Ladyada @adafruit @CSforAll Consortium #CSforALL

CSforAll Consortium Broadcasted 10/17/17 9:20am – 10/17/17 7:52pm. Fantastic event, worth watching -all of it!-

The CSforALL Consortium is the national hub for the Computer Science for ALL movement that works to enable all students to achieve CS literacy as an integral part of their educational experience both in and out of school.

Did you know? In conjunction with today’s CSforALL Summit, OVER 170 organizations are announcing new commitments to action demonstrating continued momentum and broad, bipartisan support for the mission of CS for all students. These announcements focus on expanding access to CS education including efforts to build a national movement; prepare teachers and bring CS to schools; meet students where they are and bring CS to them; and unlock the potential in small and rural communities. The CSforALL Summit is organized by the the CSforALL Consortium. Details at www.csforall.org.

In the live video stream Ladyada makes an appearance! (4 hour, 42 min, 23 secs).

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Full text of the press release here.

More than 170 Leading Companies, Universities, Cities, and National Nonprofits Announce Commitment to Bring Computer Science Education to Every Student

St. Louis, MO, October 17, 2017 – The national movement to bring computer science to every student (#CSforALL) reached an inflection point today, with more than 170 organizations from every sector committing to make CS learning a reality for all K-12 students. This historic effort is critical. Technology underpins virtually all innovation and is foundational to industries from medicine to agriculture to entertainment, and more than 90 percent of parents want CS offered at their child’s school; yet today, fewer than 40% of US schools offer any CS education.

A sampling of the major announcements made today include:

• Girl Scouts of the USA is announcing its plans for new computing programs for girls ages 12-18 to be released in fall 2018 to serve 400,000 girls annually;

• STEM Next is launching a new STEM Next Opportunity Fund that will invest millions in philanthropic capital on STEM and CS learning;

• A new campaign called CSforCA is setting a goal to bring CS education to 6 million students in California;

• Family Code Night is kicking off a national 10,000 Nights campaign, a program to inspire 10,000 schools and libraries to host coding programs for one million kids and parents in 2018; and

• University efforts to scale up rigorous professional development for both pre and in-service teachers by University of Texas at Austin, City University of New York, College of St. Scholastica, Michigan State University College of Education and more.

A full list of the announcements being made today is available below.

In addition, 400 leaders are gathering today for the CSforALL Summit at Washington University in St. Louis to announce these commitments, celebrate the progress since the White House’s 2016 call to action for Computer Science for All, and chart the path ahead. Notable speakers include:

• Obama administration official Megan Smith, 3rd CTO of the United States and CEO of shift7;

• Cartoon Network President Christina Miller;

• Equity.com Co-founder and Chairman, David Karandish;

• CEO and President of the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, Brenda Wilkerson;
• Provost Holden Thorp of Washington University in St. Louis;

• Kevin Wang, founder of Microsoft TEALS;

• Rachel Décoste, Director of the Congressional App Challenge;

• Girls Who Code VP, of Education, Strategy & Innovation, Leah Gilliam; and

• Anthony Owen, Director of Computer Science Education for the State of Arkansas.

Livestream for the event can be viewed here: live.csforall.org

The CSforALL Summit is organized by the the CSforALL Consortium, the national hub for the Computer Science for All movement and sets a collective agenda together with a membership of more than 400 content providers, education associations, researchers, and supporters to help provide all US students with rigorous K-12 CS education. Details at www.csforall.org.

BACKGROUND

The US economy is rapidly shifting toward highly skilled information- and technology-based industries, and educators, policy makers, families, and business leaders are increasingly recognizing that computer science (CS) is a new basic skill necessary for economic opportunity and social mobility. Yet today only 40% of schools offer a CS course, and students in small and rural school districts are far less likely to have access to opportunities to learn CS.

Since 2012, there has been significant progress toward raising awareness and creating demand for CS education among students and families, yet significant gaps remain in the capacity of communities to build rigorous, inclusive and sustainable CS programs on the ground. No single organization should work in isolation. The CSforALL Consortium uses a collective impact model to facilitate the building of community-led initiatives for CS education both in and out of school, through communities of practice, research and knowledge sharing, and movement-building events like the CSforALL Summit, regular community calls, contributions to CSEdWeek, and more.

