Some of the titans of the technology industry including Microsoft and Google are calling on schools to introduce mandatory computer science courses earlier in students’ academic careers, The Boston Globe reports. The companies want public schools in Massachusetts to help fill the skill gap currently being made up by foreign-trained professionals brought over to the United States on H1-B visas.

The industry wants to see lessons in computer science begin as early as 8th grade and also would like technology achievement tested like other subjects on end-of-the-year standardized assessments. Furthermore, they’re calling for a creation of standardized computer science curriculum covering grades all the way through high school.

If the plan is adopted, it would make Massachusetts the second state to make technology instruction mandatory in public schools after a similar program was adopted in South Carolina.

“This is really about workforce development,” said Steve Vinter, head of Google’s office in Cambridge, one of the proposal’s architects.

Vinter and other proponents will pitch the plan to state lawmakers and education officials on Beacon Hill Wednesday. Opposition is already forming.

The proposal would require millions of dollars in new spending to implement, as well as the retraining of hundreds of teachers and likely the hiring of new ones. It would also add another layer of teaching requirements and testing to schools.

Chester isn’t minimizing the importance of computer science instruction to tomorrow’s economy, but he believes that the same goals can be better-reached by integrating technology lessons into existing coursework. Furthermore, Chester thinks that a universal computer science curriculum would be less useful than allowing each individual district develop their own program best suited to the unique needs and talents of their students.

Moreover, the state is currently revising its standards to increase the amount of engineering and technology that public schools must teach, and Chester said additional computer science education is under consideration. Meanwhile a Massachusetts state senator, Karen Spilka, earlier this year filed legislation that would mandate more computer science classes in public schools.

Based on the latest data, many schools in the state already offer computer science courses. The problem appears to be getting students to enroll in them. In the entire state only about 700 students took the AP Computer Science exam even though the majority of public schools around Massachusetts offer the course.

The companies calling for more computer science instruction also announced their intention to back up their requests with money. The industry expressed a willingness to provide funding for infrastructure needed to support computer instruction, including providing money to train teachers and buy equipment:

The tech executives have formed the Massachusetts Computing Attainment Network, or MassCAN, to promote the proposal. The group includes executives from Oracle Corp. and Intel Corp., as well as business organizations including the Massachusetts Business Roundtable.

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Georgia Institute of Technology announced that it will offer a two-year master’s degree in computer science in the format of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), reports Douglas Belkin of the Wall Street Journal.

Georgia Tech is the first top-tier school to offer this type of online program for a graduate degree. The program will be offered through Udacity, a widely-used MOOC platform.

The course is available to anyone, but in order to obtain the degree from Georgia Tech the student must gain admission and pay the course fees, which will amount to between $6,000 and $7,000. Students must have a bachelors degree in computer science or the work equivalent and earn a grade of B or higher in the first two classes.

The program’s startup cost to create online lectures runs between $200,000 and $300,000. However, the school estimates that it will only have to hire one teacher for every hundred students as opposed to one for every ten or twenty students, allowing the school to keep costs low.

This program comes at an exciting time as the cost of education is growing rapidly and there is a need for computer scientists.

 “There is currently a significant shortage of computer scientists in the country, and the government projects that there will be for years to come. Through 2018, the demand for computer software engineers is projected to increase by 34%—among the most of any occupation in the country, according to a 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics report.”

The university hopes to admit everyone who meets university requirements. Eventually it is estimated to enroll 10,000 students into the program, which is nearly half the size of Georgia Tech’s student body on campus, according to Justin Pope of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Some worry that the quality of education will falter on such a large scale. Georgia Tech assures that the university will be able to maintain its high standards.

 ”This is a full-service degree,” Bras said. “We have our name reputation and excellence behind it. These people will be assessed graded, take exams, have help, will have access to individuals that answer questions.”

Another concern of faculty expressed by Benjamin Flowers, an architecture professor and chair the graduate curriculum committee, is that the degree will lose some of it value since there will be such a large turnout of graduates.

 ”One of the key attributes of educational distinction has always been that you control the number of people that have degrees from your institution,” Flowers said. “Are we producing something that’s of genuine value and in demand, or is it something we’re producing because there’s an arms race in place and we’re trying not to be left behind?”

