Computer Science Education at SxSWEdu 2017

SxSWedu is one big conference I have never been to. Seeing how it is tied to the big South By SouthWest Interactive and Music conferences it has always fascinated me though. Attending doesn’t easily fit with my travel budget these days and in the past I haven’t seen specific CS Ed content  to justify spending other people’s money either. This year looks very different. Pat Yongpradit of code.org has put together a Google Doc with all of the computer science education related sessions at SxSWEdu. It’s an impressive list. Note that this list has been updated since my original post.
There are some 15 or 16 sessions on Pat’s list. While in some quarters SxSWEdu has a reputation about being all about companies trying to sell educational technology to schools these CS sessions are different. Almost all of the presenters are faculty or researchers at some level. Plus many of my favorite CS education activists are involved. People I’d go out of my way to listen to!
There is one industry panel that looks particularly interesting though – “Why Tech is Investing in Teaching Tech Early” People from Google, Microsoft and Tynker are part of the panel. With a lot of concern about the influence of tech companies on education I think it will be interesting to see how these people talk about their companies’ motivations.
If you are thinking about attending SxSWEdu this year and definitely if you are planning on attending check out Pat’s list of CS education related SxSWedu sessions.