Nine Education faculty members attended the Summer Computer Science (CS) Education Intensive Workshops, sponsored by the Maryland Center for Computing Education (MCCE), at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
Beth Kobett, Professor and Dean of the School of Education, David Nicholson, Professor and Chair of Undergraduate Education, Assistant Professors Jesse Schneiderman and Valerie Valdez, and adjunct faculty members Janel Frazier, Ann Horn, Courtney Koerber, Maya Lars, and Lauren Speiser participated. The goals of the workshops were to learn about the ideas, successes, and challenges of others who have integrated computer science into preservice education, discover how Maryland districts are integrating computer science in the classroom, engage in hands-on computing activities such as robotics and Scratch Jr., examine existing computer science, engineering, and cybersecurity resources for primary and secondary content areas, early childhood, and special education, and create actionable plans to reach all future educators with customized resources to meet the needs of specific courses in collaboration with colleagues.
The daily agendas included breakout sessions on topics such as integrating Computer Science (CS) into the preservice curriculum, incorporating Computational Literacy (CL), and Computational Thinking (CT) into literacy courses and across disciplines, resources for equity, differentiation, and accessibility, and emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI),
Team time was provided each day for institutions to brainstorm and plan ways to add Computer Science (CS), Computational Literacy (CL), and Computational Thinking (CT) into their preservice programs. At the end of the workshops, teams shared their ideas with colleagues.
The workshops provided an excellent opportunity for connecting and collaborating with colleagues, building understanding of how to teach computer science to support diverse students across K-12, and offering ways to incorporate CS/CL/CT knowledge into preservice programs to prepare our future professional teachers.