Thursday, January 24, 2013

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards correlated with the Common Core

This is a big deal. With so much attention being focused on the Common Core for education these days understanding where Computer Science fits takes on some increased importance. I did mention this work by the CSTA earlier in an interesting links post (Interesting Links Post 21 January 2013) but decided that posting a stand alone topic would be a good idea. The following is from the email that was sent to CSTA members on their mailing list. Some of you teaching CS are still not members. hint hint

With the increasing focus on assessment and various national standards, computer science teachers have come under increasing pressure to demonstrate the extend to which computer science courses addressed other standards.

To help teachers, administrators, and policy makers see how computer science addresses a wide variety of standards, the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards have now been correlated with the Common Core State Standards, the STEM Cluster Topics, and the Partnership for 21st Century Essential Skills. The downloadable documents that match the CSTA standards to the above national standards (as well as the complete CSTA Standards) are available on the Curriculum webpage of the CSTA website at: http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/K12Standards.html

These "crosswalk" documents will be exceedingly helpful to classroom teachers who are asked to state how what they teach reinforces national standards.

Be the first in your school or district to check out these useful crosswalk documents and put them to good use.
Then spread the word!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it's important to integrate computer science with the CCSS, because computer technology in the classroom is an essential aspect for academic learning. How can we teach math or science these days without the use of computers and other electronic devices? We can't exactly tell kids to create their own website about what they're learning without teaching them how to program in basic html language; we can't even expect these students to blog on the Internet about what they're learning in class without teaching them the fundamentals of HOW TO BLOG or use codes and tags to blog online. So yes, computer science education is strongly encouraged to be part of Common Core.

PeteWik said...

I agree with you. Computer science is important part of learning in the class. We can't have common core standards w/o the art of learning new technology and how to use source codes and all of that.