With admission standards being comparable to the traditional Georgia Tech computer science masters program, the school assures that the program will not be an easier route to a Georgia Tech credential.

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The classroom reverberates with a lot of boom, bang, thwring, crash!  When the door opens, kids seem to be watching a big-screen video game.  Their 8th-grade computer-science teacher, Patrick Culliname, slips out, quickly shutting the door against the noise.

His students are a little fried from completing their final projects using HTML and javascript — common fare at the Advanced Academy of Math and Science (AMSA).  So Culliname is taking it easy with a movie, TRON, that re-enforces prior knowledge.

Julia Steiny

Oh, c’mon, “re-enforces prior knowledge” with a video-game war movie?  Lincoln, maybe.  October Sky, if you want to stay sciencey, but TRON?

Actually a real-life computer geek wrote the 1982′s TRON, which features characters using real computer terms instead of sci-fi babble. The story’s hero is broken down into a data stream so he can enter a computer to chase and defeat a nefarious software pirate.  The movie memorably reiterates the terms, even as kids scoff at the antiquated special-effects.

And if not TRON, what?  The few schools that do teach computer science (CS) cobble together free software, relevant books and movies, to create curricula the way birds build nests — with any sturdy materials they can find.

For the record, Russia, India and Israel, among other countries, already have CS across the grades in their schools.  Talk about leaving U.S. children behind!

Insane though it sounds, no nationally-vetted introductory course existed until now.  While only published in 2010, Exploring Computer Science (ECS) is going viral.

I asked the curriculum’s co-author, Gail Chapman, what took American schools so long.  She said:  “There are plenty of places that offer resources — as if teachers have time to research how to integrate CS into their courses.  Our group spent years probing and choosing certain materials.  Nothing in our curriculum is original, but the sequence and strategy was designed to capture the interest of girls and minorities.”

Originally funded by the National Science Foundation — who else? — ECS grew out of the work of the Computer Science Equity Alliance (CSEA), a group determined to democratize the skills that are now the gateway into the 21st century economy.  (I told their story last week.)

AMSA’s Kelly Powers is a CSEA chapter head for the state of Massachusetts.  Even though her own school already has CS for grades 6-11, she too is passionate about closing the stark equity gap for young people under-represented in the field of computer science.

Chapman experimented extensively with using materials — like TRON — to teach in low-income Los Angeles schools.  “Because kids are on devices all the time, we assume they know what computer science is.  They don’t.”

And computers have a way of making people feel stupid, a super turn-off.

“We got together a group from colleges and high schools to identify the right topics.  No one had ever done anything like this.  We had input and ideas, but we were starting from scratch.”  Building that bird’s nest.

So ECS begins hands off the keyboard, just talking.  “We ask what kind of knowledge kids bring to the table.  Every kid brings something.  We don’t assume any prior knowledge of computer science.  But we can talk about how computers get used in a variety of settings.  About privacy and problem-solving skills.”

I notice the curriculum, which is up online in its entirety, spends a full two weeks exploring “What is intelligence?”  Good question.  Then, with hands on the keyboard, the course goes on to such topics as algorithms and abstraction, and the connections between math and CS.

Chapman says, “Really, there’s nothing else out there you can just pick up.  The online curriculum does have everything, including daily, 55-minute lesson plans, designed for traditional high schools.  Although, we think the course is more effective when teachers also have the professional development we offer.”

So why isn’t CS in every secondary school?

Chapman sighs and concedes that the biggest remaining problem is determining what a computer-science course could displace.  English?  History?  Afterschool sports and clubs?  It’s a hard question that must be answered.  AMSA solves the problem with a weird schedule and a longer day, typical of charter schools.

The NSF hopes every high school will teach this course or some other like it so all kids are exposed to the subject.  They believe that computer science should count as a science credit or combined math and science.

Currently the course is taught in the cities of L.A., Santa Clara, and Washington DC, and in Utah, Oregon, and Maryland.

And coming soon, Massachusetts.  At a big business-tech meeting, Kelly Powers had the opportunity to press Governor Deval Patrick to commit to making computer science a high school graduation requirement.

With little hesitation, he said yes.

Good answer.  Let’s see if and how it plays out in MA.

The Exploratory course is not the be-all, end-all, but it’s a concrete and long-overdue start.  Gail Chapman welcomes questions and would love to share the work.  Contact her at:  chapgail@gmail.com.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

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by Julia Steiny

“Education will only prepare people for life in a democracy when education itself is also democratic.”

