During the 2019 NCWIT Summit, we sat down with several plenary speakers, workshop presenters, and other change leaders from the NCWIT community to discuss their perspectives on valuing diversity, changing systems (as opposed to “fixing” underrepresented individuals), recognizing bias, and more. The end result was a series of short videos that not only captures what drives these change leaders in their inclusion efforts, but also highlights research-based recommendations from the vast collection of NCWIT resources.
Dr. Mark Guzdial is one of the leaders in the “Expanding Computing Education Pathways” (ECEP) NSF alliance, which serves states as they seek to make computing education more accessible to more students. In this video, he shares some of the innovative ways he has seen schools incorporate computing across the curriculum. If you’re interested in learning more about what state-level advocacy can look like, Organize: Broadening Participation in Computing State Summit Toolkit, a new resource created by NCWIT and ECEP, has a wealth of information to help you get started.
Transcript:
DR. MARK GUZDIAL: When we first got started, we looked at states that were making progress in their public policy around computing education, and we realized that there was a four-step process, and one of the early steps was to gather together, to organize, to have state summits. I think that some of the most successful, exciting work in computing education today is putting computer science into math classes and science classes. I’m working with history teachers now to think about programming in the history class. I think it’s important for state education policy to include those as counting; that those, also, are computer science.