CSforALL COMMUNITY IMPACT

Today, more than 170 organizations are announcing new commitments to action in conjunction with the CSforALL Summit, demonstrating continued momentum and broad, bipartisan support for the mission of CS for all students. These announcements focus on expanding access to CS education including efforts to build a national movement; prepare teachers and bring CS to schools; meet students where they are and bring CS to them; and unlock the potential in small and rural communities including:

BUILDING A NATIONAL MOVEMENT

Alliance for California Computing Education for Students and Schools (ACCESS), in partnership with key stakeholders across the state, is launching the CSforCA campaign to create equitable and sustainable access to high quality teaching and learning opportunities in computer science education for six million California students that prepares them for college, careers and community engagement by 2025.

Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) is launching a campaign encouraging their 50,000 US professional members to support CSforALL by volunteering their technical expertise to support K-12 CS education partners including the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), CSforALLTeachers, and TEALS.

BootUp and Erin Crysdale Productions will film and document CSforALL implementation at Avondale Elementary School District, Park City School District and Kingsport City Schools as they celebrate their 4th, 3rd, and 2nd years providing district-wide elementary coding instruction to all students.

Connecticut Chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CTCSTA) will convene 200 education leaders and teachers for the CT Computer Science Summit March 16, 2018 to share ideas and draft plans for #csforall in Connecticut.

The Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance (ECEP) will strengthen the capacity of the 17 state and territory alliance members to create statewide infrastructure and initiatives designed to broaden participation in K-12 computing. This collective impact model disseminates best practices, resources, research, and provides access to a network of experts through monthly community calls, annual face-to-face meetings and ongoing individualized support for each statewide team.

Inland Code Consortium, led by Riverside USD, will expand from 9 to 20 school districts, partner with University of California-Riverside and La Sierra University and industry partner

Bourns Inc. to offer community and student CS engagement and learning workshops, and collaborate with University of California-Riverside to provide teacher professional development in CS, and host the 2nd Annual Inland CSforALL Summit on November 2, 2017.

LaunchCode will expand access to preparation and alternate pathways into technology careers for learners in St. Louis, Miami, Tampa and Kansas City by offering an open access, free supported online version of LaunchCode 101. Students who successfully complete the level one course will be guaranteed admission to the remaining 14 week LaunchCode program.

STEM Next, building on ten years of experience and $75 million of investment in out-of-school time by the Noyce Foundation, is launching the STEM Next Opportunity Fund, aimed at raising the philanthropic capital to scale up equity-based interventions in and out of school for underrepresented students in STEM and CS over the next five years.

PREPARING TEACHERS AND BRINGING CS TO OUR SCHOOLS

AccessCSforALL, a joint project of the University of Washington and the University of Nevada Las Vegas, will create and test a fully accessible AP Computer Science Principles course to ensure that students with disabilities of all kinds have the opportunity to learn basic computer science by December 2018.

American Institutes of Research is launching CSforALL Teachers Ambassadors, a cohort of six experienced CS educators leading and scaling up support within the CSforALL Teachers virtual community of practice.

Bootstrap, with support from the National Science Foundation and Bloomberg, is providing Bootstrap:DataScience, a new introductory data science course serving 1000 students through social science classes in 2017-18, continuing the mission to broaden participation through delivering computing in established courses taught by non-computing teachers.

BrainPOP, in partnership with Vidcode, is launching Creative Coding to provide teachers with scaffolded coding projects on 50 cross-curricular topics, including digital citizenship.

Bronxville School District is committing to providing computer science to all students K-12 through interdisciplinary programming with a goal of reaching 100% of our 1500 students by June 30, 2018.

City University of New York is creating new graduate online courses in computer science education and will expand these offerings to include in-person courses and undergraduate curricula in an effort to reach 25 pre and in-service teachers in the 2017-18 academic year.

Cleveland State University, under the CSEdOhio program, will work with Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) to implement a CSforALL program in all high schools in the district serving 4000 students by the 2019-20 School year; support the implementation of CS courses in 35 CMSD K-8 schools serving 8,000 students; and support 8 Northeast Ohio school districts to implement CS courses at the high school level by 2020.

CodeCrew will double its reach during the 2018-2019 school year, providing CS education to an additional 350 underrepresented Memphis youth through 10 in-school courses and 20 weekly after school programs through May 2019.

Code Red Education will provide CS education to 3000 students in the East St. Louis, Cahokia, and Belleville school districts through after school and summer programs in 2018; and through a partnership with St. Louis Public Schools, will provide computer science education for all 10,000 middle and high school students in the St. Louis Public School district.

Code To The Future will advance equity and access to computer science by providing training and resources to school districts in 4 new states during the 2017-18 school year.

