Computer Science Education Blog Roll

I’m a firm believer that blogs are a great way for teachers to share ideas and builds community. Supporting that sort of community is why I have many blogs listed on the side of this blog’s home page. But that format is limited. It doesn’t give much information beyond a name and a link. I wanted to do a little more. Also blog roles are not weighted as heavily in search engine optimization as links in blog posts are. So it occurred to me that I should create a blog role blog post. I will be adding a link to this post permanently among the “important posts” list on the home page. Also I plan to add to this post and expand the descriptions over time. If there are more blogs I should be listing (and following myself) please let me know in the comments and I will edit them in.

Stacey Armstrong is a computer science teacher at Cypress Woods High School in Houston, TX. An accomplished APCS teacher and certified APCS consultant for the College Board. He writes about general CS concepts and issues.
Doug Bergman is the award winning head of Computer Science at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston, SC

Laura Blankenship writes mostly about teaching CS at an all girls' school. And the occasional post about her kids.

Ray Chambers is an ICT teacher Lodge Park Technology Collect in Corby Northamptonshire, England. Ray is huge in developing applications that use Kinect in education. I find his projects both inspiring and potentially quite useful.
Ben Chun teaches computer science at a large urban public school in California.
Doug Semple A particular focus on teaching materials for International Baccalaureate Computer Science but also his general musings on ICT, e-Learning and Education.
Garth's CS Teacher Blog Garth Flint is a teacher at a private Catholic school in western Montana. Garth always gives me things to think about.

Johnny Kissko KinectEDucation Blog “KinectEDucation is an educator-driven community resource for developers, teachers, students, enthusiasts, and any other education stakeholder to promote the use of Kinect applications in classrooms.”

Rebecca Dovi - I am a teacher on a mission. Every student should have access to computer science, it starts in my classroom.

Deepa Muralidhar writes a blog at csprinciplesnorth.wordpress.com on their experiences teaching CS Principles. They occasionally display students work samples there.

Kathleen Weaver - Teaching CS in Dallas Kathleen teaching computer science in the Dallas Independent School District and a good friend. An independent thinker.

Mike Zamansky, is a highly-regarded CS teacher at New York’s elite Stuyvesant public high school. He's also involved in the new Software Engineering High School that will open in September 2012.

Leigh Ann Sudol In need of a Base Case Leigh Ann Sudol is currently a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University but was a high school computer science teacher in New York state for a number of years. Leigh Ann is the person who trained me to grade the AP CS exam the year I was a reader. She has an amazingly quick mind and talks fast at times as well. Fortunately she writes well; unfortunately she doesn’t write as often as I’d like. But what she writes is very good.

CSTA Blog The CSTA blog is updated by various members of the CSTA board and by their amazing Executive Director, Chris Stephenson. I find it essential for keeping up with news from CSTA. I highly recommend CSTA membership for anyone who teachers computer science in pre-collegiate education.

Communications of the ACM: blog@CACM The CACM blog has posts from some of the top people in computer science. Some of the posts are very technical but many are potentially interesting for students, teachers and CS hobbyists alike.

Mark Guzdial – Georgia Tech, GA, US Computing Education Blog Mark is probably doing more research in how to teach computer science right than anyone else I know. His posts include information about the CS Principles course, he is on the advisory board, which will probably be a new APCS course. He talks about the work they are doing at Georgia Tech both in terms of teaching new and different courses there as well as the Georgia Computes! program that is helping to develop more CS education at the HS level in Georgia. I wish I wrote half as well as Mark. Whether if be his commentary on the various articles he finds or information about his own work or discussion of things his graduate students are doing what you will find here are well thought out, well written and informative posts. His are the first posts I read most days.

Eugene Wallingford, University of Northern Iowa, IW, US Knowing and Doing Eugene writes a lot about the things he does in class and I find this very informative. Teaching and Learning is the top item in his blog categories list. Computing and Software Development as close behind. This is another blog I like for its well thought out and well written posts. And like a lot of Mark Guzdial’s posts, the posts here often make me think. And I am always learning from this blog as well. From insights into pedagogy to societal issues in computing I find a lot of value in this blog.

Gail Carmichael, PhD student at Carleton University in Canada The Female Perspective of Computer Science I like this blog for its perspective and for the insights she shares from the courses and workshops that she teachers. She also does research in augmented reality and has good knowledge of games as teaching tools. And of course gender equity, something I care deeply about, is something she is well qualified to write about. So I learn a lot.

Hélène Martin used to teach high school computer science but now lectures for the introductory computer science courses at University of Washington. Scary smart and full of ideas I learn a lot from her.

Rob Miles – Hull University, UK Rob Miles' Journal The first thing you have to know about Rob is that he has a great sense of humor. The second thing is that he knows what he is talking about with regards to game development and programming for mobile devices. Rob has written a lot of good curriculum resources and is one heck of a speaker. On his blog he shares a lot of his resources as well as a lot about his life. This is not all tech all the time by any means. So if you take things too seriously read about the other blogs here. But for me I enjoy his travel talk and outstanding photography as well as the insights into teaching and software development. Rob is one of the first bloggers I ever started reading and I enjoy his work a great deal.

A couple of other good university faculty blogs for you to take a look at:

  • Jim Huggins Kettering University 
  • Existential Type Robert Harper, Carnegie Mellon University – Very technical and I don’t always follow everything