– John Dewey, in 1916, Democracy and Education.

“I think minorities are… are scared, you know, to jump into the (computer-science) future because what it looks like is only Caucasians should be in that industry.”

– Nia, an African-American student in a Los Angeles high school.

During the late 1990′s, Dr. Jane Margolis, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, studied why so few women were entering computer science and related fields.  Using a feminist perspective, she unearthed disincentives for women to get under the hood of a computer.  She published her results in the 1999 book, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women and Computing.

But in the course of her studies, the equally remarkable absence of certain minorities did not escape her notice.

Julia Steiny

Actually, to this day, students taking computer science are overwhelmingly White and Asian males.  Hmmmm.

In 2000, the National Science Foundation (NSF) was also worried about why Latino and African-American students were so miserably represented in computer science classes.

More generally, the NSF was super-concerned about students fleeing the field as a result of the dot.com bust.  Too few students were in the pipeline before the bust.  They knew that the “tech crash” meant only a temporary decline in the ability of skate-boarding coders to become overnight gagillionaires.  Venture capital went dry, but the need for computer scientists was still ballooning.

So the NSF funded Margolis’ new project:  “Out of the Loop:  Why are so Few Underrepresented High School Students Learning Computer Science?”

She assembled a team of social scientists based in Los Angeles.  They spent three years studying three big, overcrowded, public high schools, following and interviewing 185 students in total, with the blessing and cooperation of the LA Unified School District (LAUSD).

One school was predominantly low-income Latino, and another low-income Black.  The third was also predominantly low-income and minority, but in a swanky neighborhood full of Tinseltown mansions.  Poor kids were bused in from elsewhere.

Studying participation in K-12 computer science (CS) is totally easy because there’s only one course:  Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS).  Yes, rare schools have created a CS curricula of their own, but they’re all one-offs, not replicated, not nationally recognized.  The APCS course is offered towards the end of high school, to the sort of smarties who take AP, college-level classes.  Only hot-shot juniors and seniors have a prayer of learning a byte of computer science before college.

One of the three L.A. schools had an APCS program with anemic enrollment.  Another had none.  The third — guess which? — had a robust APCS program, mainly filled with students who did live in the mansions but who, for whatever reason, weren’t going to private schools.

The problem wasn’t a lack of computer equipment.  Nationally, the quantity and quality of computers in low-income public schools has vastly improved.  But better equipment does not teach computational skills, nor can it raise low expectations.  Mostly it serves computer “literacy,” helping kids practice word-processing, PowerPoint and spreadsheets.

Computer “science” is the ability to tell a computer what you want it to do and how to do it, in computer language.

Computing is the key to opportunity in the 21st century.  Certain students are sailing into that future — those that Nia the high school student mentioned.  The others are becoming what math Professor Robert Moses calls the “designated serfs of the information age.”

We have yet another ugly racial divide.

Margolis’ team documented a chasm of inequality.  So they formed a new group, the Computer Science Equity Alliance (CSEA), whose mission was to increase minority participation in APCS in the L.A. schools.

For three years, they ran summer institutes for teachers, collected an army of tutors to prep kids for APCS, and conducted Saturday academies.  They got terrific results — quadrupling the number of Latinos and doubling the number of Blacks taking APCS.  By 2007, 8 percent of all California females who took the APCS exam came from L.A, thanks to them.

In 2008, they captured the story of this gargantuan effort in Stuck in the Shallow End — Education, Race and Computing.

But they realized that  APCS, coming at the end of high school, is way too late to nudge more kids into computer science.  Fortunately, after years of working directly with students, CSEA had picked up tons of tricks to intrigue and engage novices in the fun of computational thinking.  So they shifted their attention to assembling these newfound techniques into a 9th-grade course that would introduce and acclimate students to the subject.  A 9th-grade introductory course would at least prepared students to take APCS later on, if they want.  And computer science burnishes any college application, giving these kids a leg up.

And not a moment too soon.  We don’t need more workplace ghettos for people with brown skin and stunted educations.

