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Computer Science Education Week Reports Highlights
Dec 08, 2011 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) --
Computer Science Education Week, celebrating its third year through Dec. 10, focuses on the need to build strong computer science education programs in schools, giving students the opportunity to explore this field and supporting the country's need for a workforce skilled in computing.
"We're using this week in December, and other year-round efforts, to call attention to the need for stronger computer science education throughout the nation," said Debra Richardson, Chair of CSEdWeek and Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine, in a release.
"We're mobilizing the computing community and grassroots partners,everyone from parents to teachers to CEOs,to encourage local policy changes and instructional reforms to provide broader access to computer science education so that all students can succeed in our information-driven world."
"These standards represent the work of experts across all educational levels. They are our community's best effort to identify the computer science skills that students need at every stage of their K-12 education to ensure that they are prepared to thrive in the new global economy," said Chris Stephenson, Executive Director of CSTA.
"We decided that the release of our standards should coincide with CSEdWeek because this week is all about celebrating the importance of computing and our commitment to ensuring that our students have the skills and knowledge they need."
"At a time when the country is talking about jobs where they are, and how to create them the computing industry is desperate to fill thousands of vacancies," said Computing in the Core Representative Della Cronin. "Computer science is where the jobs are, and through efforts such as CSEdWeek, we aim to eliminate misperceptions about the discipline and to educate young people, their parents, educators and others about how important it is to include computer science in K-12 education in this country."
A main focus of this year's CSEdWeek is to demonstrate how local, grassroots efforts can raise the status and quality of computer science education. Fewer than ten states count high school computer science courses as a core academic subject in graduation requirements, and computer science education suffers from a lack of teacher professional development, quality curriculum, student diversity and teacher certification.
To address the challenges in computer science education, the Computer Science Teachers Association, founded by the Association for Computing Machinery, is releasing a revised version of its computer science education standards, CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards, during CSEdWeek.
These learning standards, which have evolved from the models released in 2003 and 2006, will serve as a catalyst for widespread adoption of computer science education for all K12 students.
To date, CSEdWeek has registered over 2,000 pledges of support by individuals, with support from organizations such as Microsoft, CA Technologies, Google, Change the Equation, National Science Foundation, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and the American Association of Engineering Education.
Friday, Dec. 9: CSEdWeek, CSTA and National Center for Women and Information Technology representatives honored at the White House as Champions of Change, which is part of President Obama's Winning the Future initiative (whitehouse.gov/champions).
CSEdWeek is a collaborative activity of CinC, a non-partisan advocacy coalition of associations, corporations, scientific societies, and other non-profits that strive to elevate computer science education to a core academic subject in K-12 education.
CSEdWeek's core partners are the Association for Computing Machinery, Microsoft, Google, Computer Science Teachers Association, NCWIT, IEEE Computer Society, Computing Research Association, College Board, Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, SAS, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and National Science Teachers Association.
((Comments on this story may be sent to newsdesk@closeupmedia.com))
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UPDATED 3:36 PM EST - May 16, 2012
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