in February 2018. ***

updated → American Computer Science League ACSL organizes computer science contests and computer programming contests for junior and senior high school students. In their 39th year of continuous operation, they are announcing an Elementary Division (grades 3-6). More information is available on their site.

Over 200 teams in the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa and Asia are participating. ACSL is on the approved activities list of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and is an institutional member of CSTA.

Their yearlong contest is in 4 rounds. The last day to give and score round 2 is Friday, February 9, 2018. This is worth checking into even if to just have access to their wealth of short answer and programming problems over the years. <http://www.acsl.org> ***

new → Robo Expo 2018 . This is event for students of all ages, with a shared interest in robotics, to come together to pursue similar goals or express themselves uniquely. Participation in Robo Expo is open to schools, home school groups, club, and any children sponsored by an adult. This will be held at the Hewitt School in New York City on Saturday, April 21, 2018 from 1:00pm - 3:15pm. Find out more...

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Professional Development/Conference Opportunitiesupdated → FETC-2018 CS Firehose. At the 38th national Future of Education Technology Conference which will be held in Orlando, FL from January 23-26, 2018 a CS Firehose will be held on Wednesday morning, January 24, 2018 from 8am - noon. Similar to both the last year’s ISTE and FETC CS Firehose mini-symposia, several concurrent sessions each an hour long will occur. Plans include a several session strand by Microsoft, sessions around elementary and middle school

computer science, CS and 3DPrinting and Raspberry Pi with Python. <http://fetc.org>

NEW → Creative Computing for Everyone. This interactive workshop, to be held in New York City on January 26, 2018, is for classroom teachers in grades K-8 with little or no experience in computer programming (“coding”) especially progressive educators working with project-based learning and teachers wishing to do so. Register here.

TCEA-2018. The 38th Annual TCEA Convention and Exposition will showcase over 1000 sessions and 450 exhibitors for every educator to discover new ways to engage students and enhance learning. The conference includes sessions related to computer science, computational thinking and teaching IT. TCEA-2017 runs from February 5-9, 2018 in Austin, TX. Registration opens September 14, 2017. <http://tceaconvention.org>

SIGCSE 2018. To be held in Baltimore, MD, February 21-24, 2018, the theme for SIGCSE 2018 is CS For All. SIGCSE 2018 welcomes colleagues from around the world to present demos, lightning talks, papers, panels, posters, special sessions, and workshops, and to discuss computer science education in birds-of-a-feather sessions and informal settings. The SIGCSE Technical Symposium addresses problems common among educators working to develop, implement and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses. The symposium provides a forum for sharing new ideas for syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy, at all levels of instruction.<http://sigcse2018.sigcse.org>

CSTA 2018 Annual Conference. Get ready for this always excellent conference totally focused on K-12 computer science. The dates are July 7-10, 2018 in Omaha, NE. Plenty of workshops, sessions, opportunities to network and have fun together with colleagues from across the country who share the same joys. <https://www.csteachers.org/page/2018conference>

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NEW → Logo

Summer Institutes . Plans for the 2018 Logo Summer Institutes are underway. The following are confirmed with more dates and locations to be announced shortly

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● June 11-14, 2018 in Austin Texas● July 9-12, 2018 in New York City

These workshops are intensive immersions in creative computing for K-12 teachers, parents and technology integrators. Their approach to teaching and learning is progressive, project-based, and learner-centered. Learn to code as you explore and create projects using Scratch, Makey Makey, Hummingbird, Arduino and a variety of other hardware and software platforms. For more information and to register visit <http://logofoundation.org/summer>***

NEW → Plans are already being made for the next Scratch Day on December 1, 2018 at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City. There will be workshops on a wide range of Scratch topics for Scratch beginners and those who have been Scratching for years. Scratch Day is for people of all ages

● Teachers, bring your students!● Parents, bring your children!● Children, bring your parents and teachers!

Please go to <http://logofoundation.org/scratchday> to see what happened at Scratch Day in December, 2017 and in previous years.

NEW → Your Reading Assignment: Report on Computational Thinking Everywhere

Computational Thinking for a Computational World. This is a new report by Digital Promise. “This paper argues that computational thinking is both central to computer science and widely applicable throughout education and the workforce. It is a skillset for solving complex problems, a way to learn topics in any discipline, and a necessity for fully participating in a computational world. The paper concludes with rrecommendations for integrating computational thinking across (the) K-12 curriculum.” (44 pgs released Dec 2017) <http://digitalpromise.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/dp-comp-thinking-v1r5.pdf>

