Puerto Rico held its first teacher professional development (PD) of the Exploring Computer Science curriculum in Spanish using the translated version of Exploring Computer Science, El Mundo de la Computación. Seventeen teachers and five mentors-in-training attended the event July 19-23 at the Engine-4 co-working space in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Computer science professor Dale Reed of the University of Illinois at Chicago led the workshop with teachers from across the island. Everyone was impressed with his ability to teach the course in Spanish.

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance is happy to announce they awarded "seed" funding for equipment to three institutions to help them start or expand computing summer camps for the summer of 2017. The funding was provided by a generous grant from Oracle and from the National Science Foundation. Each institution offered at least two sessions of computing summer camps for elementary and/or middle school students this summer.

Artbotics, a high school program that introduces students to art, computer science, and robotics, has expanded its teacher professional development to Indiana and New Hampshire. Workshops were held in Indianapolis and Concord this summer, hosting 32 educators.

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences, recently gave their website a facelift. The website, ecepalliance.org, extends ECEP’s mission of broadening participation in computing education by offering services and resources to its member states that further the states’ efforts in making state-level systemic change that will result in more, and more diverse, students in the pathway to computing and computing-intensive degrees.

Please join us online May 15-22 for the 2017 STEM for All Video Showcase: Research & Design for Impact, when ECEP, along with more than 170 other projects, will showcase a three-minute video highlighting the innovative work being done in broadening participation and access to STEM. During the week-long online event, principal investigators, practitioners, administrators, researchers, policy makers, industry, and the public at large are encouraged to participate. All participants will be able to view the video presentations, participate in facilitated discussions of each video, and vote for the videos that are most effective in conveying the creative work …

Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) recently announced awards for the 5th round of mini-grants. States that are active members of the ECEP alliance are eligible to apply for awards up to $25,000. This round included applications from seven states; four states received funding reflecting a total of $87,458. The four successful applications came from Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and the territory of Puerto Rico.

A new report describing the progress of U.S. states in achieving 10 policy priorities for improving and expanding K–12 computer science (CS) education was released today at a national workshop led by Google, EDC, and the Massachusetts Computing Attainment Network (MassCAN) on Google’s Cambridge campus. The report highlights key strategies and issues state leaders must address regarding CS education.

Expanding Computer Education Pathways (ECEP) has collaborated with Code.org on a document that helps state and district leaders consider how Career and Technical Education (CTE) can support computer science (CS) education. “Rethinking Perkins to Expand Access to K-12 Computer Science” was co-written by the two organizations and released in fall 2016.

More American students are taking rigorous computer science courses in high school, at least as measured by the number of students who took the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science A (CSA) exam, which assesses computer science knowledge and object-oriented programming ability in Java. The number of high school students taking the AP CSA exam has more than doubled in the last five years from less than 25,000 in 2012 to more than 54,000 in 2016. However, access to AP CSA is still quite limited, as only 3,206 institutions passed the College Board audit to offer AP CSA in 2016 compared …

In support of Computer Science Education Week 2016 (December 5-11), ECEP states organized various CS Ed Week activities to encourage participation in computing: Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Virginia.