Code/Interactive will support 600 teachers across 12 states, reaching over 21,000 students with computer science courses in the 2017-2018 school year.

codeSpark, through strategic outreach and targeted advertising, will share their free learning game codeSpark Academy with The Foos, the accompanying curriculum, and other CS teaching resources with 10,000 new teachers over the 2017-18 school year.

College Board will increase the number of new schools offering AP Computer Science Principles (AP-CSP) in the 2017-18 school year by 30% through new and existing partnerships, additional school and teacher outreach, and a new AP Mentoring program; provide strategic outreach to schools serving students underrepresented in computing reaching 200 new majority-minority schools and 150 new rural schools across the US; and additionally, through new state initiatives with the KY and NV Departments of Education, Code.org, AdvanceKY, and RPDP, will double the number of schools offering AP-CSP in each state for a total of 60 new schools in the 2017-18 school year.

College of St. Scholastica commits to designing new curricula aimed at incorporating computational thinking into all teacher preparation programs and offering a new minor in computer science education, reaching over 95 pre-service teachers in 2017-2018.

Cornell Tech will broaden the CS knowledge base for NYCDOE educators, students and families by bringing renowned UK CS educator Phil Bagge for an innovative educator in residence knowledge exchange, providing professional development in the Code-IT curriculum for an estimated 100 NYC DOE educators.

CS for Oregon will expand the adoption of the Exploring Computer Science curriculum across Oregon by partnering with teachers, counselors, and administrators in at least 24 schools serving underserved populations to bring rigorous CS courses to over 1,500 high school students in the next three years.

CS4IL aims to double its membership footprint in the inaugural year of existence, and create short, medium, and long-term action plans for K-12 CS education for at least 100 Illinois school districts by October 2018.

CSforAZ will create a consortium of the colleges of education serving Arizona to streamline high-quality CS certification pathways utilzing research-based, best practices and inclusive pedagogy by 2019.

Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) will promote the new CSTA K-12 CS Standards broadly so that all states and school systems have rigorous models for their own standards; work with 3-5 CSTA chapters to help them establish their CS program while developing state standards and supporting CS teachers; work through the CSTA Advocacy Committee to form CSTA chapters in three new states; and investigate online options for quality professional development for CS teachers.

CSTA-NM is committed to organizing CSPDWeek for New Mexico in 2018 providing 75-100 teachers with an intensive week of high quality professional development offered by a diverse group of CS educators and organizations.

CSTeachingTips.org will commit to the creation of three new tip sheets and 150 new tips; and distribute 4000 sets through online and in person channels to K-12 and postsecondary CS instructors.

Dell, through the Legacy of Good Youth Learning program, is partnering with the CSforALL Consortium to offer five regional SCRIPT (School district CSforALL Resource and Implementation Planning Tool) Workshops in geographically and demographically diverse locations across the US, targeting 175,000 students in 346 schools by Summer 2018.

ETR (Education, Training, Research) will develop a Research-Practitioner Partnership (RPP) with Santa Cruz City Schools and Santa Cruz Education Foundation in order to provide a CS pathway for the 2,148 3rd-8th grade students in the Santa Cruz City School District, and address the research questions of how to reduce disparity in students’ access to quality opportunities to learn CS/CT and provide ongoing support to persist in CS for students in the district.

Exploring Computer Science (ECS) will support rigorous 2-year professional development programs at schools in 16 regions and states in addition to supporting a national cohort of 70 teachers online; and study the conditions that influence diverse students’ effectively learning computer science. In total, 500 new ECS teachers are participating in this evidence-based professional preparation this year, reaching an estimated 10,000 high school students.

Idaho STEM Action Center will prepare 40 new educators in 2017-18 to deliver CS aligned with the new state computer science standards, reaching 25 new schools and serving 1,500 students across the state; and is launching a pilot VR project in partnership with the Idaho Virtual Reality Council and Blocksmith to prepare 10 middle school educators across the state on the Blocksmith VR platform, engaging over 300 students in learning technology skills through building immersive virtual worlds.

Georgia Department of Education is working with five urban, suburban and rural school districts to align in and out-of-school curricula to the K-12 CS Framework and train 15-20 teachers and program providers on how to maximize this alignment.

Georgia Institute of Technology is establishing the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing to focus on the equitable delivery of computing education for underserved students through national and international policy, advocacy and research; and provide comprehensive and inclusive CS education programs in metropolitan Atlanta, the state of Georgia and beyond, beginning with Atlanta Public Schools serving an estimated 7000 students of color in 10th-12th grade, through hybrid courses, online programs, outreach, and leadership and professional development programs for new CS teachers.

