Last month at the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) biennial Snowbird Conference, a session titled “Reflections on Teaching Massive Online Open Courses” featured Peter Norvig from Google and Salman Khan (via Skype) from the Khan Academy discussing the recent transformation taking place in education. Well, yesterday, the Khan Academy launched a brand new portal that aims to teach computer science through interactive drawing. The tutorials on the new Khan website are focused on computing for today’s youth, beginning prior to high school and concluding just before a college-level introductory computer science course. Check out a video describing the new CS education portal after the jump:

Harvard computer scientist and CCC Council member Margo Seltzer was interviewed last week about her thoughts on women in computer science: Txchnologist: Although women make up nearly half of the workforce in the U.S., the Department of Commerce reports that only one out of four employed computer scientists is female. Does this fit with what you see?   Margo Seltzer: It’s stunning. The numbers are bad, and they’re not particularly getting better globally. The only place that I’ve encountered worse numbers is actually finance and entrepreneurism. Those are the only events that I’ve ever gone to where I’ve felt that I was even more outnumbered.   Txch: What do you think accounts for the disparity? [more following […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has developed a new website for undergraduates seeking summer research opportunities as well as advice and tips on applying for graduate school. The website is called CS URGE (CS Undergraduate Research and Graduate Education), and the URL is http://cra.org/ccc/csurge. We URGE you to promote CS URGE with your students and place a link to the site from your departmental website. In addition to sections on “What is CS Research” and “Why Go to Graduate School?”, the site contains links to many undergraduate summer research programs (e.g., NSF REU, CRA-W, and many others) as well as a free service where researchers can post summer research opportunities […]

Computing was among the excitement this past weekend at the 2nd Annual USA Science & Engineering Festival, held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. The festival is the largest celebration of science and engineering in the U.S. and featured over 500 exhibits and 75 performances and shows on multiple stages. The National Science Foundation (NSF) was an Einstenium sponsor of the Festival and supported a performance stage and the participation of 16 projects, including the SpelBots. The SpelBots are a team of students with an interest in robotics from Spelman College, a female historically black college, and were formed to inspire and encourage young women and underrepresented students […]

The Computing Research Association (CRA) today released a report — Computing Degree and Enrollment Trends, 2010-2011 — providing summary data from its annual Taulbee survey of Ph.D.-granting departments in computer science and allied fields in the U.S. and Canada. As posted on CRA’s Policy Blog: Enrollments in undergraduate computer science programs rose 9.6 percent in the 2011-12 school year, the fourth straight year of increase…  

An article in today’s New York Times that’s making the rounds — written by Randall Stross, an author and professor of business at San Jose State University: READING, writing and — refactoring code?   Many professors of computer science say college graduates in every major should understand software fundamentals. They don’t argue that everyone needs to be a skilled programmer. Rather, they seek to teach “computational thinking” — the general concepts programming languages employ.   In 2006, Jeannette M. Wing, head of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote a manifesto arguing that basic literacy should be redefined to include understanding of computer processes. “Computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not […]