So next week we’ll talk to a co-author of the 2010 final product of CSEA’s efforts, the Exploring Computer Science course.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

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by Julia Steiny

Back in the day, the high-tech innovation that rocked my world was a self-correcting typewriter.  Mere keystrokes replaced the black-ink ribbon with a white-out tape so I could erase mistakes by typing.  Absolute bliss for someone living a writing-intensive life.

Today, super-sophisticated computers and electronics are everywhere.  Literally.  Devices are in everyone’s hands (to an annoying extent), implanted in people’s bodies, and managing all manner of data-heavy work like traffic, government databases, massive communications systems, and more.

Julia Steiny

Electronic technology has become the lifeblood of all developed economies.  Even nature-bound work — landscape gardeners, wedding florists and farmers — use computers for billing, research, ordering supplies, advertising their wares.

Ubiquitous.  Critical to everyone’s daily life.

So you would think that America’s K-12 education system would be frantically preparing students for all manner of computer skills, from software engineers to hardware experts.  But how many schools do you know that routinely offer computer science in their curriculum, to most students?

For years now, the business community has been pushing educators to get more students into STEM fields — without great success.  STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  The remarkable dearth of qualified employees in these areas means that even during the recent recession, thousands of jobs went begging for lack of trained applicants.

But in last December’s presentation to the Massachusetts’ Governor’s STEM Council, an industry group, the MASS Tech Hub, made the point that the foundational problem is the lack of computer science.  “Computing is both the biggest job sector of STEM today and has the largest future growth expectations.  ..  Tech isn’t just an industry or a job function, it’s part of nearly every aspect of our economy.”  No STEM job gets done without computer science.

Massachusetts, btw, has perhaps the best trained technology workforce in the country.  Its tech sector produces nearly 20 percent of their Gross Domestic Product.  But they are scrambling for workers.

Between 2010-2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the current 900,000 software engineering jobs to grow by 30 percent.  The 300,000 computer and information systems managerial jobs will grow 18 percent.  Database administrators, 31 percent.  And that’s not even counting the civil engineers or biochemists and biophysicisists.

Hey, it’s not even considering the Information Technology (IT) person that virtually every organization now needs on staff or available for hire.

Ask any business who needs software engineers if they can find workers.  Mighty slim pickings.  Anecdotally, my data pals report that their new hires are largely self-taught.  Schools are very little help with this problem.

So an industry group has resorted to selling computer science via celebrity gods.  Check out the aptly-named video What Most Schools Don’t Teach on code.org.  Super-celebrities like Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, a basketball and a rap star talk about feeling like superstars when they first could make miracles happen on their computer screen.  Anyone, they assert, can read, do math, and program.  Coding is not the exclusive province of nerds and geniuses.  And even if you don’t enter a STEM field, the skills will support any field you choose.

Oh, and the not-so-subtle underlying message is that you too can be obscenely wealthy, famous, and work in cool places with live bands, pools and free lunch.

It quotes the late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple:  “Everyone in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.”

Now that I agree with.

So if computer science is a necessary skill, right up there with reading and writing, why isn’t it pervasive in schools?

For the most comprehensive answer, see Running on Empty — The Failure to Teach K–12 Computer Science in the Digital Age.  It says, for example, that even as “we move toward an ever-more computing-intensive, … most states treat high school computer science courses as simply an elective and not part of a student’s core education.”

Our system is greatly hampered by the fact that “government policies underpinning the K–12 education system are deeply confused, conflicted, or inadequate to teach engaging computer science as an academic subject.”

Only 9 states allow computer science to count towards math or science requirements.

If anything, since NCLB’s demand that all kids perform proficiently, according to state standards, computer science has gotten increasingly pushed out of the school day, at best into elective courses — that displace music and art — or after-school clubs.

There’s no room for computer science in the conventional 6, 7-period secondary-school day, with its curriculum rooted in the 19th century.

Although, Russia, India and Israel, among others, found ways of embedding it in their schools, K-12.

America’s reputation as the nation of innovators is receding.  The K-12 system needs a re-boot, and not just more tinkering around the edges.

Thoughts on a partial solution next week.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: We’ll Never Achieve STEM Goals Without Computer Science appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

For 11 years, Kelly Powers has had her dream job teaching computer science.  But not without a big, illustrative glitch.

Five years ago, the private girls school in Massachusetts where she was working decided to eliminate the subject.  Since no one else was teaching programming, why on earth should they?  They figured that students needed only what’s considered “computer literacy,” a grasp of the basics — Word, Excel, PowerPoint.  The science of computing was not important.

