My name is Joe Kmoch from Milwaukee, WI and one of several regular bloggers on the ACM Inroads site. My orientation will be K-12 since I taught math and computer science for 34 years, 28 of those at Washington HS of IT in Milwaukee. I taught all sorts of programming and IT courses along the way including APCS-AB for 21 years. I also was on the APCS Development Committee for 4 years.
Since I retired some years ago, I advise the school and serve on their Advisory Board which is made up of about 20 business people, some post-secondary reps and a few retired staff like me. As some of you know, I’ve kept my “oar in the water” related to CS education. I’ve been involved at the curricular level and as an advocate for increased CS in schools in general both locally and around the nation. If you want to see some specifics of my involvement, take a look at my LinkedIn page at http://www.linkedin.com/in/joekmoch
Over what I hope will be many blogs and lots of comments, I’m guessing that everything K-12 is on the table. Advocacy, approaches to beginning courses at the HS level, middle school and elementary computer science (possibly with a guest blogger for elementary), developing a program (i.e., a series of courses at the high school level, perhaps a series of units at the K-8 level), getting support for your program, and probably lots of other things that I’m forgetting at the moment.
I welcome your response to any future blog posts I write. So let the fun begin!
It’s great to have you on board, Joe! There is a lot of discussion of and interest in computing in the K-12 area, and it sounds like you’ll challenge us to think hard about the subject.