Celebrate Computer Science Education

At Lake Highland Prep in Orlando, FL, we'll be celebrating Computer Science Education in a couple of ways. I have some outstanding guest speakers that will be visiting our school and talking to our students.  Scott Faris will be talking to my AP class about his company. Mrs. Frank who runs a very successful online business selling childrens clothes will be coming in to speak to my Web Design class. Finally, Joe Healy, from Microsoft will be bringing Bill Reiss from Tampa to speak to my Honors Programming class. Bill is an XNA developer and will be talking about game development to my students.
In addition, the Tech club will be creating a video commercial for that day.
Finally, we'll have posters set up around campus promoting computer science education. That's what we have planned so what will you be doing to promote computer science education at your school or business??

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Valerie Bernauer
Technology Coordinator/Teacher K-8
Our Lady of Lourdes School
30 S. Downey Ave.
Indianapolis, Indiana 46219

Her school will be having a computer science poster contest that day.

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Sharon Dearmon from Bishop Moore HS in Orlando FL

What will we do in honor of Grace Hopper Day?

 

0) every celebration needs food – sign up to bring in some snacks

1) We will listen to some computer science songs

2) We will have a contest to see who is the first to find the bug in a program

3) If anyone wants to write a song (perhaps Mr. Reyes?) in honor of Grace Hopper we can share that!

 

Scott Faris who is the Managing Director of Corporate IP Ventures in Orlando, FL came to my 2nd period AP Computer Science class to speak to my students about his company and the technologies that he has worked with. Scott was very interesting and the students learned a great deal. The next speaker was Ms Hyland who runs an online clothing store talked to my web design students about her business and about the technologies
that they have used as well. Her husband came in later to answer any questions about the business.
Finally, Joe Healy from Microsoft Corporation and Bill Reiss from Tampa came in to talk about XNA Programming with my Honors Programming class. We invited engineering students to listen to the talks so
the room was crowded. Bill showed lots of demos of games he created. All in all, it was a fun day for my students and for me as well.

• Essay contest about the life of Grace Hopper

• Poster contest

• Find the bug

• Fastest to debug a program

• Guest speakers from the Computer Science Field

• A few ideas for daily/week long promotions:
  -add a brief announcement to the school daily announcements each day recognizing a famous CS person or event.

• Have students/club members create posters to hang in the school hallways on CS careers/events/personalities

• Each day recognize a successful CS student or team or project with a school announcement and the delivery of an award ribbon to the student in his/her first hour class (not your hour)

• Collaborate with math, science or other teachers to reciprocate, sharing with students, famous inventors from each other's field of study.

• Host an open house after school complete with "puppy chow" or chex mix snacks - otherwise known as "bits and bytes"

• Invite past students in to "tell it like it is" about CS careers or college

• Make each day a special day in your classes with fun activities or something unusual that focuses on the impact CS makes in the lives of your students.

• I can't remember how this was done but.... a computer program was used to match up the "perfect couples" based on interests, etc. I sort of remember a fairly long interest inventory and a fee of a dollar or two to get the names of 10 other students that "match" you. FWIW it might be
  a fun $ maker for the CS club.

• Collaborate with the web team to feature something about your classes for the week, - projects, CS careers, successful former CS students from the school, etc.

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• Collaborate with the lunch room "ladies" to rename the items of each day's menu to some clever computer related term. ..just for fun...infinite loop spaghetti or Grace Hopper Pie...(from Pat Phillips, mainfunction.com)