Cybersecurity, Computational Thinking, Computer Science and STEM were the foci of SIGCT (Computing Teacher) activities at the recent ISTE Annual Conference in San Antonio, June 23-26, 2013.
ISTE 2013 (The International Society for Technology in Education) had about 17,000 attendees probably 80% K-12, the rest post-secondary. While most of this conference deals with using computing technology in K-12 classrooms, there were about 80 sessions which were of interest to the SIGCT special interest group. Specifically for Computer Science there were 13 activities that involved computer science (including several BYOD sessions, for example) and 8 more activities related to teaching IT. While the number of CS sessions are much greater at other conferences like CSTA, attendees get involved in other SIGs which might be of interest to computer science and information technology folks such as the SIGs for Teacher Education, Technology Coordinators, Administrators, Games and Simulations and others.
There is interest in computer science within ISTE. I don’t know about other computer science sessions, but a BYOD on Scratch was full with about 120 attendees and about 40 additional who waited in line to get in (unfortunately few of those did).
I’m heavily involved in the SIGCT and as part of our activities our SIG held a Forum and a Playground both of which featured CyberSecurity which is a very hot topic in San Antonio. With the second highest concentration of certified information security professionals nationally, the city has been working since 2002 to build educator-industry partnerships and get more students educated in computer science, IT and CyberSecurity. The 24th Air Force (the AF component of Cyber Command) just located their headquarters in San Antonio in part because of the strong talent pipelines in the region.
San Antonio has 54 schools which are involved in a national competition called Cyber Patriot http://uscyberpatriot.org where kids use both IT as well as computer science skills. We also learned that Computational Thinking plays a big part in not only that competition but in schools which have made CyberSecurity a priority in their curriculum. Several high schools and colleges with CyberSecurity programs exhibited and involved participants at the SIGCT Playground including the UT San Antonio Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS), Alamo Colleges’ ITSA (Information Technology and Security Academy) as well as student and faculty representatives from St. Philips College and Southwest, Holmes and Jay High Schools in San Antonio.
It turns out that CyberSecurity and computer forensics both involve a lot of computer science, particularly significant problem solving and programming, along with significant IT components. I am aware that there are several collegiate programs in Computer Forensics and CyberSecurity, but I didn’t know how extensive this was at least in the San Antonio area (http://cybercityusa.org/home) and indeed much of Texas. This is certainly an area that both high schools and colleges consider for their programs. I know that recently the NSA has made appearances at CSTA, NCWIT and Grace Hopper conferences looking to get involved with computer science advocacy, because areas such as CyberSecurity are of great interest to our armed forces, our government, and should be to us.
