For goodness sakes! CSEd Week – December 4-10 – is almost here…where has the time gone?

If you haven’t made plans, don’t worry! There are lots of things you can do on short notice and with the time you have available to enhance and promote computer science in your school and community. Here are a few ideas to fit your schedule:

15 Minutes

• Bookmark the NICERC curriculum Cyber Interstate to revisit when you have time to explore the 10 course offerings. Don’t forget that they are modular in design to fit your individual classroom needs (https://cyber.org/curricula-search).
• Order CS career posters and brochures for your classroom and counselor’s offices from CSTA (http://www.csteachers.org/page/PostersBrochures).
• Invite an administrator or counselor to visit your classroom to get a first-hand look at CS education in action.
• Make your classroom inviting. Stand outside the door between classes and greet students as a friendly computer scientist.
• Engage students with computational thinking puzzles when they finish their assignments (http://www.cs4fn.org/puzzles).
• Show a couple “Careers in Tech” videos (https://www.youtube.com/codeorg).

30 Minutes

• Engage students in creating a showcase of their projects that they think fellow students will find interesting.
• Add a little spark to your CS lessons with a few “magic tricks” (cs4fn.org/magic).
• Schedule a visit with the counselors to tell them about your classes and share a few of the many counselor resources in the “Counselors for Computing” program from NCWIT (https://www.ncwit.org/project/counselors-computing-c4c).
• Make plans to attend the Education Discovery Forum (July 10-12) after the 2018 CSTA Annual Conference (July 7-10) in Omaha, NE. Find your perfect fit of EDF content threads (https://cyber.org/event/cyber-education-discovery-forum). Registration begins in January 2018.

1 hour

• Check out the professional development offering from NICERC (https://cyber.org/professional-development).
• Participate in the Hour of Code (https://csedweek.org/educate/hoc).
• Offer a lunch break “CS Escape” session in your classroom. Invite non-CS students to “play” with some of your students to learn a couple CS concepts and tools. Include tools your students are familiar with (i.e. Scratch, App Inventor, or CS Unplugged activities).
• Invite former students who are now CS major or in tech careers to visit your classroom to talk about their education and careers.
• Submit proposals to present on CS topics at regional and national conferences.
• Check out the ideas for engaging Hispanic/Latino(a) students in CS (http://www.cscproject.org).

2+ hours

• Explore innovative curriculum resources found on the Cyber Interstate at NICERC (https://cyber.org/curricula-search).
• Get involved politically. Explore the state-by-state STEM data and share the facts with policy makers in your community and state (http://vitalsigns.changetheequation.org).
• Plan CS projects that involve social causes. Recruit community members as student-team “clients.”
• Plan a field trip to a local tech company. Make the emphasis on careers and the required training/education.
• Look for CS competitions for your students to show case their skills. Can’t find any local contests? Plan your own! Collaborate with nearby schools. Invite parents and local businesses and industries to help with judging and prizes. Engage your students in the planning.
• Host a parents’ night. Allow students to run the show.
• Form an advisory team of students, parents, educators, and business leaders to plan CS promotion projects in your community.

This post comes from Pat Phillips, a NICERC Subject Matter Expert.