The CSforAll Consortium (csforall.org) is a hub for the national Computer Science for All movement that works to enable all students in grades K-12 to achieve computer science literacy as an integral part of their educational experience. Join us for the CSforAll Networking Reception, hosted by AWS Educate from Amazon Web Services on Wednesday, March 8 from 6-8pm. 

During the event, you will learn more about the CSforAll Consortium, hear from our members during a panel session, and have the opportunity to meet and network with diverse stakeholders within the K-12 CS Education community. 

This event will be located within 10 minutes walking distance from SIGCSE 2017 conference. 

To attend, you must register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/csforall-consortium-networking-reception-hosted-by-aws-educate-registration-31897967680 and have an Eventbrite ticket.  

Eventbrite Password is: csforall. 

Space is limited. PLEASE REGISTER BY FRIDAY, MARCH 3.

Christine Alvarado, University of California, San Diego
Sanjay Srivastava, Vocareum

As demands for CS education has increased exponentially, often universities have had no choice but to increase the class sizes to meet this demand.  Inevitably teachers have looked to technology to help manage these large classes.  In this session we will discuss how Vocareum has been deployed to help teachers meet the challenge.

Speakers: James Reinders, HPC Enthusiast

Solving the biggest challenges in science, industry and society requires dramatic increases in computing efficiency. Today’s technical computing applications must be modernized to unlock the potential of current and future hardware. Educating the next generation of programmers and researchers on parallel programming will help gain insights on how to execute their code faster and gain advantage of inherent system architecture.

In this session, we will be sharing resources including hardware, free software for educators and students, hands-on training materials and more. By attending this session, you will receive real academic curriculum examples that includes hands-on labs experiments.

Misty V. Decker, IBM

Blockchain is the technology underneath Bitcoin but now a wide variety of industries are researching ways to use the technology to transform business to business transactions. Come learn what Blockchain is and how you and your students can be a part of innovating the future. We’ll look at real world scenarios in development today such as identifying conflict-free diamonds, determining the safety of fish, tracing property ownership for title searches, and exchanging property or managing contracts without an intermediary.

Jennifer Dimatteo, Intel Corporation

Solving the biggest challenges in science, industry and society requires dramatic increases in computing efficiency. Today’s technical computing applications must be modernized to unlock the potential of current and future hardware. Educating the next generation of programmers and researchers on parallel programming will help gain insights on how to execute their code faster and gain advantage of inherent aystem architecture.

In this session, you will be able to directly apply modernization techniques to existing codes (such as the cardiac simulator, showing electrical signal propagation through the heart) in order to unlock the hardware capabilities. You’ll utilize the full Intel® Parallel Studio XE suite of tools in order to discover how to best find and optimize performance bottlenecks in HPC applications, resolve parallelism issues, and scale to higher core counts.

Smita Bakshi, CEO/Co-Founder, Zybooks
Frank Vahid, Co-Founder, Zybooks and University of California, Riverside
Roman Lysecky, Authoring Co-Lead, Zybooks and University of Arizona
Scott Sirowy, Director of Engineering, Zybooks
Alex Edgcomb, Sr. Software Engineer/Research Specialist, Zybooks and University of California, Riverside

CS courses often include the additional need to learn a complex set of support tools involving LMS's, discussion boards, e-book logins, homework systems, program submission systems, clickers, web links, online announcements, OS'es, IDEs, and other items, often involving poorly-designed UI's and workflows, making today's CS classes unnecessarily hard, and stressful. In this session, we will introduce:  (1) zyBooks: Highly-interactive web-native CS learning material for nearly any lower-division CS course, featuring animations of challenging concepts, learning questions for engaged learning, and concise text for lucidity. Instructors can award points for completion, rearrange sections to match their syllabus, and add notes to content; (2) Our challenge activities ("homework"), fully integrated within each zyBook section, many algorithmically-generated, all auto-graded; (3) Our zyLabs system, "The easiest program submission and grading system on the planet", and seamlessly integratable with a zyBook, or usable standalone; and (4) Our user-experience focus that guides how the content and platform are designed, how we provide support and respond to feedback, and more. We will show how instructors use those items to eliminate non-essential complexity and help focus students on learning concepts and programming, and summarize research showing improved learning outcomes as well as happier, less-stressed students.