… From the December, 2017 issue of this newsletterWhat the Future of Work will mean for Jobs, Skills and Wages. Another report on the future workforce environment both in the U.S. and globally. The link get you to a webpage that very briefly summarizes the report. I would suggest downloading and reading the Executive Summary. There you’ll find early in the summary an infographic entitled Jobs Lost, Gained, Changed with some compelling information that you as a computing teacher should be able to use to justify more computer science and computational thinking along with developing dispositions similar to the Common Core mathematics practices (higher order thinking skills).<https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/future-of-organizations-and-work/what-the-future-of-work-will-mean-for-jobs-skills-and-wages>Monthly CSN Newsletter readings Oct 2012 - November 2017 <http://iste-csn.wikispaces.com/Monthly+Newsletter+Readings>***

National Center for Women and IT (www.ncwit.org)The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) is a non-profit community of more than 850 universities, companies, nonprofits, and government organizations nationwide

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working to increase women’s participation in computing and technology. NCWIT equips change leaders with resources for taking action in recruiting, retaining, and advancing women from K–12 and higher education through industry and entrepreneurial careers. Find out more at www.ncwit.org/resources or email us at info@ncwit.org

NCWIT Resource of the Month: Get new posters below

Girls in IT: The Factswww.ncwit.org/thefactsgirls

Girls in IT: The Facts, sponsored by NCWIT's K-12 Alliance, is a synthesis of the existing literature on increasing girls’ participation in computing. It aims to bring together this latest research so that readers can gain a clearer and more coherent picture of 1) the current state of affairs for girls in computing, 2) the key barriers to increasing girls’ participation in these

fields, and 3) promising practices for addressing these barriers.

LOOK → HOW TO GET THESE FREE POSTERS and other C4C materialsTo get the C4C Counselors Kit: https://www.ncwit.org/counselors-computing-c4c-kit-request-formTo get the Posters + related material: https://www.ncwit.org/resources/stephanieweber/c4c-plus-kitTo get just the Posters: https://www.ncwit.org/resources/customcatalog/c4c-posters

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Several links... If you have favorite links you’d like to share (we could use some on IT topics such as networking, support, information systems and web design), please email Joe Kmoch. < joe@jkmoch.com >

This month…An Introductory Computing Curriculum Using Scratch. The focus on these resources revolves around the question “What is Creative Computing”? Here you’ll find a guide for educators (English and in nine other languages), a Learner Workbook (English) and editable versions for teachers and translators. <http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/guide/> As suggested by the Scratch team at Harvard, you can use and edit freely

Codesters. Perhaps as a follow-up to Scratch or just for beginning Python programmers, this site has what appears to be a full curriculum to teach computer programming and problem solving using Python V2.7. Although it’s text-based, there’s a lot of drag and drop capabilities. A teacher can establish a class and there’s a learning management system included. If you investigate this or use this site, please offer your review on the ISTE Discussion Board or on the CSTA CS Teachers List. <https://www.codesters.com>

Stanford CS Education Library. Looking for material on some advanced CS topics? You might check out this flash from the past that contains many useful explanations and problems in topics like Pointers and Memory, Lists and Trees. There are also a couple of language tutorials (Perl and C) an intro to Unix programming tools and the Stanford Tetris Project. Great reading from the early 2000s. < http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/ >

*******Contact Joe Kmoch <joe@jkmoch.com> to include an item in the next issue.

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Social media links:● CSN Community: <http://bit.ly/computing_teachers_network> (site registration needed)● CSN on Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/pages/ISTE-CTN/132261473482000>● CSN on ISTE Wiki:  <http://iste-csn.wikispaces.com>● CSN on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6784194/profile>● CSN on Twitter: <https://twitter.com/ISTE_CTN>

reminder → Joining the ISTE Website and Communities. If you have not already signed up for our Computer Science Network please visit the site <http://connect.iste.org/connect/learningnetworks>, choose Computing Teachers Network.

Appendixreminder → Journal for Computing Teachers (JCT)

The Journal for Computing Teachers (JCT) Fall 2015 issue is now available in the resources section of the ISTE.org website <http://www.iste.org/resources/searchresults?searchterms=jct>. There you’ll actually see all of the complete issues for the past few years. You can go directly to the Fall 2015 issue by surfing to <https://www.iste.org/resources/product?ID=3772>. Soon it will also be on our CTN Wikispace.

Our editor Lucianne Brown is currently looking for papers and articles for the Winter 2018 JCT. The editor and our peer reviewers professionally offer critical suggestions for the writers to edit and produce a high quality article. If you have any questions, contact Lucianne Brown, Editor of JCT at docbrown1944@gmail.com or lbrown3@govst.eduJCT is the only refereed journal oriented around K-12 computing education and one of only three journals published by ISTE. The previous complete JCT issues are available online along with the new current issue. Head to this url: <https://www.iste.org/store/publications/downloads/jct>

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