Highline Public Schools will expand and increase CS course offerings across all grade levels serving 550 additional students and creating new opportunities for every student to engage and build expertise in CS through internships with HPS Technology Services and local businesses.

Kiss Institute for Practical Robotics is expanding Junior Botball Challenge programs in Idaho, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Massachusetts to reach 85 new elementary schools and serve an estimated 250 elementary educators and 2200 students in 2017-18; and integrate standard aligned math activities broadly into the Junior Botball Challenge program serving 6,000 elementary students during the 2017-18 school year.

Launch CS will offer new professional development courses to provide K-8 educators with CS content knowledge and the skills to integrate computational thinking into any K-8 subject, and by 2018 will develop an online Administrator Prep Course to facilitate successful district-wide CSforALL implementation.

Learning.com will provide more than 300,000 students free access to their EasyCode basic lessons during their second annual Code-a-Thon, and will randomly select one classroom to receive 20 laptops for their school, as well as a free year subscription to Learning.com’s digital literacy and coding curriculum.

Lindbergh Schools is committing to providing computer science to all students K-12 through interdisciplinary programming, with a goal of reaching all 7,218 students by the 2019-20 school year.

Loudon County Public Schools is partnering with CodeVA and Virginia Department of Education to establish an elementary CS Coaches program; creating a K-12 Computer Science Blueprint for the district; participating in the development of state standards; and adopting K-12 CS standards for the district serving over 80,000 students.

Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance is committed to bringing CS to all 182,990 Maine students, from grades K-12, supporting 15,447 Maine teachers beginning or continuing their commitment to making CS a part of their students’ curricula, and will encourage parents, students, and other stakeholders to join our initiative to bring CS to all Maine students.

Maryland Center for Computing Education, in collaboration with CS Matters in Maryland and the Maryland State Department of Education, will support statewide CS efforts in 2018, including implementation of the MD P-12 CS standards; measurement and tracking of gender, race, and socioeconomic gaps; ensuring that each district has CS course listings included in their program of studies; and trained CS teachers are in place in at least 50% of MD high schools

Michigan State University College of Education, with support from the National Science Foundation, will work with Oakland Intermediate School District to implement an integrated computational thinking curriculum and provide professional development to 50 elementary school teachers in embedding computational thinking (CT) in grades 3-5 serving over 1250 students by 2018.

Micro:bit Educational Foundation will create teacher professional development for US elementary and middle schools using physical computing as a new modality to encourage all students to learn computer science, with the goal of reaching 2 million students by 2020.

Mobile CSP will partner with Valdosta State University and Cleveland State University to expand professional development offerings for teachers in Georgia and Ohio.

NAF, through a $1.3M investment from Lenovo, will expand the Lenovo Scholar Network to 2,900 additional students at NAF schools across the US, reaching 57 high schools with app development for the first time using MIT AppInventor, and providing additional development and engagement opportunities with Lenovo including classroom speakers, mock interviews, and paid internships.

NCWIT through the Counselors for Computing initiative, will develop a Counselor Leadership Network to provide peer-to-peer professional learning for 1,500 school counselors, equipping them with information, resources, and motivation to increase access to CS education and career exploration for over 700,000 students; and pilot an E-textiles Train-the-Trainer Workshop for 25 educators that serve Native American students.

New Hampshire Department of Education will implement the newly adopted CS Educator certification, develop and adopt academic standards for K-12 CS, and support broad implementation of K-12 CS for all 189,000 public school students in NH by 2020.

New York Academy of Sciences, through its virtual and in-person mentoring programs, will mentor 100 Computer Science educators in person and online in 2018.

New York City Department of Education will train more than 200 schools in using definitions of rigorous CS and emerging pedagogical practices from the CS4All Blueprint, an academic and implementation guide for teaching computer science in New York City public schools, during the 2017-2018 school year.

Parkway Spark! Tech and Engineering High School CS students will develop and lead computer science classes for 800 middle school students in 2018.

Oakland Unified School District will expand computer science classes to all middle schools with support from Salesforce, serving 1,295 students in 13 schools by June 2018.

Oregon CSTA will develop and implement the Oregon Digital Literacy 2.0 Plan to work with administrators and districts statewide to increase computer science related course offerings by at least 50%, and double the number of historically underserved and underrepresented students engaged in STEM by 2020.

Outlier Research & Evaluation at UChicago STEM Education, University of Chicago, with support from the National Science Foundation, is extending work originating with the

Walcott School, a college preparatory school for students with learning differences, to reach five additional AP-CSP course providers beginning fall 2017, providing customized support for adjusting CSP instructional materials and practices to be more accessible to students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders.

