Congress Recognizes CS Education Week

National Lab Day

CS Ed Week is a great opportunity to get publicity and media attention focused on what we do and where we’re going.  For it to be really useful though, we’ll need to capture some of the generated interest and put it to constructive use.  CS education is not just the responsibility teachers but of the entire computing community (researchers, academics, and professionals). National Lab Day gives you a great way to connect with some of these people as resources for your class.

National Lab Day is an unprecedented, nationwide effort to bring more high-quality, hands-on, discovery-based lab experiences to middle and high school students. It is more than just a day. It’s teachers working with community volunteers and communities rallying around teachers to improve STEM education. We tend to think of “labs” as test tubes and beakers, ramps and levers, or frogs and bugs, but in reality they can be much more broadly defined. A lab can be any place where students can explore, experiment, test, design, and get their hands dirty and their minds engaged; it can be anywhere that authentic lessons in science, technology, engineering, math, and computer science can be designed to happen.

National Lab Day is centered on teachers and thus, activities will vary from classroom to classroom. What resources could you use? It could be help with a new computer lab: What should your school buy? What about installation? Software? Teach support? Or fund raising? It could be help introducing new activities to your class: CS Unplugged? Scratch or Alice? Robotics? Cell phone apps? Perhaps you’re interested in curriculum redesign and are looking for new ways to highlight computational thinking and problem solving. It could be that you’d like professionals to help convey the range of application and promise of computing to your students: What’s new and exciting? What career opportunities are out there? Or perhaps you’d like members of your local community to help with internships, research experiences, job shadowing, or science fair projects. You create the project. National Lab Day helps to connect you to the resources and volunteers that you’ll need to do it.

Take advantage of National Lab Day at http://www.nationallabday.org. Sign up and start your own project by posting a description -- Thanks!  Jan Cuny, Program Director, NSF