CSTA NE (Huskers) September Minutes

Hello, everybody

Here are the notes for today’s meeting.

Date: September 21, 2015: 7:14 PM – 8:00 PM

Place: Lincoln Southwest

Present: Leen-Kiat Soh, Kent Steen, Scott Burns, Susan Prabulos, Lloyd Summerer, Scott Handelman, Deb Bulin, Jason Rushing, Craig Eveleth (LPS Lakeview Elementary)

1. Introduction of attendees
2. NETA
   1. Scott Handelman (teaching programming via Python), Deb Bulin both presented last year.
   2. Susan Prabulous, Jason Rushing, Kent Steen: Starting elementary K-5 CS curriculum
   3. From Kent: Alice Steinglass, VP from Code.org will be a “Featured Speaker” at NETA; potentially visiting UNL on Wednesday and visiting Cory Epler of NDE
   4. From Kent: Doug Durham from Nebraska Global is advocating. Get a whole group of industry reps to visit NDE. From Leen-Kiat: I followed up and also encouraged him to talk to the State Board of Education.
   5. From Kent: Working with Jason to work with Jacqui Garrison to get Hadi Partovi of Code.org to come to NETA’2017 for keynote speech
   6. ACTION PLAN: Scott Burns will work on the registration form with NETA to re-establish our partnership with NETA.
3. University of Nebraska Reporting
   1. From Leen-Kiat: Working on getting CS to be allowed to count towards Math or Science for university admission requirements
   2. ACTION PLAN: Lloyd will follow up with Concordia University to count CS towards college/university admissions
4. Inventory for High School CS topics
   1. Since AP CS Principles is coming soon; but still not part of NDE.
   2. ACTION PLAN: Scott will start a Google document to collect all the course syllabi and perhaps also course schedules
   3. Only Lincoln High and Northeast do not have any CS courses.
   4. Allow students to transfer and pathways
   5. Career Center pathways (decided by SCC): not a single student from Scott Handelman’s class is happy with the strain there. Adult education course. Not appropriate for students.
   6. Parochial + Public schools: would be good to have a set of common core topics
   7. From Kent: will update everybody on the meeting that they are going to have next week, and then will share, will eventually involve UNL and parochial schools
5. CS Education Week
   1. Christina Oldfather of Lincoln Chambers of Commerce is going to hold a big event
   2. Leen-Kiat and Kent will meet with Christina this Friday
   3. Will the cost be lower if it was a UNL request?
   4. ACTION PLAN: Leen-Kiat and Kent will report back after the meeting.
6. Visit of Computer Lab at Southwest
7. Next Meeting:
   1. October 26, 2015 (Monday), Location: Lincoln Southwest; 7:00 PM

Thanks,

Leen-Kiat Soh