Pennsylvania Department of Education is launching a plan to develop statewide capacity for CS education over the next three years including updating existing Business, Computer and Information Technology standards to ensure coherent K-12 guidance for CS education; provide professional learning for at least 800 educators annually influencing over 16,000 students per year; design a CS certification for preservice educators covering 7th-12th grades by 2018; design a K-3 and a 4-8 CS concentration for preservice educators by 2019; coordinate a statewide network connecting existing and emerging Computer Science for All initiatives through the Pennsylvania STEM Coalition; and during the 2017 – 2018 school year, as part of its Schools that Teach initiative, will highlight 20 districts taking innovative approaches to CS and STEM education.

Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) will work with the Palo Alto, San Jose, Campbell Elementary, Union Elementary, Los Altos, and Evergreen school districts to build CS Advisory Committees; facilitate six professional learning events per district; and host Family Code Night events for K-3 parents in 2017-18.

Siegel Family Endowment has renewed and increased our commitment to Cornell Tech’s Teacher in Residence program, building computational agency in teachers and students in three schools, providing 126 days of computer science content coaching to approximately 45 teachers, reaching up to 1600 New York City students.

St. Joseph’s Academy is committed to providing CS for over 500 female students by the 2019-2020 school year through supplementing existing coursework to include units on programming for all students, as well as building a three course progression to AP credit courses in computer science.

Tata Consultancy Services, (TCS) and Discovery Education will provide professional development in computational thinking education for 20K teachers, in-person and nationally over a virtual platform, serving 1M students over the next five years through the Ignite My Future in School initiative. TCS will also leverage the support of 3K employees in eleven school systems in the following cities across the US, including: Brooklyn, NY; Charlotte, NC.; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Dublin, CA; Harrisburg, PA; Janesville, WI; San Anselmo, CA; Stone Mountain, GA, and Washington D.C., to enable educators, administrators and school districts to become ambassadors of a trans-disciplinary approach and introduce computer science within the context of core subjects.

Teach For America will prepare and support a diverse cohort of over 100 new elementary school teachers to integrate computer science and computational thinking across their curricula in high-needs schools for the 2018-19 school year.

TEALS (a program supported by Microsoft Philanthropies) will partner with 348 high schools in 29 states plus the District of Columbia to build and grow sustainable computer science programs, working with over 1,000 industry professionals, representing 500 companies and organizations, as trained volunteers to team teach computer science alongside classroom teachers; and will expand the TEALS Rural and Remote Instruction program to bring industry volunteers into rural classrooms via teleconferencing from 10% to 25% over the next three years.

TEC Center at Erikson Institute in partnership with the Archdiocese of Chicago, Eagle Academy Public Charter Schools, and Latin Schools will provide blended in-person and online professional development in 2018 to prepare 500 early childhood educators to introduce technology, computational thinking and coding in early childhood settings.

TECH CORPS and the Teaching & Learning Collaborative, the creators of E4Tech, will release a new set of free elementary school computer science lessons and provide no-cost professional development for 20 Ohio K-5 teachers.

The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC), in collaboration with The Friday Institute and EDC, is providing professional development to 180 new teachers in 2018, developing a fully online professional development course designed to supplement the BJC teacher workshops and provide additional support; adding a social website for the SNAP! programming language to enable students to share projects online; releasing a fully stand-alone auto-grading system for the BJC course; and collaborating with Vanderbilt University to develop netsblox.org, a Snap! extension that allows students to collaboratively create innovative distributed programs.

University of Illinois at Chicago is launching an initiative to increase participation of underrepresented students among undergraduate teaching assistants in CS courses by 25% in the 2017-18 academic year to provide a diversity of role models for students considering CS education and careers.

UC San Diego CREATE and the San Diego Computer Science Teachers Association (SD-CSTA) are partnering to accommodate the growing number of K-14 CS faculty in the region. CREATE will house SD-CSTA in their facility and provide fiscal management and institutional affiliation at UC San Diego. In addition, CREATE will provide ongoing meeting space and staff support to support the SD-CSTA mission to provide professional development and networking resources for CS teachers in the region.

University of New Hampshire will host 6 teacher workshops and meetups reaching 100 new teachers, and continue to build partnerships to expand teacher professional development offerings in NH through 2018.

UT Austin’s Center for STEM Education will support 100 educators obtaining a high school computer science teacher certification through the WeTeach_CS project by August of 2018, a 25% increase over the prior year.

