I think that the root cause is a > systemic issue. Feedback from my high school teachers indicates that until > CS is a "real" discipline, it won't be given the emphasis and resources that > it needs. It may be that the government at the US or state level will have > to mandate that students need to achieve a certain level of competence in > computing before computing will be widely adopted in middle and high > schools.
What if there was some sort of STEM (or STEAM) ranking for schools endorsed by a professional educator association of some sort or other like minded organization (e.g. CSTA, ACM, etc..)? Much like a Zagat (or Better Business Bureau) review of schools - a non-profit independent listing of schools' STEM rating whereby "real" tech courses (such as robotics) are weighted high as well as special accolades for 'real' CS0 programs (Scratch, Alice, Starlogo etc and NOT office productivity apps such as Word, publisher). Yes, what happened to CS becoming a "real" discipline in schools? There certainly was a lot of commotion about making CS (and CT type stuff) at the core of academics in "A Nation at Risk." 30 years later, everything's being cut to focus on multiple choice reading and math tests. _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