Julia Steiny

Bad decision.  Their loss.

Some high schools offer Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science, an elective for smarties.  Maybe web design for a semester.  But true computer-science (c.s.) courses are rare as hens’ teeth.  So, sigh, Powers had to get real.  She had a B.A. in both math and computer science, and an M.B.A. in information systems, but she enrolled in a program that would beef up her credentials for teaching math in public middle schools.

Then fate stepped in.  The Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) was advertising for a computer-science teacher.  Bliss!  Or more appropriately, mutual bliss, since capable K-12 computer-science teachers as hard to find as c.s. teaching jobs.

Her main new duty was to oversee their c.s curriculum, taught every year in grades 6 – 11.  In truth, she had to build one.  As recently as 4 years ago, the one nationally-developed K-12 Introductory course had not yet gelled.  AMSA middle-schoolers were stuck using introductory college materials.

“When I got there, they were using compilers and writing code.  The tools weren’t kid-friendly.”

Powers had experienced this problem at her other school.  “Writing code is really frustrating for kids.  It looks like writing, only harder, and it has to be perfect to work.  It’s way too text-based to be a good way to start learning.  Kids need visualization tools, where you can drag images and blocks of code to build artifacts that work.  I go to a lot of professional development partly to find out about the slew of tools available for free.  There’s Scratch at MIT and Alice from Carnegie-Mellon.”

The key to teaching kids this science is changing their attitudes.  Especially among the girls.  It’s best to start as early as possible, before that “I can’t” mindset has taken root.  “People say, kids in 6th grade can’t do programming.  Actually kids in 4th can.”

So teachers help students “believe that they can use technology to innovate, to create.  They practice it and keep practicing it until they believe.  And when they do, the level of engagement from the kids is just magical.  They’re like sponges.”

The secret is to teach one concept, but then have the kids make something they can see, touch, manipulate, use — distilled hands-on learning.  “Our students don’t learn a (computer) language for its own sake.  They always need to do a task that requires the language.”

Starting with AppInventor, 6th-graders learn very basic skills by building a simple phone app of their own choice.  They can drop and drag blocks of code or icons indicating certain functions.  They can build weather apps or upload pictures of the teachers and throw pies at them.  In any case, there it is:  you made something.  You programmed.  Be done with self-doubt.

Powers says, “We teach them to solve problems.  How to approach a problem, break it down.  This is applicable to every aspect of their life.”

For example, “Computational thinking (integral to c.s.) is very creative.  We give problems like:  here’s a list of 10 songs that they know.  Okay, organize them.  One kid gets a piece of paper and puts them down in alphabetical order.  Good solution.  Another uses Excel.  Yet another has some other tool.  Good.  Okay, what if you have 100 songs?  Now the paper-pencil kid is struggling.  How about 1,000?  Now a million.  This is a great conversation.  The kids have to think about how to solve this problem.  It’s just awesome when a student solves a problem in a totally different way than I would.”

For the record, AMSA students kick butt on the 10th grade MCAS statewide exams.  All of them, not just math and science.

Because learning computer science teaches kids how to think.  The science itself teaches the 21st century skills, which are:  critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration.

Could all the money and effort being pumped into education reform be missing something?  Like, say, computer science?

Which is a little silly considering what a piece of cake it is to intrigue a distracted middle-schooler with electronics.  As Powers says, “We find it easiest to integrate c.s. from the get-go.  Kids love the creative nature of computing.”

So kids love it.  The academic results are great.  But this nation has a dearth of computer science courses for K-12  (Not so Russia, Israel and India).  Next week we’ll look at the crisis this situation is causing in the business world.

In the meantime, note that the introductory Exploring Computer Science course — aimed at 9th-graders — will be offered July 29th – August 2nd.  For details and registration, contact Kelly Powers at K.Powers@amsacs.org .

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Computer Science Dazzles Students, Boosts Achievement appeared first on Education News.

Twenty New York City middle- and high schools are going to be taking part in a pilot program that will bring a comprehensive computer science curriculum into their classrooms, Mayor Mike Bloomberg has announced. The pilot program is part of the effort by the city to prepare its students to succeed in a world that is becoming more dependent on technology every year.

