The Institute for Computing Education (ICE) at Georgia Tech has just finished another summer of offering computing summer camps and teacher workshops to advance computing education in Georgia. Since 2004, ICE has been an integral part of supporting computing teachers and students throughout Georgia.

ECEP partner ACCESS is playing an active role in reforming Computer Science education in the state of California. Below, some highlights of their recent accomplishments and upcoming plans. 

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) alliance is delighted to announce its support of a variety of professional development offerings for K-12 Massachusetts teachers this summer.

ECEP surveyed Massachusetts computing teachers to understand their professional development needs, as well as the barriers that make participation difficult. In response, ECEP is supporting workshops across the state on a range of topics and in various formats, from seminars to full week hands-on workshops. ECEP also shared the survey results with professional development providers across the state to encourage the development of expanded and coordinated opportunities to help teachers prepare to teach computing. …

When is a U.S. state like a European country? Perhaps when it comes to understanding and transforming computing education.

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) alliance is offering a free workshop October 12 and November 2 for college-level and high school educators/staff to learn how to start and run financially self-sustaining computing summer camps. These workshops will take place in Columbia, South Carolina and San Diego, California respectively. Applications for up to $4999.99 in "seed" funds to buy equipment will be available to residents who participate in the workshop.  

ECEP Partner States contributed to many events celebrating computing education as part of the annual Computer Science Education Week, held December 9-15th. This year, the Hour of Code tutorials made participation accessible and engaging. In total, almost five million students from 168 countries took part in the Hour of Code. See http://csedweek.org/events for event listings. A rundown of national happenings by Mark Guzdial is featured on CACM's blog.

Teachers of computer science and information technology in western Massachusetts will soon have their own local network for professional development and community. With the support of the Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE), based at UMass Amherst, about 30 computer science educators gathered in Holyoke at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 to form a new chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA).

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways alliance (ECEP) is pleased to announce that it will award six institutions seed money grants to buy equipment to help the institutions start or expand summer computing camps for students. The grants will provide each recipient with approximately $5,000 for computing equipment. Awardees are based in South Carolina, Massachusetts, and California, and became eligible to apply for funds after attending the How to Run a Summer Camp workshops run by ECEP in the fall of 2013. Applications were reviewed based on criteria covering financial sustainability, outreach to under-represented groups in computing, and the use of …

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) alliance encourages underrepresented minorities to pursue computing education and careers.   However, in 2013 only 1,090 out of 29,555  (3.6%) students self-identified as Black on the Advanced Placement Computer Science A exam.  In addition, the pass rate for Black students is lower than any other racial group both nationally (35.6% vs 69% for White) and in Georgia (22% vs 57.5%).  Georgia Tech’s Institute of Computing Education (ICE), with support from the ECEP alliance, created Project Rise Up 4 CS to address this problem.

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance joined more than 700 computing researchers, educators, and industry professionals at the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT)'s annual Summit, held in Newport Beach, California in May. Georgia Tech professor and ECEP PI Mark Guzdial presented two workshop sessions on the topic "How to change a state: Making computing education fit into public education."