UTeach Computer Science will prepare 400 teachers to teach AP Computer Science Principles across the US through two large-scale professional learning events and five district partner workshops, support five online cohorts through summer 2018.

Washington University in St. Louis’ Institute for School Partnership, as the Regional Partner for Code.org in the Greater St. Louis area, will implement an ongoing and comprehensive professional development program for 48 K-12 computer science teachers in the 2018-2019 school year.

MEETING STUDENTS WHERE THEY ARE AND BRINGING CS TO THEM

Afterschool Alliance, through the Afterschool STEM Hub, will support computing in the out-of-school-time education sector through release of a CS education in out-of-school time position paper; webinar trainings to support afterschool providers successfully offering computing activities; and daily highlights of afterschool computing opportunities across all Hub member media platforms during CSEdWeek 2017.

BirdBrain Technologies commits to loaning 1200 Finch Robots to 300 organizations through August 2018, and analyzing Finch Robot loan program successes to discover and share best practices that support efforts to deepen computer science experiences.

The Boeing Company, in partnership with Washington University’s School of Engineering & Applied Science is committed to expanding its K-12 STEM outreach to promote CS opportunities through the Boeing/Washington University Mentoring Program, with the goal of reaching an additional 1,000 K-12 students by December 2018 through the delivery of 20 foundational programs with an emphasis on CS learning and education.

Broward County Public Schools, through its #BrowardCODES initiative, will expand connections between K-12 and CS career pathways in South Florida, in partnership with the

Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, South Florida Regional TechGateway and other local businesses. TechGateway Day, highlighting CS career opportunities, will be a central part of the District’s CSEdWeek 2017 celebrations. In addition, Hour of Code activities, which take place at all 234 schools, will include industry participation with at least 60 schools, reaching in total more than 271,000 students.

Code in the Schools will serve an additional 1,000 Baltimore youth through programs in the 2017-2018 school year, and focus efforts on recruiting underrepresented students ages 4-24 for both in and out-of-school computer science courses, the CodeWorks summer job training program, and The Prodigy Program, a pipeline for underrepresented students to college degrees and jobs in computing.

Digi-Bridge commits to serving more than 1000 K-8th grade scholars annually in Charlotte, NC, through STEAM education programming.

E-Line Media will be expanding its platform support for young people learning computer science through the making of video games, expecting to reach an additional 500,000 youth in 2018, as well as launching a network of hands-on youth game making studios, reaching hundreds of youth in our initial rollout.

Digital Harbor Foundation commits to increasing access to high-quality computer science content for high school students by expanding AP Computer Science to more than 100 youth in out-of-school time programs in Baltimore City.

Emerging Entrepreneurs, Inc., with the support of Wells Fargo and Infinite Scholars, will provide scholarships for 500 college-ready youth from across the US to enroll in EdX’s online professional development courses, designed to prepare college-ready youth for careers in IT and tech-based fields. Additionally, the organization’s Urban Leadership Lab for at-risk youth will partner with WG Pearson Elementary School and the Emily K. Center of Durham, NC to provide STEM, coding, and robotics education to over 800 new students, ages 5-13.

Family Code Night, with funding from Capital One and the Norfolk City Public Schools, and in partnership with CodeVA, is launching Virginia Family Code Nights, a campaign to invite and enable more than 1100 elementary schools in Virginia to host their own free Family Code Night school event, focusing in particular on low to moderate income schools in the Richmond-Henrico County communities. Virginia Family Code Nights kicks off the national 10,000 Nights campaign, a program to inspire 10,000 schools and libraries to host Family Code Night programs for one million kids and parents in 2018. In addition, Family Code Night will produce and distribute the Family Code Night Parents CS Action Kit, a blueprint for parent support of K-5 CS education, through PTA and parent groups nationwide, including, in partnership with codeSpark, the Foo’s Club Kit to enable volunteer parents and staff to lead a free, 8-week after-school Code Club at any elementary school; and will partner with the California State PTA to share resources and information on the importance of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) during CSEdWeek 2017.

Girl Scouts of the USA, the largest leadership organization for girls and young women, is committing to develop and launch a computer science progression for Girl Scout Cadette, Senior and Ambassador levels (girls ages 12-18) by Fall of 2018, providing CS opportunities to as many as 400,000 girls annually in the United States and overseas locations.

GlobalHack and the Saint Louis Science Center will be hosting a region-wide Computer Science Fair in spring 2018 serving 200 middle and high school students.

Hodges University, in partnership with the Southwest Florida Regional Technology Partnership, will bring computer science activities to more than 2,500 K-12 students in Lee and Collier Counties during the 2017-18 school year.

