Talking about CS teacher certification at CSTA 2018

As I mentioned in my last post, this coming weekend is the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) conference. I've been a member of CSTA since the beginning but this will be only the second time I've made it to the annual conference.

The CSTA conference might be the largest conference specifically for k12 computer science teachers and that makes it different from conferences like SIGCSE which is for CS education and education research at all levels or ISTE which seems to be more of an Ed Tech conference.

I really enjoyed the conference last year but as the sessions seemed to be weighted towards beginning CS teachers and towards the CSTA standards I found most of the value in the "hallway track" when I got to meet and chat with CS teachers from all over the country.

Glancing at the program, there looks to be a bunch of interesting sessions and this time more sessions that I think I'll personally be interested in .

I'm also giving a talk. New York State just approved and created K12 Computer Science Teacher Certification and we're currently making plans to roll out our Masters and Certificate programs for CS teachers as soon as we get state approval. The Masters program will be largely for preservice teacher candidates and the certificate program for in service teachers certified in other areas.

The talk will cover a bit of the history of CS Education in New York, what the state is doing and mostly what where building at Hunter and why. It should be a fun talk. I'm hoping for some people from other states attend so we can have a rich discussion during the session.

So, if you're going to be at the CSTA conference, I'd love to see you either at my session or at the conference in general. I'll be spending most of my non session time there with my friends at GitHub education.

For those of you can't make it, I hope to blog about the weekend and I hope others do as well.