More than 3,000 teachers, administrators, and students attended the 2014 California STEM Symposium this week at the San Diego Convention Center. While there was a lot of math and science related learning going on, there was also an emphasis throughout the symposium on the importance of coding and computer science within all of the STEM fields. Teachers are learning how to code using “Scratch” and “Alice” education programming languages, and Project Lead the Way gave workshops on its new Computer Science Curriculum. Professor Cheng and staff from the UC Davis C-STEM Center provided a workshop on curriculum that integrates math, coding and robotics.

Code.org co-founder and CEO Hadi Partovi kicked-off the conference with an inspiring video that included progress that was made last year through the hour of code campaign and emphasized the need for more computer science instruction in the classroom.

Chris Roe, President and Chief Executive Officer of the California STEM Learning Network also advocated for action to increase computer science instruction and announced release of a new policy brief on the subject: “Computer Science Education in California: From Kindergarten to the Workforce.

Code.org is promoting the curriculum found in the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) course that was developed by UCLA in partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District. Congratulations to the CTE teachers from the following schools attended ECS training at UCLA this year!

• Central Union High School
• Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies
• La Canada High School
• Polytechnic High School
• Folsom High School