IGNITE will expand their technology mentoring and learning program for 6-12th grade girls to include new school districts in 2018 in Pierce County, WA and Everett, WA; and launch IGNITE Chapters in three additional schools in San Francisco.

JPMorgan Chase will bring CS education enrichment to nearly 5,000 children (K-12) and 1,500 parents in 2017 through CyberKidz, a program that teaches kids and their parents how to be safe and secure online; serve 500 high school students through Generation Tech, a one-day technology design challenge event focused on prototyping technical solutions for a social cause; and JPMorgan Chase will invite over 160 students for technology site visits, where students can participate in a robotics curriculum and experience a day in the life of a technology employee.

Kano will provide packs of Computer Kit devices to public housing communities through the ConnectHomeUSA initiative, providing 100s of low-income students access to broadband internet after school, as well as provide free curriculum to communities to empower young people with computer science.

Lawrence Technological University will pilot CS+PA (learn Computer Science with Physical Activities), an innovative program in which K-12 students learn physical activities, such as mathematical dance, and then learn to animate photographs of themselves dancing using SCRATCH in 2017-18.

Mastercard will partner with the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri to host two summer workshops enabling up to 100 Girl Scouts ages 10-18 to participate in Mastercard’s Signature Program – Girls4Tech, and learn about STEM careers throughout 2018.

Midwest Cyber Center (MC2) is launching a strategic campaign to grow the number of Greater St. Louis CyberPatriot teams from 31 to 75 teams with a focus on participation by students underrepresented in technology for the ’17-18 national competition.

Minefaire and The Young Innovators Fair will offer 100 need-based scholarships for children to attend each of our weekend community events all across North America.

NCWIT AspireIT and the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy Ready to Code initiative is launching a pilot program to design and implement 3-5 peer-led CS programs for K-12 girls at public libraries over spring vacation 2018.

Nextech and Teenworks will offer a week-long Explorers program focused on career exploration, advanced coding instruction, and design thinking for 320 Indianapolis students ages 14-18 in summer 2018.

NPower St. Louis will its reach within the St. Louis metropolitan area by providing its free IT training program, including paid internships and assistance with launching a digital career, to over 100 young adults ages 18 -25 from under-resourced communities within the St. Louis region during the 2018 calendar year.

PBS KIDS in partnership with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and 21 stations public media stations across the nation, will engage more than 6,500 children, families and educators in CS activities over the next year through the PBS KIDS Family Creative Learning (FCL) Workshops utilizing the PBS KIDS ScratchJr app; engage more than 1,200 educators in live professional learning opportunities; reach over 25,000 educators via the PBS KIDS ScratchJr learning materials online to use as part of their own in-class, after-school or camp programming. Today PBS KIDS is releasing a research report highlighting findings from the CPB-PBS Ready To Learn implementation study of the family workshop and app conducted by EDC and SRI with families in 16 communities. The findings, available at https://goo.gl/ xGrd1A, indicate that children developed skills for using technology, and the workshop increased awareness of and interest in careers in computer science and programming.

RBC Capital Markets has set a goal to deliver 20,000 hours of free coding lessons to students ages 6-20 in 2018 through the Teaching Kids to Code initiative, a program in which technical employees provide coding lessons in collaboration with community organizations and schools.

ScriptEd will help more than 1000 students from under resourced communities in NYC and the Bay Area this year gain the knowledge and professional experiences they need to access a career in tech by bringing its tuition-free program directly to schools through classes taught by software developer volunteers, and students apply their coding skills in paid summer internships.

SPARCS family of outreach at NC State University will host 24 free Saturday workshops for intermediate and secondary students attending under-resourced schools or who come from historically underrepresented groups.

STEMgirlz, a free program for middle school girls in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, will expand to grades 6-12 by starting a Girls Who Code (GWC) club, and collaborating with other GWC clubs in school districts in Bucks County during the 2017-2018 school year.

Techbridge Girls will introduce computing to 200 middle school girls through the Techbridge Girls’ Changemakers program in which girls will build apps using MIT App Inventor and share their projects during regional Techbridge Girls’ Changemaker Showcase events; and introduce 300 elementary age girls to computational thinking through a multi-week Scratch challenge in the new Techbridge Girls’ Inspire program; and provide professional development in Scratch and computer science to over 30 teachers in the Greater Seattle, Washington D.C., and San Francisco Bay areas.

TechGirlz will provide free hands on tech workshops for 5,000 middle school girls across the US in the 2017-2018 school year.