Chris Stephenson, Google
Kinga Dobolyi, George Mason University
Jeff Forbes, Duke University
Kristy Boyer, University of Florida
Heather Pon-Barry, Mount Holyoke
Josh Hug, University of California Berkeley

Increasing enrollment in CS programs is prompting the need for a variety of interventions that enable institutions to expand high-quality Computer Science (CS) programs at the undergraduate level while additionally ensuring better engagement of women and underrepresented minority students.  This will be a two-part session. It will begin with a panel of faculty from Google’s Computer Science Capacity Awards program sharing the results of their current interventions. The panelists will follow by chairing roundtable discussions focused on specific interventions, including self-paced learning, training for undergraduate peer mentors, course analytics and software for online courses, tools for real-time distance TA support, and student and TA online communications tools.

Brett Wortzman - Instruction and Training Manager, TEALS/Microsoft Philanthropies
Kasey Champion – Computer Science Curriculum Developer, Microsoft Learning

Come hear from professionals with experience in both engineering and education about how to create the most effective partnerships between industry and classrooms. Led by members of Microsoft Philanthropies' TEALS program (http://www.tealsk12.org) and the Microsoft Learning group (http://www.microsoft.com/learning), we'll discuss both general philosophies and specific practices that can help avoid common pitfalls when partnering engineers with schools, students, and teachers; and demonstrate how you can take what we've learned and apply it in at any level.

Since 2010, Microsoft Philanthropies' TEALS program (http://www.tealsk12.org) has recruited, trained, and placed software professionals from over 200 companies in more than 300 high schools across the US.  Meanwhile, the Microsoft Learning group has deployed a wide range of computer science curriculum to thousands of students of diverse backgrounds all over the world.

Pierre St. Juste, Google

Join Google as we demystify the journey of a software engineer from their undergraduate studies to Google. Google Software engineer and former CS professor, Pierre St Juste, will host the discussion and review how faculty can better prepare students that would like to apply or gain entry into the CS field. During the session, we'll review best times to apply for internships, resume tips including a good example of a software engineering resume and how to prepare for a technical interview. We'll provide curriculum guidance for Freshman-Senior year that can best prepare students for internships and full time roles at companies like Google. Toward the end of the session, we'll open it up for Q&A and help answer your questions.

Learn about planned CRA initiatives to support teaching faculty at research universities and contribute your input.

For additional information: contact Penny Rheingans (rheingan@cs.umbc.edu)

To register for this event: https://goo.gl/forms/Wtyxw1RO28wQ6sT22

Heather (H.Y.) Ricciuto, IBM

With a projection of 1.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs expected by 2020 (Frost & Sullivan Report, 2015), the cybersecurity skills gap simply cannot be ignored.  IBM is taking action, and you can too.  Get inspired!  Learn about the steps that IBM is taking to address this gap, including partnering with academia and government, embracing the cognitive era with Watson for Cyber Security, opening a state-of-the-art Cyber Range in Cambridge, Massachusetts and addressing the gender gap through middle-school outreach programs.

Sanjay Srivastava, Vocareum
David Joyner, Georgia Tech

MOOCs are changing the landscape of education. While the first generation of classes significantly increased access to education from top institutions and teachers, the focus now needs to shift to improving engagement and learning outcomes. We will discuss how Vocareum is being deployed on an EdX MOOC platform to deliver CS education.

