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Busy schedules are one reason why educators don't collaborate and connect through social networking platforms. But a lack of time isn't the main issue. It's priorities. And because this month is Connected Educators' month, this is a good time to share why educators need to get connected, said Derek McCoy, the new principal of Spring Lake Middle School in North Carolina.

Educators have been tapping into the wildly popular online game Minecraft for its potential as a learning tool for a while now - to teach physics, math, and computer science. But until recently, the game was mostly the territory of computer science teachers, and even they were forced to use the commercial version of the online game. So a few months ago, two teachers, Santeri Koivisto and Joel Levin, decided to make the software more accessible and relevant to teachers. They joined forces to found MinecraftEdu and started offering discounted educator licenses to Minecraft.

U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) and Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) today introduced the Computer Science Education Act, which will help prepare Americans for the more than 1.5 million high-wage computing jobs that are expected to be created in the U.S. by 2018. The bill will help states to increase and strengthen their computer science offerings in K-12 education.

Can We Fix Computer Science Education in America?

Doug, thank you for the link to the article. I just spent a few days in Boston with CS Educators at the App Inventor Summit and the issues discussed in this article now make more sense to me. The CS Principles project (csprinciples.org) looks like a huge step in the right direction. It "could" become the foundation of introductory CS courses in high school (AP) and in post-secondary. They have run 2 years of pilot courses and it looks promising. The next generation AP exam will likely be language agnostic - designs will likely be expressed in pseudocode and the course really engages with students (not just programming).

Please provide the following information to register for "CSTA: Services and Resources to Engage Youth in Computer Science". CSTA is the Computer Science Teachers Association, a membership organization of 10,000 educators, institutions, and companies dedicated to supporting and promoting the teaching of computer science and other computing disciplines in K-12. This webinar will focus on services that CSTA provides for formal and informal educators and the free resources it provides for helping young people, their families, and their educational community better understand the computing disciplines and the world of opportunities they provide.

Every day, more and more teachers are using the world-building game Minecraft to engage and educate. The game is a true phenomenon and gamers young and old are using it in countless creative ways. Practitioners of Games Based Education have realized the potential and have embraced Minecraft in classrooms around the world. Now you can too!

Computing in the Core is a non-partisan advocacy coalition of associations, corporations, scientific societies, and other non-profits seeking to elevate the national profile of computer science education in K-12 within the US and work toward ensuring that computer science is one of the core academic subjects in K-12 education.

"We have devised an interactive curriculum aimed to support teachers of secondary students (approximately ages 13-17). The curriculum helps educate students on topics like: YouTube's policies How to report content on YouTube How to protect their privacy online How to be responsible YouTube community members How to be responsible digital citizens We hope that students and educators gain useful skills and a holistic understanding about responsible digital citizenship, not only on YouTube, but in all online activity."

MinecraftEdu is the collaboration of a small team of educators and programmers from the United States and Finland. We are working with Mojang AB of Sweden, the creators of Minecraft, to make the game affordable and accessible to schools everywhere. We have also created a suite of tools that make it easy to unlock the power of Minecraft in YOUR classroom.

The open source hardware platform Arduino has been the central platform of my electronics class since the beginning of 2008 and I've learned a lot in that time. I use the Arduino to teach some basic programming and introductory electronics concepts. This course led me to create a website (http://electronics.flosscience.com/) to help support my students as well as others who might want to use this platform in education. Now I'm ready for the next step.

This collection of links and applications highlights just the tip of the iceberg of educational resources that are available on the web. If you are interested in teaching yourself a new skill or learning a new topic indepth in your spare time, hopefully some of these will be of use. ** Collection of Computer Science courses **

Windows may boast the lion's share of the desktop education market, but the economic and technical benefits of open source software has seen many schools and education institutions implement various flavours of Linux across their desktops and server back-ends.

"Online Python Tutor is a free educational tool that helps students overcome a fundamental barrier to learning programming: understanding what happens as the computer executes each line of a program's source code. Using this tool, a teacher or student can write a Python program directly in the web browser and visualize what the computer is doing step-by-step as it executes the program."

Online Python Tutor is a free educational tool that helps students overcome a fundamental barrier to learning programming: understanding what happens as the computer executes each line of a program's source code. Using this tool, a teacher or student can write a Python program directly in the web browser and visualize what the computer is doing step-by-step as it executes the program.

There is a growing consensus that the way children in schools are being taught information technology is in need of a radical overhaul. Here John Naughton explains the problem and offers a manifesto for revolutionary action

Google has said it will cough up funds to train (British) computer science teachers.

ICT lessons in schools are 'highly unsatisfactory', says Royal Society One of the UK's most eminent scientific institutions says British schools have lost their way in teaching computer science

An alternative to Evernote for students to take notes using a variety of tech - computer / tablet / phone.  Customized for education rather than Evernote which must be setup, but does allow multiple uses.

Producing computer scientists and engineers to fill the demand from domestic companies should be a national priority, said Jeannette Wing, head of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Botball Educational Robotics Program gives students skills, experience, and opportunities to succeed as they work in teams to design, build and program a pair of autonomous robots for regional and international competitions

Kids Like . info is dedicated to bringing you the best, and most fun, educational resources for free. Our main emphasis currently is on teaching computer programming, math, and science. Information about business and innovation will be coming in the future.