January Puget Sound CSTA Meeting

Our next meeting of the Puget Sound Computer Science Teachers Assocation will be this Saturday, January 21st at the University of Washington. This weekend's topic is Robotics, with a roundtable discussion of options for teaching robotics and participating in competitions. Please bring any information you have to share.

We will be meeting in Room 503 on the 5th floor of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering, from 1 to 3 pm. Free parking is available in the garage and in parking lots near the building.

Greg Kilpatrick

Coursekit

I read something recently about a fairly new course management software platform called Coursekit.

Today I see that they have received some VC funding: http://goo.gl/GE6Ed.

Its avowed simplicity was appealing, and I have been meaning to check it out. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with it?

December Programming Contest Results

Thank you to everyone that participated in, helped out with, or judged the programming competition!

This was our largest turnout to date with 15 schools bringing 43 total teams! Remember that the December contest is your practice for the April contest!!

Contest Winners:

Novice - 1st Place - Lakeside School - Alex Tong, Nat Mayer, Hannah Ruggiero

Novice  - 2nd Place - Garfield High School - Caitlin Rochlin, William Zhou, Lucy Spain

Novice - 3rd Place - Lakeside School - Nikhil Khanna, Aran Khanna

Advanced - 1st Place - Garfield High School - Lane Aasen, Eamon Gaffney, Dylan Swiggett

Advanced - 2nd Place - Garfield High School - Jenny Lin, Grant Bronsdon, Isabel Suhr

Advanced - 3rd Place - Issaquah High School - Jason Walker, Patrick Violette

The rest of the results can be found here.

Contest Problems, Student Data, Judges Data:  Available here

  

And a special thank you to our sponsors: Microsoft and HTC!

 

Microsoft Summer Internship Program for HS Students

Microsoft has announced its summer 2012 internship program for high school students:

Here at Microsoft, high school students just like you will work on cutting-edge technology that will make a real difference in people’s lives all over the world. As an intern, your insider’s look into high-tech professions may give you a little inspiration as you make plans for college. It’ll also give you a head start on building a good resume. You’ll receive a competitive hourly wage plus a bus pass and software discounts. Sure beats scooping ice cream.

It's a great opportunity for current junior or senior students. More info can be found here: Microsoft Summer Internship.

The deadline to apply is March 12, 2012.

And here is a flyer you can download and print out for your classroom: Internship Flyer.

Thanks to Kevin Wang for the info.

Share your Intro to CS course

(Edit: notes posted)

Greetings, all.

This Saturday is our November chapter meeting, back at the usual venue in the UW CSE building, from 1:00 - 3:00 (or so).

The topic this month is introductory courses in CS. We'd like to have a roundtable discussion of goals, topics, syllabi, and languages and systems that people have used for teaching introductory courses in CS.

We invite teachers to sign up for slots to do quick presentations of their courses, and then have some discussion among the group for each one. The idea is about 15-30 minutes for each course.

If you would like to present your course concept and share your experiences or get feedback, please reply or comment to this post or send an email to pscsta-planning@googlegroups.com and we'll organize the agenda.

Thanks!

.andy

Teacher Resources + Nov Meeting

Thanks to Hélène for facilitating Saturday's meeting and to everyone who ventured into the wilds of Fremont. Nice to see some new members joining in. (Hope your day was fun, Stuart: goo.gl/UC3xP !)

I just wanted to remind everyone that on the "Resources" page of this site, various members have provided links to their websites, which are chock full of useful information for all of us. If you have a site you would like added to this list, just send an email to csta.pugetsound at gmail.com and I'll update the list.

Our next meeting is on November 19, back at the UW. The topic is "Intro to CS courses." The idea was to have a round table discussion of what folks are doing in their introductory CS courses. I'll solicit volunteers to present closer to the date.

.andy

CS Pedagogy this Saturday

(Edit: meeting notes now posted)

This is just a reminder that our October meeting is this Saturday, from 1:00 to 3:00 (ok, maybe 4:00 if we want).

The topic is "CS Pedagogy," featuring a discussion of techniques and activities for the CS classroom. Hélène Martin will share some ideas for warmup activities, ball-parking, challenges, etc.

NOTE that we are NOT meeting at the UW this month, due to Husky Stadium Parking Madness. Instead we'll be convening very near the center of the universe, at the Fremont branch of the Seattle Public Library.

Details here: October Meeting.