[TOS] CS certification for K12 - what is out there?

[Kevin Mark]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 09:17:09AM -0400, Bonnie MacKellar wrote:
> My kids are in public school in an affluent district in Westchester County,
> NY. There is plenty of money for video production labs, drama, and trips. The
> schools are well equipped with computers. NY state has a "technology"
> requirement. And yet, we have no computer science in our schools at all. We
> have plenty of classes in Powerpoint, Word, and digital scrapbooking. The 6th
> graders are required to take a course that teaches them those skills. But
> there is no real computer science.

I think the term computational thinking is more useful than 'technology
skills'. It describes better what we want to teach and what its purpose is.
> 
> I volunteered to run a Scratch club afterschool at the elementary school
> (parents are not allowed to run clubs in the middle school). It was vetoed by
> the district IT director, who didn't want open source software on the
> computers.

If its not too much to recall, can you recall what the objections was to OSS?
I mean, you can use a live CD/USB and not 'install it'. if that was an issue.

> 
> There is no interest in adding courses on computing here because the parents
> see it as "vocational". I suspect this attitude is common in affluent
> districts everywhere. Those are usually the districts that drive innovations
> - many of the schools in my area are adding Mandarin for example -  so I
> might suggest that reaching out to parents is a better way to bring computing
> into the schools.

well, learning to use 'word' is vocational, I'd say. Which is why
'computational thinking' is less likely to seem 'vocational' 

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take forceful action:
	Do something that should have been done a long time ago.