How ECEP States are supporting Computer Science Education Week 2015

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    In support of Computer Science Education Week (December 7-13, 2015), ECEP states are organizing various CS Ed Week activities to encourage participation in computing:

    Alabama hosted a webinar for K-12 teachers in October, featuring Laura Kline of Code.org and covering how to plan, recruit, and implement an Hour of Code for CS Ed Week. Over 300 teachers joined the webinar; the archive of the webinar is available here. The Alabama State Department of Education is issuing a press release and encouraging all teachers to participate in Hour of Code. To help achieve that goal, many of the fifty teachers across Alabama who are introducing CS Principles to their schools are having their high school students lead Hour of Code activiites in other classes and mentor students in younger grades at their feeder schools.

    California's Debra Richardson worked with Code.org and other CSEdWeek organizers to broaden the scope of "Hour of Code" and CS Ed Week this year  to include longer, community computing events called CS Tech Jams.  They designed a rubric for partners to use in develping "in-a-box" events for clubs, classrooms, and afterschool programs. A variety of sources, including Girls Scouts (using VidCode, a Javascript creativity platform), Codesters (a middle school Python platform), Kano, Bootstrap, and CSFirst, and CS Principles have contributed "in-a-box" events for CS Tech Jams that go beyond the Hour of Code; you can find them here.

    Connecticut is promoting Hour of Code and CS Ed Week through a PowerPoint presentation at all of the Regional Education Service Centers for curriculum supervisors, superintendents, and assistant superintendents. There will also be a table at the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) conference where Board of Ed. members will have the opportunity to get some hands-on coding experience to inspire them to support Hour of Code in their own districts. The Commissioner of Education will also be visiting an elementary school and learning to code with some students.  Local activitities planned for CS Education Week will be posted and shared on the website of the CT chapter of CSTA: http://www.ctcsta.org/.

    In Massachusetts, CAITE is collaborating with the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's (MassTLC) Education Foundation to provide CS Ed Week kits to educators across the state who are organizing computing activities in their classrooms and programs.  Each kit includes a poster, a CS Ed Week button for teachers, "Computer Science Rocks!" buttons for their students, as well as a sample press release that teachers can use with local media. In advance of CS Ed Week, MassTLC also helped mount an event  on Nov. 17 at the State House in Boston, where students helped their representatives learn to code and shared their enthusiam for CS education with educators, industry leaders, and legislators.

    In Texas, TACSE (Texas Alliance for Computer Science Education) hosted a dinner and networking event for educators to share ideas about organizing an Hour of Code and learn about activities planned for CSEdWeek in central Texas.