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CSTA
How do you integrate computational thinking concepts and strategies into your teaching? Have you heard your colleagues talk about it and wondered if they have accurate and useful understandings of how CT can be used across the curriculum? Are you curious about how other schools, or even other countries, are implementing CT strategies? Wondering where you can get more information?
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Chicago Tribune
Eighth-grader Quincy Houghton said she knows exactly what she wants to study in college: English and computer science. Quincy's goal is to translate her learning into writing storylines for video games that she expects to create someday. Quincy is among the 30 girls participating in the Girls Who Code club that started in January at Fischer Middle School in Aurora. Girls Who Code is a national nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in the technology and engineering fields by helping girls with the skills and resources to pursue opportunities in computing fields.
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Fortune
English, math and computer science. Now all three are required courses to graduate high school in the Chicago Public Schools. Recently, the third largest school district in the U.S. rolled out the new computer class requirement, which will take effect for next year's freshmen, the class of 2020. The high school requirement is a shift: While more than half of U.S. states allow computer science courses to count towards regular math and science requirements, Chicago is adding in one additional computer science credit. The Los Angeles Public School district has a similar requirement.
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eSchool News
Though 90 percent of parents in a recent survey said they would encourage their children to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering or math, 87 percent of those surveyed also said they would be concerned if their child opted to pursue a K-12 STEM teaching career. Just 9 percent of surveyed parents would encourage their child to seek a STEM teaching career. When it comes to STEM careers, surveyed parents identified engineering (50 percent), doctor (41 percent) and computer/IT analyst (27 percent) as their top three preferred careers for their children.
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Fast Company
President Barack Obama announced a plan to bring computer science into all American classrooms. The initiative, called Computer Science For All, would devote part of the 2017 fiscal budget — about $4 billion in funding for states and $100 million for school districts — to bringing public schools up to standard with their science, technology, engineering and math education programs. Computer science is a "new basic" skill, the president said, and our children can no longer afford to miss out.
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Scholastic Administration Magazine (commentary)
Julia Dweck, a contributor for Scholastic Administrator Magazine, writes: "Every teacher hopes to ignite a passion for learning in his or her classroom. I was lucky enough to watch this happen when my students embarked on a two-month journey in a nationwide robotics competition. I teach gifted students in grades 3 to 5, and when I first introduced robotics to my students, I didn't know what to expect. While sharing a learning environment with other students of different skill and grade levels, collaboration can present challenges for some students. But with their minds and hearts in gear, the competition allowed a community of innovative thinkers to quickly emerge."
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MindShift
For all the emphasis placed on science, technology, engineering and math instruction, not much attention is given to a skill set that's closely related with success in STEM: spatial skills. The ability to mentally manipulate objects is key to success in many fields, including physics and engineering. Spatial skills are an early indicator of later achievement in mathematics, they "strongly predict" who will pursue STEM careers, and they are more predictive of future creativity and innovation than math scores. In fact, a review of 50 years of research shows that spatial skills have a "robust influence" on STEM domains.
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THE Journal
The White House goal of training or retraining 100,000 teachers in STEM subjects by 2021 is gaining momentum. 100Kin10, an organization dedicated to achieving this end, just announced 49 new partners, including Texas A&M University and Washington University in St. Louis, among other businesses, non-profits, foundations and academic institutions working on the mission. The 100Kin10 coalition formed in 2011 following a State of the Union address in which President Obama called for the preparation of "100,000 new teachers in the fields of science and technology and engineering and math."
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The Atlantic
Spanish. French. German. Computer coding. Are they the same? This question is at the center of a debate in Florida, where legislators are currently considering a bill that would require high schools to offer computer coding as a foreign-language credit. The bill is sponsored by the former Yahoo executive and democratic state senator Jeremy Ring, who sees coding as its own unique language. But some argue the skill doesn’t offer the value of spoken-language training and might be a better fit for the STEM disciplines.
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ACM, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. CSTA appreciates ACM's ongoing support!
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