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CSTA Professional Meeting on November 29th 2018!

Join the CSTA for another jam-packed evening of computing professional development fun!

Tentative Schedule:
Art Lopez’s President’s report
Anthonette Pena on Code.org, CSPD week
Ray Kinne’s presentation
Joe Politz & Shirley Miranda on Bootstrap
TreoBytes
Community College CS Programs ( for teachers or students)
CyberSecurity PD by SoCal Cup

Register Here

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Counselors for Computing PD in Emerging Careers!

 

UC San Diego’s CREATE, San Diego Unified School District, Sweetwater Unified School District, the National Center for Women & Information Technology, Counselors for Computing program, and the National Girls Collaborative Project invite middle and high school counselors to:

Get information and resources you can use to set students on a path toward stable, rewarding and flexible computing careers that change the world!
During the program, you will:

  • Try your hand at coding so please bring your laptop or tablet!

  • Learn about career prospects in this fast-growing sector, and why employers want a large and diverse talent pool from which to draw

  • Learn about changes in computer science education, including:

– Local computer science education initiatives that lead to more course     offerings
– What new courses are like, and how they count toward graduation and
preparation for postsecondary pathways
– Why computer science is a fundamental literacy, no matter what your students’ plans

  • Meet technology professionals, learn about their jobs and how they found their way into computing

  • Enjoy lunch and receive continuing education credit
RSVP
Download Flyer
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Teaching Impacts of Technology in K-12 Education Specialization. 
“According to a recent Gallup & Google Trends in The State of Computer Science Report, 60% of schools in the U.S. do not have a single computer science course. Dr. Beth Simon, Teaching Professor in the Department of Education Studies at UC San Diego, wants to make sure teachers in every school have the necessary skills to address this challenge. Using her unique combination of computer science knowledge and k-12 pedagogy, Dr. Simon is creating a series of online courses to empower teachers to teach CS, starting with the new Teaching Impacts of Technology in K-12 Education Specialization. If you’re looking to teach digital literacy and create enthusiasm for Computer Science education read on to see how this Specialization can help.”

Read more here. 
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Computing Counselors Event!

UC San Diego’s CREATE, San Diego Unified School District, Sweetwater Unified School District, and the National Center for Women & Information Technology Counselors for Computing program invite middle and high school counselors to:

Get information and resources you can use to set students on a path toward stable, rewarding and flexible computing careers that change the world!

During the program, you will:

  • Try your hand at coding so please bring your laptop or tablet!

  • Learn about career prospects in this fast-growing sector, and why employers want a large and diverse talent pool from which to draw

  • Learn about changes in computer science education, including:

– Local computer science education initiatives that lead to more course offerings
– What new courses are like, and how they count toward graduation and
preparation for postsecondary pathways
– Why computer science is a fundamental literacy, regardless of your students’ plans

  • Meet technology professionals, learn about their jobs and how they found their way into computing

  • Enjoy lunch and receive continuing education credit

Participants successfully completing this professional development day will receive a certificate of completion Questions? Contact c4c@ncwit.org

This event is funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Merck, and the Coca-Cola Foundation.

See Flyer. 

RSVP here. 

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Plankton and Computational Thinking

Dear CS Educators,

Join us for a workshop that connects marine ecology and computer science—
Plankton and Computational Thinking—led by Dr. Darcy Taniguchi from California State University San Marcos.

Saturday, August 11, 10:00-12:30 pm

See flyer. 

Birch Aquarium at Scripps, second floor conference room

Lunch provided by CS-CaVE (Computer Science: Creating a Village of Educators) at UC San Diego

RSVP required by July 25 (limited spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis)

At this workshop, educators will engage in “unplugged” hands-on activities that embody computational thinking practices: defining computational problems, using abstraction, and designing algorithms. Content and pedagogy are best suited to middle and high school level.

“Unplugged” computational thinking activities:

  • Build a physical model of plankton (organisms that drift with the ocean currents), focus on abstraction of relevant features, iteration to improve the model, and discussion of data and modeling in engineering.
  • Create a system to classify plankton images, focus on abstraction, decomposition of big problems into smaller chunks, algorithm design, pattern recognition, pattern generalization, discussion of computer vision and classification in marine ecology research.

Following each activity, we will look at examples of computer code (for computational modeling and classification of digital images) and discuss adaptation of activities for use in your CS classes.

Co-hosted by San Diego CSTA, CS-CaVE, and Birch Aquarium at Scripps

All participants will receive complimentary admission to Birch Aquarium at Scripps for the day.

For an overview, please see Jeanette Wing’s “Computational Thinking,” the K-12 Computer Science Framework: Practices (pages 67–72), and/or Wikipedia

“Computational thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution(s) in such a way that a computer—human or machine—can effectively carry out.”[1]

For questions about Plankton and Computational Thinking, please contact Darcy Taniguchi (dtaniguchi@csusm.edu). For questions about Birch Aquarium at Scripps, please contact Nan Renner (nrenner@ucsd.edu).

RSVP by July 25

 

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Our next CSTA meeting!

Thursday,  April 12, 2018

Join us as we continue our CSTA San Diego professional meeting at the Elementary Institute of Science (EIS)!

Mix, mingle and enjoy light appetizers and beverages with San Diego computer science educators, compliments of EIS, CSTA San Diego Chapter, the National Science Foundation and UC San Diego’s CREATE.

We aim to share our best practices, activities, lessons for teaching CS! Experience robot and data science live-demos from our CSTA board members, Code.org activity, Google CS First, and a talk from Dr. Beth Simon.

5:00 – 5:30 p.m.: Drinks and networking

5:30-7:00 p.m.: Program

Don’t wait – RSVP today. Space is limited!

Register here: https://cstaspringmeeting.eventbrite.com