The Computer Science K-12 Express
Issue #6, December 15, 2017
Your weekly resource to discover what is happening in K-12 computer science around the district and the world. Feel free to use any of the ideas or resources in these newsletters as you prepare your computer science lessons that will be shared at the end of the Computer Science: Building a Foundation for Student-Choice course on February 7, 2018.
News You Can Use
The Computer Science section of the CDE (Colorado Department of Education) website has been updated recently and now contains some great resources and information, including a couple of grant opportunities. Definitely worth checking out!
- Upcoming Computer Science Grant Opportunities
- Educator Resources
- Partnerships
- Professional Development (coming soon)
Connected Coding
One of the focuses of the upcoming Colorado State Standards for Computer Science is Computational Thinking (CT). There are a variety of ways that we are already using CT within our content areas. For example, have you ever had students look for a pattern? Or sort something? Or perhaps describe directions for how to accomplish a task? All of these involve computational thinking skills. When teachers and students cognizant of it, they can engage students with a lesson connected to computational thinking skills.
To help with teaching CT within content areas, the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) has developed a second edition of Computational Thinking teacher resources. An incredible PK-12 resource with many ideas and activities that are unplugged! And also check out this link for more CSTA resources on CT.
This week in Computer Science
As mentioned in a previous edition, the technology department will be offering two new courses that are a blend of collaborative planning sessions with an online book study. Sheila will be facilitating the No Fear Coding (K-5) sessions, while Curtis will be facilitating the Computational Thinking {and Coding} for Every Student (K-12) sessions. Each will be worth 1.5 district credits or 22.5 continuing education units. Please find more information and the links to register on our Weld RE-4 District website here. An email was also sent earlier this week containing more information and registration links
Shoutouts
We would like to give a shoutout to Sheila Bowman this week for attending the code.org Hour of Code week kick-off in San Mateo CA. She has already begun sharing the many resources she learned about while on the visit. She also met Hadi Partovi, one of the developers and CEO of code.org. How cool is that!