How One Small School District Embraces CS Education This is a fantastic article about how Computer Science education is embraced and supported in the small town of Melrose, NM. It highlights the work of Alan Dougherty (science teacher, and bus driver for the district) as he leads student teams to compete in the Supercomputing Challenge. Alan was a participant in the NM-CSforAll PD program and a past participant in Project GUTS PDs offered in concert with the Supercomputing Challenge.
Project GUTS at CSEdWeek Kickoff in San Mateo, CA This year, Paige Prescott and Sheena Vaidyanathan will be representing Project GUTS at the CS Ed Week Kickoff conference in San Mateo, CA. The organizers are expecting to have around 100 district administrators from all over the country at the event. Project GUTS will have a booth at the showcase to talk to attendees about how they can implement computer science in science at their schools/districts.
Data Science lesson for Hour of Code Project GUTS, in collaboration with the MIT AppInventor team and University of Massachusetts Lowell, have developed a Data Science activity for this year's Hour of Code. It's geared towards students in 6th grade and older and features crowd-sourced data collection through the Pop Culture app (on an Android phone) and data analysis in
Why CS Belongs in Every Science Classroom Project GUTS teacher and supporter Sheena Vaidyanathan wrote a terrific article for EdSurge on "Why Computer Science Belongs in Every Science Teacher's Classroom" (November 16, 2013). She focuses on data analysis and computer modeling and simulation as NGSS practices that can be "brought to life" with tools like StarLogo Nova. Project GUTS was recommended as a place to get
Santa Fe Design Workshop Participants Produce New Lessons This summer, a small but determined group of experienced Project GUTS teachers from Santa Fe, New Mexico met to share out some pedagogic changes they made to existing curriculum, and to create new curriculum to meet the needs of their students.
Girl Scouts of America Offers New STEM Badges The Girl Scouts of America are offering 23 new badges focused on STEM areas. In the photo is Sylvia Acevedo, right, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA (and former NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist) from Las Cruces, NM! She says ""My troop leader looked at me and saw me looking at the stars, and she taught me that there were constellations, she taught me there were systems and patterns to the stars.
Interview with Cristián Rizzi Here's a video of the interview with our colleague Cristián Rizzi (the interview starts around 00:05:30). Cristián translated the Project GUTS MOOC and many resources into Spanish. He talks about new developments in modeling and simulation that excite him.
Interview with Susan Yoon In this video, Dr. Susan Yoon of University of Pennsylvania talks about science education, modeling and simulation, and gives a delightful historical perspective on her involvement with StarLogo Nova.
Hello World magazine for computing educators Here's a new online magazine called "Hello World" from the UK's Raspberry Pi, Computing At School and BCS Academy, with support from British Telecom.
GUTS Alum on Winning Supercomputer Challenge Team Photo (from left): Kathy Keith, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Community Partnerships Office and Supercomputing Challenge winners Theo Goujon, Lisel Faust, Ramona Park, Rowan Cahill (GUTS alumni), and their teachers Hope Cahill (former GUTS club leader) and Brian Smith, and Shaun Cooper, the awards ceremony MC.
Learning to Think Like a Computer This New York Times Education Life article by Laura Pappano gives a well-rounded view of the integration of Computational Thinking in K-12. Pappano does a great job of making the link between CT terms, how we know them in everyday life, and why they are important in computing. See if you agree....
The Long Road to Making CS Count in New Mexico The New Mexico chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association has been hard at work proposing legislation that would make CS count towards high school graduation as a math or science credit. Spearheaded by CSTA-NM President Paige Prescott, the bill was two years in the making and had the support of industry, universities and the Public Education Department. Sponsored by Representative
Teaching Kids to Debug Code Independently Friend of GUTS, Sheena Vaidyanathan, writes about her experiences teaching students to debug code. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-01-16-teaching-kids-to-debug-code-independently
Don't You Dare Try to Teach Science Without Building Models In this January article in Wired by Rhett Allain, the author states that science is about building models and thus science classes should be framed around building models. Do you agree? https://www.wired.com/2017/01/dont-dare-try-teach-science-without-building-models/
NSTA Stance on Computing Education NSTA Executive Director, David Evans, while an advocate for CS education does not believe computer science should be able to count as a science graduation credit. In the NSTA community blog (http://nstacommunities.org/blog/2016/10/17/computer-science-should-supplement-not-supplant-science-education/) of October 17th he stated his view that "Computer Science Should Supplement, not Supplant Science Education."
