We hope you're feeling the CS love this month! Our February meeting will spotlight 3 of our favorite resources by grade bands: 😻 Scratch for Elementary teachers | 📟 Micro:bit for MS teachers | 📣 NCWIT for HS teachers. We hope you'll register to join us on February 9th @ 7p!
Here's a quick highlight of what's in our February Newsletter:
Get FREE CS Teaching Resources!
Share your CS Story at ITEC this Spring!
CSTA Iowa Spring Meetings Detail - Our next meeting is February 9th!
You can get FREE CS teaching resources by applying for one of the 2021-22 STEM Scale-up Program. The Governor's STEM Advisory Council has announced the12 STEM programs included in their 2021-22 Scale-up program which includes 4 programs that address Pre-K-12 computer science.
We KNOW you're doing amazing things with Computer Science in your classroom! Why not collaborate and share with educators at ITEC's 2021 Spring Conference will be April 10 - 16th this year?!
CSTA will be pushing out a new resource to all members to help us connect, collaborate and grow as CS teachers and educators, and we need your help! To cultivate this resource, we require members to update data in their member profile.
Google's CS First can now be synced with Google Classroom and students can use their G Suite for Education accounts to sign in. This change requires district Google Admin to turn on the service in the Admin Console by February 16th for continued access and teachers to collect parental consent to use CS First.
The CS Teaching Excellence Awards are designed to recognize outstanding teaching by K–12 computer science teachers. Winners excel in inspiring students to explore the computer science field, engaging students in learning rigorous standards-aligned computer science content, and broadening the participation of underrepresented students in computing. CSTA will select at least three K-5 CS teachers and three 6-8 teachers of the ten national winners. These awards were made possible by a grant from Infosys Foundation USA. Applications are due February 8, 2021.
The Amazon Future Engineer Teacher of the Year Awards honor and recognize 10 all-star teachers working diligently to help students in underserved and underrepresented communities pursue futures in computer science and robotics. Applications are due March 19, 2021.
The Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance in collaboration with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is calling for applications for a new grant program to support projects that focus on equity in K-12 computer science education. CSTA Iowa needs your input so we can submit an application that meets the needs and interests of our members.
Elementary Resource - EdSquare's AI & Machine Learning site
Looking for ways to engage elementary students in age appropriate Artificial Intelligence learning? Check out EdSquare's free, unplugged lessons about AI and machine learning available as Google Slides and printables!
Looking for ways to teach Data Science and address the Data & Analysis CS standards? YouCubed has a plethora of resources including a HS data course curriculum, lessons for 6-10 grade, videos, and resources to help kids and colleagues understand why it's important content to learn!
This month CSTA Iowa shines a spotlight on Marisa Dahl. Marisa
is an Instructional Technology Consultant at Heartland AEA and member of the Iowa Computer Science Leadership Team.
CSTA Iowa supports and connects educators across Iowa with teaching Computer Science in many forms.
Whether you teach CSP to high school students or integrate coding into elementary literacy, we're here to share resources, support your practice, and connect you with CS educators across our great state!