Like other parts of the country, companies based in New York City are reporting a severe shortage in qualified engineers, computer programmers and other technology workers, and hopes that efforts like Software Engineering Pilot will make it easier to produce homegrown candidates to fill this gap. With this goal in mind, the schools taking part on the pilot will begin offering courses covering topics like computer programming, web design, embedded electronics, robotics and mobile computing starting next year. As part of the pilot, teacher training programs will also be put into place.

“We know it’s vital to prepare our children to succeed in an increasingly technology-centered economy, and the Software Engineering Pilot will help us do just that,” Bloomberg said in a statement today. “This groundbreaking program will ensure that more students receive computer science and software engineering instruction so that they can compete for the tech jobs that are increasingly becoming a part of our city’s economy. We’re creating the home-grown workforce our city needs and teaching our students skills that will open up new doors for them and their future.”

Among those selected to participate are schools located in all five boroughs and includes at least one specialized school – the Brooklyn Technical High School commonly known as “Brooklyn Tech” – which requires an entrance exam. The city’s acclaimed public school for gifted kids – Mark Twain IS. 239 will also participate in the pilot.

The announcement follows the “Made in NYC” campaign that Bloomberg announced last week, which supports the city’s startup community. Students participating in the SEP program will likely be strong applicants for Cornell NYC Tech’s campus, which is scheduled to open in 2017 (classes have already begun in temporary Manhattan locations). If all goes according to plan, NYC’s engineer shortage will be less of a problem in several years.

It is no coincidence that Brooklyn’s High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology served as the setting for the announcement of the new educational push. The school, which is one of the participants, was created as part of an effort by the Bloomberg administration to bring better STEM education to the city.

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Britain’s Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that a year from now, students can expect their Baccalaureate exams to include a portion on computer science, joining physics, chemistry and biology as a science for testing purposes. The announcement comes amid an ongoing discussion of both the British exam system and ways to increase students’ computer literacy.

Britain’s ruling Coalition has been debating educational reform, particularly how to change the comprehensive system of exams that close out secondary education. GCSE exams and the more advanced A-levels are given in a set number of subjects. They include the sciences, mathematics, English, a choice of history or geography, and a foreign language. The language can be classical or modern, and as many as 172 language options are offered.

Gove’s Education Ministry has proposed replacing GCSE exams with a new set of tests. Debate goes on about whether to move forward with this replacement, and if so, with what.

In January 2012, the Secretary changed the computer science curriculum from a less challenging information and communications technology (ICT) program to computer programming, as many computer experts and advocates have called for more technical programming education in general education courses. The new decision to include computer science in the Baccalaureate comes in response to this advocacy:

In October, a panel of technology experts, including representatives of Google and Microsoft, called for the inclusion of computer science in the English Baccalaureate.

But having a test at the end of the education won’t be enough, computer experts say. Real computer literacy must be comprehensive.

Microsoft’s [UK] education director Steve Beswick welcomed the announcement as the “start of a journey” in changing how computer science is taught. He wants the subject to be taught to even younger children, including in primary school.

Microsoft and other technology advocates recommend taking a fresh look at education in the new century. Older models are about standards, individual work, factual memorizing and instructors who direct the learning. As computers become not only the subject but also the mode of learning, education will be collaborative, creative, student-centered, and focused on information exchange.

At the same time, as computer advocates succeed in adding computer science to Britain’s small cluster of exams, those who believe the creative arts need a larger place worry that the curriculum will become too rigid. The governing coalition’s opposition is quick to point out the problems:

Stephen Twigg, Labour’s education spokesman, said: “Adding computer science into the EBacc is too little, too late. Gove’s exams still place no value on creative subjects like art, music and drama, and no value on practical subjects like engineering, design and technology and construction.”

But the government believes that including computer science outweighs any other possible inclusions. Computer science is not creative in the same way that fine arts are, but it is a less passive study than some other subjects. As Beswick and others have noted, teaching computer science means changing the learning model to active, project-oriented learning.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “We need to bring computational thinking into our schools. Having computer science in the EBacc will have a big impact on schools over the next decade. “It will mean millions of children learning to write computer code so they are active creators and controllers of technology instead of just being passive users.”

