The demand for Software Developers will continue to grow and increase 22% by 2020. I hope my students are listening and reading all of these articles I keep posting.
HP CodeWars is just around the corner. It should be a good time. My students have done very well over the last 3 years and we hope to keep that trend going in 2013. If you are not near a HP CodeWars location, consider hosting your own high school programming contest. Students love to crank code in a contest setting.
Tech Salaries are Still on the Rise
It looks like high demand and relatively short supply of Computer Science graduates is continuing to drive up salaries.
It seems like this is the case year after year, but many students still aren’t getting the news.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/21/financial_software_disasters/
This was sent to me by a friend who works out for a large software company.
It is rather interesting and an article I plan to share with my Comp Sci students.
I plan to share this article with my Computer Science classes on Monday. The article discusses the need for workers with CS related high tech skills, but yet also shows that some of these jobs are not paying much considering what all is required to get the job. The skill set needed for some of these jobs is quite high, but the pay is quite low.
Well,
All 3 of my AP SIs have concluded. I had a great time at all 3 stops and look forward to doing a few summer institutes again next year.
This year, I started each SI with Scratch and Jeroo on the first day and then moved on to GridWorld and lots of Java. I spent considerable time on arrays and ArrayLists as those topics constitute a huge part of the exam. We worked with arrays and lists using graphics, games, and cross-curricular focused projects.
Time was spent discussing ways to show students how important Computer Science skills all to other disciplines and to students considering a degree other than Computer Science. We read articles each day, like the ones I post here on this blog and discussed the relevance of talking about articles in class.
I just received a link to a great article about Stanford Computer Science and the changes they have made. It is a great article and makes me feel great about many of the changes I have made to my curriculum over the last 3 or 4 years.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
It seems like I run across an article like this at least once a week. Most of the articles are strictly about the demand for Computer Science graduates, but the demand for Cybersecurity professionals is just as high. I spoke with a former student last week that has a Masters in a Cybersecurity related field and his career is going quite well.
I also had the pleasure last week of having lunch with 3 of my former students all of which are now in the Turing Honors Computer Science program at the University of Texas at Austin. These students are all freshmen and have all received numerous internship offers for the summer. The internship offers were all from highly respected companies with nice compensation packages. Almost all of their classmates had multiple summer interships offers as well and all of their friends that recently graduated had a large number of job offers from which to choose. It sounds like the UT Austin Computer Science program has it going on!
A friend just sent this video link which follows along the same lines as the rest of my post.
Lastly, if you are still searching for a Computer Science workshop for the summer, check of my workshop list. My workshops are a blast – we covers lots of material and have a ton of fun doing it. Cheers!
I have posted about how everybody needs Comp Sci skeelz numerous times, but here is another link to another article discussing the same idea.
Learning how to solve a problem computationally is a really cool process and that experience will help students in many different ways. How could it hurt? Many of my students will get jobs or start companies that rely on computing power to conduct their everyday business. Knowing a bit more about how these systems work and how they were built is a good thing. Having the knowledge to build your own system or tell someone else how to build what you want is very useful.
Teaching students basic content early seems to me to be the best way to get kids hooked and interested so that they will continue on and gain the skeelz they will use and need for life. Elementary school is the place to start and there are many tools you could use to get the ball rolling. Scratch is one that works great!
The University of Texas at Austin Computer Science Department is again holding a Computer Science camp for girls this summer.
The First Bytes Summer Camp for Girls will accept applications through the 23rd of March.
Many of my students have attended past instances of this camp and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Almost all of my students that attended the camp in the past have gone on to either minor or major in Computer Science.
Check it out!
Computer Science skills can be learned at any age. I have been going to my sons’ elementary school for the last 3 years at least twice a year, teaching their classes how to create games, animations, and stories. I have taught them how to use variables, loops, ifs, and lists using Scratch. All of the boys and girls in each class love it when I come out and they use the skills to create projects throughout the year. These students all think CS is cool and will have no problem taking Computer Science classes in the future as they are comfortable with the concepts and idea of writing programs. I hope that I have successfully planted the seeds for a whole crop of future Computer Scientists.
This article discusses the same idea of starting students in Computer Science early and makes some of the same points.
I like to talk to my students in Computer Science about career options and what and where they can do things later on life.
I had all of my classes take a look at the NSA recruiting page to see where NSA had needs.
http://www.nsa.gov/careers/
They were very impressed that Computer Science and Computer Engineering were in high demand.
Several of my students have Cyber Security career ambitions so this is very good information for them to have.