Thinking Media through the Learning Blade platform will support and engage 25,000 students across five states with CS career resources in 2017-18.

Tufts Girls of Code is launching an initiative to improve participation rates of girls from underserved communities, people of color, and students with disabilities by 100%; partnering with NCWIT to develop new after-school programs that offer transportation support for students from majority-minority Boston neighborhoods; and will develop a curriculum for Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts Service Unit 406 focused on using technology for social good.

Vidcode will work with partners to expand creative CS programming to over 10,000 students in Kansas, Arkansas, and South Dakota; work with Girl Scouts of New York to expand their partnership to empower 150 additional middle school girls to learn to code; and reach 5,000 new students around the world by the end of 2018 through new suite of VR coding projects.

Wonder Workshop will expand the Wonder League Robotics Competition to serve 50,000 students in 2018, expand their curriculum to serve middle schools, and grow the Wonder Innovation Squad from 20 to 60 CS education ambassadors.

UNLOCKING POTENTIAL IN SMALL AND RURAL COMMUNITIES

Arkansas Department of Education is launching a new program today, as part of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s #CSforAR initiative, to drive student participation and achievement in rigorous computer science courses. Beginning with the 2017-18 school year, the state will recognize public high school students and their schools with substantial tiered monetary awards when they earn a qualifying score on the College Board Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) A exam.

Auburn University, in collaboration with Alabama STEM Education, will provide targeted computer science, robotics, and 3D printing one-week summer camps, and weekend events for 400 African American, Latino, and underserved girls grade 6-12 from four Alabama counties through 2019.

ChickTech will expand its youth program to provide hands-on tech workshops for 300 rural girls, focusing on HS girls in rural Oregon and K-12 girls in Montana during the 2017/2018 school year in partnership with the Computer Science Teachers Association and TechGirlz.

CodeHS is launching Code Missouri (codemissouri.com), which will provide CodeHS Pro and professional development to 15 rural school districts in Missouri for free. Additionally, by the 2018-2019 school year CodeHS will expand its 6th-12th grade computer science curriculum to include courses on mobile apps, virtual reality, and courses in Spanish. Last, CodeHS will build follow on professional development courses for teachers who have completed a first PD course and are looking for additional training.

CodeVA is partnering with the State of Virginia to launch the “Virginia is for Computer Science Lovers” campaign with the state tourism bureau, and to invest more than $360,000 in targeted teacher professional development in high-poverty rural areas; and in 2017-18 will partner with Family Code Night on a statewide campaign to engage parents as their children will soon be coming home with CS homework.

CS4NC and The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, will engage over 250 community members in 8 counties that serve more than 60,000 students in rural western NC to establish the CS4WNC initiative to align broader, statewide CS4NC efforts using insights from this rural region, and support effective implementation of statewide policy and funding initiatives in Western NC.

Hispanic Heritage Foundation, through the Code as a Second Language initiative, will provide computer science education and training for more than 1,000 students in 25 schools in 20 cities in 2018, which includes a specific focus on Latinos and schools in small and rural communities.

Kewl Girlz Kode, in partnership with Claflin University and Richland 2 School District, will provide five hands-on weekend workshops serving 100 girls from the Columbia, SC area to diversify computing by working collaboratively with parents, teachers, and students to teach computing concepts to K-12 students.

OpenDataSTL, in partnership with Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, will host a user experience design hackathon in early 2018 in St. Louis, Kansas City and satellite sites at libraries across the state, during which K-12 students and adults will collaborate to optimize and create design specifications for updated online resources for the State of Missouri, with a focus on accessibility, customer service, efficiency, cost savings and active citizenship. The end result will be a student/citizen driven RFP to build a new site for the Secretary of State in 2018.

Region 18 Education Service Center will amplify the impact of the ESC-18 WeTeach_CS Collaborative by connecting 30 teachers from West Texas to a networked professional learning community of teachers across the region and state, while working to identify, understand and address the unique challenges that rural districts face in implementing CS programs.

Silver Falls School District is launching an Information Communication Technologies Program of Study for 2017-18, serving at least 50 rural Oregon high school students annually.

The Friday Institute will prepare more than 250 K-12 teachers to teach computer science courses, and integrate computer science and computational thinking in other courses in 40 North Carolina school districts through 2018.

Virtual High School will develop and launch new online Intro to CS Principles and Java Programming courses to provide AP CS preparation to more than 600 school districts, and offer online AP Computer Science Principles for at least 10 rural school districts in the 2018-2019 academic year.

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