Almost two months into the new year, so time for a belated update on the Oregon CSTA’s upcoming events and workshops.  On Saturday, March 18 we will hold our 1st professional development event of 2017. The 2017 SuperQuest Spring Conference & High School Programming Contest will be a combined event held at George Fox University in Newberg, OR.  SuperQuest Spring Conference attendees will have their choice to attend either 1 day long workshop or 4 mini (90 min) workshops. In addition there will be a morning only (3 hour) workshop for school district decision makers and curriculum directors.  Descriptions of the workshop curricula and a registration link can be found here. Along with these workshops, the George Fox Computer Science Department is hosting the 2017 High School Programming Contest.  New for this year, there will be 2 divisions (Div-I and Div-II). Division II consists of students who are in the beginning stages of developing their algorithmic problem-solving skills and have not previously placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in a programming contest. Division I is open to all high school students and will entail more advanced algorithmic topics. A high school may enter up to two teams per division.  So if you are teaching CS at a high school, consider registering a student team and joining us for the 2017 SuperQuest Spring Conference.  

On the following Tuesday (March 21), we will hold a 3 hour pre-NCCE Conference workshop; CSForAll : What It Means and How To Bring it to Your Students. It will be hosted by the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University. Attendees will have an opportunity to explore this national CSforAll effort; what we mean by CS skills, why all students would benefit from exposure to CS education and how the Oregon CSTA has been has been providing teacher training and curriculum support. This workshop will be co-led by Joanna Goode, Professor of Education at the University of Oregon; Jill Hubbard, OCSTA Instructor and Engineering/Computer Science Teacher at Tualatin High School; Andrew Scholer , OCSTA Instructor and Chair of the the Computer Science program at Chemeketa Community College; and Terrel Smith, OCSTA President and Computer Science teacher at Sherwood High School.

Then on Wednesday (March 22) at the NCCE Conference; Jason Galbraith, OCSTA Instructor and Computer Science teacher at Sunset High School, will give a 2 hour workshop on Incorporating Computer Science In All Classes.  Jason will expand on the CSforAll theme by showing how CS can be incorporated into practically any classroom, regardless of subject or grade.

Further out we have our 2017 Summer SuperQuest Events, beginning on Saturday, June 24th with the CS Symposium in Wilsonville. This will serve to kick off our seven Summer SuperQuest 3-day workshops held throughout the state and spread over the months of June through August.  We will update our 2017 Superquest FAQ with curriculum descriptions and registration links soon.  An announcement will be made via the OregonCSTA Blog as well.Preview