Blogs By and For High School Computer Science Teachers

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Well the nominations for the Educational Blog awards are out again. I'm not nominated but some people I know and blogs I read are. Vicki Davis who writes a great blog called the Cool Cat Teacher blog is nominated for best teacher blog and I'm happy about that.  I hope she wins.

This event got me thinking though about the state of computer science teacher blogs. On one hand one would think that if any teachers were blogging it would be computer science teachers. They are after all on the computer a lot and knowledgeable in all sorts of computer applications. But one truth I have found is that they are all at least as busy as other teachers. Often times they spend so much of their so-called free time (and a lot of not free time) solving technology problems for others that blogging is not often something that fits into their schedule.

All that being said I have a few high school computer science teacher blogs in my blog role and a couple of blogs that I would recommend that computer science teachers read. It thought I would list s few (give them some link love) and give a line or two about each so you can decide if you want to check them out. They are listed in no particular order BTW.

So here now the review.

High School Computer Science Teacher Blogs

  • Brian Scarbeau - The typical extra busy teacher Brian does not post a lot but I always find a lot of value in what he does post. Brian is an innovator who has done and written about things he is doing in web development and game development. Brian is also the brain behind Computer Science Education day.
  • Tom Indelicato - Tom is an amazing teacher who does a lot of innovative things in his classes. He's done Pocket PC development, game development and runs his school's FIRST Robotics team. Having had the job he now has (I hired him - best hiring I ever did) I understand why he doesn't have time to post as often as I would like.
  • Mr. Higgins - Higgy teaches both math and computer science like a lot of people. He's young energetic and always has a lot of new ideas.
  • Kathleen Weaver - Kathleen teaches HS CS in Dallas TX. She writes about the joys and no so joys of teaching as well as sharing ideas and links for others to use.
  • Ben Chun - Titled "and yet it moves" Ben is another young teacher in his early years of teaching. Young teachers seem to be blogging more than older ones. Imagine that! Some reflections, some project ideas, like others in my list not a lot of posts but well written and interesting.
  • Christian Day - Nothing posted since last July. Most posts are links to resources for his students or for teachers taking his summer workshop for AP CS teachers.
  • Dustin Swanson - Computer Science 30 - Mostly class assignments and projects for a programming class using PHP and MySQL. Not updated very often.

I have a few others in my RSS reader that have not been updated in a very long time and I think they are pretty much abandoned. My gut tells me there have to be more high school (and perhaps middle school) computer science teachers out there blogging and sharing ideas. If you know of any PLEASE leave me a comment.

Blogs for High School Computer Science Teachers to Read

  • CSTA Blog - The official blog of the Computer Science Teachers Association. If you are a high school computer science teacher you should be a member and this is a blog you should read for interesting information, links and to stay current. Contributions are made by members of the CSTA board and their amazing executive director Chris Stephenson.
  • Leigh Ann Sudol - In Need Of A Base Case - Leigh Ann is hard to categorize. She is a very experienced high school teacher and a long time reader of the AP CS exam (Leigh Ann trained me the year I graded the AP exam and will forever call me her "acorn") but these days she is a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University. Yes, she is that smart. She blogs about interesting topics in CS and CS education research.
  • Mark Guzdial - If you want to keep up with computer science education research this is the blog to follow. Mark Guzdial is on the faculty of Georgia Tech and the work he does there with CS1/CS2 type courses applies directly to AP CS and even earlier. He hardly ever writes a post that I don't want to link directly to.

I subscribe to a lot of other technology blogs and blogs by professors and I do link to some of them from time to time. But these three above are the ones I would recommend to people with limited blog reading time because of the constant value.