Nagib Hakim, Intel Corporation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next big revolution in computing, contributing to cutting-edge innovations such as precision medicine, injury prediction and autonomous cars. Intel is the partner for AI today and in the future, and is committed to driving this transformation by offering a complete portfolio to deliver end-to-end AI solutions. Intel is democratizing AI innovations by increasing the accessibility of data, tools, training, and intelligent machines, while collaborating with academia to foster the next generation of technology leaders. In this session, you will learn about Intel’s AI solutions and how computer science faculty and students are utilizing Intel’s AI portfolio for education and research. You will also explore Intel® Deep Learning SDK, a free set of tools to develop, train, and deploy deep learning solutions.

Thomas Ball – Principal Researcher/Research Manager, Microsoft Research
Peli de Halleux – Principal Research Software Engineer, Microsoft Research
Michael Braun – Educator Trainer, Microsoft Research

Physical Computing for CS Education with PXT

Thanks to Moore’s Law, embeddable microcontroller-based devices continue to get cheaper, faster, and include more integrated sensors and networking options. In 2016, the BBC and a host of technical partners, including Microsoft, delivered such a physical computing device, the BBC micro:bit, to every 5th grader in the UK. The non-profit Micro:bit Education Foundation (http://microbit.org), of which Microsoft is a founding partner, was recently created to take the micro:bit global. Over the last year, Microsoft has invested in a new web-based programming platform for physical computing, called PXT, with the micro:bit being the first target (http://pxt.microbit.org). Come hear about Microsoft’s plans for bring physical computing to CS education across a wide range of devices.

Game-based Computing with Kodu and the BBC micro:bit

Microsoft’s Kodu Game Lab (http://kodugamelab.com) is a game creation tool and visual programming environment for children. The BBC micro:bit (http://microbit.org) is a card-sized microcomputer and sensor board designed to bring physical computing to kids and classrooms. What if we were to combine the two? In this session you will create a Kodu game controlled by the BBC micro:bit, and you will learn first-hand the different ways Kodu and the micro:bit work together to blend virtual- and real-world computing.

Tyra Crockett, Sr. Manager, Oracle Academy

Join the Oracle Academy team to learn the many benefits available to teachers through free membership to Oracle Academy.  In this session you will learn of the many benefits available through the free Oracle Academy program, learn how to join the Oracle Academy program, and explore and get hands on in mini workshops with free Oracle Academy curriculum designed by educators for educators. We will also present our Short Byte curriculum designed for both younger learners making their first steps into programming, robotics and databases, and we will also present our comprehensive curriculum in Java programming and database development.

J.J. Ekstrom, Brigham Young University
Allen Parrish, U.S. Naval Academy
Ed Sobiesk, Army Cyber Institute
Rajendra Raj, Rochester Institute of Technology

This session will provide an introduction to ABET as the leading organization in the world that provides accreditation of undergraduate computing programs. ABET accredits programs in computer science, information systems and information technology, and provides a flexible infrastructure for accrediting programs in emerging computing disciplines. The session will discuss ABET’s contributions to these academic computing disciplines and to the standardization of computing education. The session will also articulate the benefits of obtaining program accreditation in the computing field.

ABET continues to evolve its computing accreditation criteria as the computing disciplines evolve. During 2016, ABET provided initial approval to new computing accreditation criteria, that--in final form--will be rolled out over the next several years for both new accreditations and re-accreditations. These criteria, which are currently undergoing public review, include revisions to the general computing criteria and to program criteria for computer science, information technology and information systems. This session will discuss the new criteria and provide an opportunity for audience feedback to be considered in the final revision that is currently in progress.  ABET is also developing new program criteria to accredit cybersecurity programs. This session will provide a progress report on that effort and will provide an opportunity for audience feedback on the proposed cybersecurity program criteria.

Freddy May, Founder of Codio

This presentation shows how CS lecturers can author and publish a rich library of tutorial content (including re-purposing existing lecture materials) as well as both simple and highly complex auto-graded code tests. Everything is done with just a browser and without the need for any in-house infrastructure.

