Computing at School Working Group

What did I learn about on Twitter today? The UK based Computing at School Working Group is what I learned about. From their home page:

The Computing at School Working Group is an informal group that aims to promote the teaching of computing at school. Our membership is broad, and includes teachers, examiners, parents, university faculty, and employers.

CAS was born out of our excitement with our discipline, combined with a serious concern that our brightest students are being turned off computing by a combination of factors that have conspired to make the subject seem dull and pedestrian. Our goal is to put the fun back into computing at school.

They have a conference and regional support groups called hubs. So if you are a pre-collegiate computer science teacher or a university faculty/lecturer with an interest in helping support such education in the United Kingdom you will want to look into this program.

In the US there is still the Computer Science Teachers Association which, while is largest in the US, is really international in scope and membership.

Speaking of the CSTA, they just released the draft of a model curriculum (Level I Course: Foundations of Computer Science) that covers K-8 computer science. They are looking for comments and opinions on it so take a look.