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Teaching computer science was celebrated last week with the annual recognition event called CSEdWeek. The week is celebrated during the birthday week of Grace Murray Hopper, one of the pioneers in the computer science field and one of the first programmers of Harvard Mark I computer. Hopper was born on December 9th, 1906.

The aim of the celebration is to encourage more students in K-12 to study computer science and to expose them to the multiple facets of the constantly-evolving discipline. As the website for the event explains, computer science involves learning about more than just programming languages — it also encompasses the study of computer engineering, informatics, information technology, and information systems.

In an increasingly tech-hungry and tech-dependent world, computer science touches almost every part of daily life. It is an engine of economic growth and it has an impact on almost every part of society today. Yet according to Teach for America, it remains one of the most overlooked components of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education. Schools are experiencing a chronic shortage of skilled instructors in the subject and seem at a loss even as to the most effective way to teach it. Some of the challenges to the field include:

There is insufficient innovative computing curricula for students at all levels

Few students have the opportunity to study computer science in an engaging and rigorous way

The lack of ethnic and gender diversity among those who take computer science courses is unacceptable

Teachers have few opportunities for professional development in computing

Certification for computer science teachers is virtually nonexistent nationwide

In light of the fact that employers are also calling for schools to produce more computer science professionals, schools that embrace teaching the subject will also be doing their students a real service by putting them on the path towards a lucrative future career. The event website cites data that shows that close to a million computing jobs will be created by the year 2018, and five of the ten fastest-growing industries involve computing.

Those graduating with computer science and computer engineering college degrees are attracting job offers and high starting salaries, yet the number of high schools and middle schools that offer courses on computer science fell from 40% to 27% between the years of 2005 and 2009.

The percent of high schools with introductory computer science courses fell from 78% to 65% from 2005-2009.

The majority of states have no certification for computer science teachers; in states where certification or endorsement exists, the requirements may have little, if any, computer science content.

Only 17% of AP computer science test-takers in 2008 were women , although women represented 55% of all AP test-takers.

For schools that want to embrace teaching it, there are many engaging and original options to pursue. Tess Rinearson points to edu-toys like Lego Mindstorm robots that will engage younger children and provide an age-appropriate introduction to the discipline. There are even programming languages that are aimed squarely at middle-schoolers that eschew complexities often found in full-featured high-level languages used by older students and professionals. Among the most used are Scratch and Alice.

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A recently published position paper by Microsoft calls on the government to take steps that would increase the number of high school graduates interested in pursuing STEM degrees and careers. However, the company isn’t content to leave it at that. Taking a more direct approach, Microsoft is sending its employees into the classrooms to serve as volunteer computer science instructors for a year to encourage students’ interest in the subject enough to consider making a career out of it.

Steven Edouard is one of the employees who heeded the call. He now works as a Computer Science teacher at Rainier Beach High School in Seattle four days a week. He is one of 110 participants in the philanthropic project overseen by the company’s general counsel Brad Smith.

Participation requires teaching at least two hour-long classes a week, with many taking on as many as five. Schools attempt to schedule the classes for the morning to allow the engineers to return to their regular jobs for the remainder of the day. Those who choose to take on teaching get a small stipend to offset expenses associated with participating in the program.

The program started as a grass-roots effort by Kevin Wang, a Microsoft engineer with a master’s degree in education from Harvard.

In 2009, he began volunteering as a computer science teacher at a Seattle public high school on his way to work. After executives at Microsoft caught wind of what he was doing, they put financial support behind the effort — which is known as Technology Education and Literacy in Schools, or TEALS — and let Wang run it full time.

Initially only schools in the Seattle area were targeted, but now there are Microsoft volunteers heading up classrooms in the other parts of Washington State as well as in North Dakota, Utah and California. Next year a school in Minnesota will become a beneficiary when Park Christian school in Moorehead will begin to offer a CS class taught by a Microsoft employee.

Microsoft wants other big technology companies to back the effort so it can broaden the number of outside engineers involved.

“I think education and bringing more people into the field is something all technology companies agree on,” said Alyssa Caulley, a Google software engineer, who, along with a Microsoft volunteer, is teaching a computer science class at Woodside High School in Woodside, Calif.

Although the Microsoft engineers fill a need which arises from a dearth of well-qualified Computer Science teachers, their lack of teaching certification presents a problem. This means that a professional teacher often needs to be on hand during lessons to keep schools from violating district requirements.

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