You will see how students are able to write everything from simple functions right up to highly complex projects using databases and any other components that might be required. This code can be tested and displayed to lecturers and assistants who are able to monitor their progress. We will demonstrating seamless integration with all major LMS platforms, and how course leaders can significantly reduce wasted administration time and system administration overheads, as well as enhance the overall student experience.

Gayathri Magie, WW Academic Initiatives Lead, IBM

Learn the platform for all of your Internet of Things development and application needs. Learn about IBM's Watson IoT platform on IBM Bluemix that will help you rapidly connect your devices, and also infuse capabilities around device management, information management, real-time analytics, risk management and cognitive computing. Create and deploy your IoT application on the cloud using Node-Red with ease. You will also learn to use a variety of “recipes” provided by our device partners and individual users to connect your devices to the cloud. You can take the knowledge and contribute yourself to the developerWorks recipes community.

Ibrahim Awwal, Gradescope
Sergey Karayev, Gradescope

You will learn how to manually grade both paper-based exams and programming projects in our rubric-based interface. Additionally, you will see how you can build your own autograders to automatically grade programming projects. Lastly, we will show a recent feature we call AI-assisted grading: for question types such as simple math questions, Gradescope AI groups student answers by content, so that you can review and grade answer groups instead of individual submissions.

Gradescope has been used to grade over ten million pages of handwritten work and over half a million programming projects. Ibrahim Awwal (ECE MS from UCSD) is a co-founder who has developed Gradescope since it was a humble TA-developed side project. Sergey Karayev (Computer Science PhD from Berkeley) is a co-founder who has been focusing on applying his research in computer vision and machine learning to AI-assisted grading.

Mitch Resnick, Professor of Learning Research, MIT Media Lab
Yannick Dupont, Educational Content Development Manager, LEGO Education

Digital technologies are changing the ways in which we play, learn and create. These tend to take on an even greater force when it comes to their potential impact on the lives of students. For over 35 years LEGO Education has been working with teachers and educational specialists to deliver playful learning experiences that bring subjects to life in the classroom and make learning fun and impactful. By bridging physical and digital educational resources, students are encouraged to think creatively, reason systematically and release their potential to shape their own future.

This session will provide an introduction to LEGO Education, where learning is at the very core of the LEGO Group’s values. Get an in-depth overview of the LEGO Education learning philosophy and our approach to computational thinking and the design engineering process. Learn more about how LEGO Education uniquely combines the familiarity of the simple, easy-to-use bricks with easy-to-use computer science, coding resources and engaging STEM challenges designed to meet curriculum standards. LEGO Education empowers teachers and their students to explore, learn and apply coding to the real world.

David Malan, Harvard University
Omar Shaikh, San Francisco State University

S. Monisha Pulimood, College of New Jersey
Vanessa Gennarelli, GitHub Education

In this session, we will present three examples of GitHub in the classroom: GitHub for CS50 (the largest course at Harvard) that collects assignments, enables portfolios and promotes project-based learning; an automated testing framework, Travis CI, with GitHub Classroom to support students and teaching assistants for large courses; and GitHub for group projects in a service learning course. Learn from the speakers’ specific experiences and variations, reflections and recommendations. After a brief presentation, there will be time for Q&A. Following the hour-long program will be a GitHub classroom lab, where teachers can work with an instructional designer to use GitHub classroom themselves and see how it works.

Susan Baskin, Teradata Corporation
Karen Davis, University of Cincinnati

Teradata University Network (TUN) provides computer science and information systems faculty members and students with a rich variety of FREE resources for teaching and learning about data and database management, data warehousing, data science, and analytics, and information management. These resources include software (both from Teradata and its partners, such as Fuzzy Logix, IBM Watson Analytics, MicroStrategy, NetApp, SAS, and Tableau), teaching materials (exercises, assignments, tutorials, case studies, etc.), and access to real-world data sets. This session will provide information on our 2017 TUN student competitions, an introduction to TUN resources, and demonstrate how these resources can be used to support your computer science courses. In addition, you will learn how you can contribute to TUN to make it an even better community for CS faculty.