Posted by David Petty on Oct 23, 2019

Voice, the voice of K-12 computer science education and its educators.

The 2019 CSTA New England Regional Conference will be held on Oct. 26, 2019, at the Boston University Photonics Center.

Full Story

The 2019 CSTA New England Regional Conference will be held on Oct. 26, 2019, at the Boston University Photonics Center. This third annual conference will bring together more than 150 educators and leaders in K-12 and higher education, state policymakers, and industry professionals from across the six New England states – Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island – and beyond. The conference theme is Equity in Computing: Working Together to Strengthen Computer Science Education.

The conference has five tracks with 30 talks and hands-on activities in areas such as elementary-, middle-, and high-school teaching, equity, physical computing, robotics, AI and drones.  The keynote speakers are Kristina Lengyel, VP of Global Services at Tableau, and Sandra Nagale, Director of Digital Health at Boston Scientific Corporation. The schedule, more information, and registration ($38 for CSTA+ members) are available on our conference website.

The CSTA New England Regional Conference (which coincides with the last weekend of Mass STEM Week this year) began as an opportunity for practitioners and leaders from New England CSTA chapters to share the good, diverse work happening in this hotbed of computing education. Each of the states has a different demographic makeup and different approach to standards, licensure, curriculum, and state-level policies. Sharing our experiences and practices has been powerful for participants in past years.

The conference was hosted in 2017 at UMass Lowell, in 2018 at Rhode Island College, and next year will be organized by CSTA Maine. Rotating the location has allowed different chapters to share the spotlight (and organizational challenges!) and eased travel for some of the far-flung participants – though we have always used part of our funding to offer travel scholarships for overnight accommodations to those traveling over 80 kilometers.

Check out our schedule and see why we are excited about this weekend’s conference! If you’re joining us, or curious about our conference, follow our hashtag: #2019cstaNE.

About the Author

David C. Petty teaches computing and robotics at Brookline High School, an urban public high school in Massachusetts. He is past co-president of the CSTA Greater Boston chapter and one of the organizers of the 2019 CSTA New England Regional Conference.