Home MembershipSpecial Interest GroupsSIGCT (Computing Teachers)Journal for Computing Teachers (JCT)Past Issues2008 Spring

President’s Message

Joe Kmoch

Welcome to this first issue of ISTE/SIGCT’s revitalized Journal for Computing Teachers (JCT) put together by a new editor, Dr. John Thompson. Previously known as the Journal for Computer Science Education, our publication now has a new name that more closely reflects our expanded mission since 2005, which includes teaching and learning about computing in grades K–12. This publication is intended to focus on longer, more in-depth articles in which issues, research, and the practice of computing are explored. I hope we see articles both from college folks as well as teacher-driven articles with classroom strategies, tips, units, problems, etc.

This also marks another change: this issue and at least the next few issues will be available to everyone everywhere. SIGCT's community of educators is much smaller than that community of educators who use computing, so the SIGCT Board in collaboration with ISTE decided to expand our publication's availability. If you are a current SIGCT member, we hope you enjoy this journal focused on learning about computing. There is nothing else like it currently anywhere. If you are a non-member, I encourage you to contact me directly at joe@jkmoch.com so that our board can learn about you, find out your interests, and if you would like to see the JCT availability continued.

The SIGCT Board encourages membership in ISTE/SIGCT because of the availability of people and resources in other ISTE SIGs with missions that relate to what we do as professionals. This access to an organization such as ISTE with its efforts to advocate for technology in schools and access to other SIGs with interests related to ours (such as SIGDE — Digital Equity, SIGTE — Teacher Educators, SIGTC — Technology Coordinators and others) is what makes membership in ISTE/SIGCT special. We hope you will consider joining. To find out more information, see http://iste.org.

As we move ahead with future issues of JCT, we will be looking for articles that support and expand on our K–12 mission of teaching and learning about computing. To this end, I thought I would list some issues and ideas that I hope spark some interest for you to write about.

I believe JCT has plenty of room for articles of various kinds, including those that

• explore issues which have longer term and more system implications
• provide more focus for the classroom
• offer examples of lessons that can be immediately used in your classroom

Some of those larger issues include —

Why is it so difficult to find teachers to teach about computing?

• What are the implications for teacher training programs?
• What are the implications of technology certification (or their lack)?
• What are the implications of continuing professional development?
• What are the local, state, and national implications?

Why is it so difficult to get students to get involved with computing so they are creators of computing rather than only consumers of computing?

• What are the implications for school programs?
• Are there any national curricula that can be explored?
• What are the implications for administrators, guidance counselors, and teachers themselves?
• What are the implications for the paradigms we use to teach computing?

Topics and questions of more immediate use to our classroom teachers, who are the majority of our membership include:

• Can we find interesting teaching techniques that we can share?
• Are there tools and techniques for teaching particular topics that could be explored and debated?

If you are a SIGCT member, thank you for choosing us as one of your ISTE SIGs. Please consider becoming more involved in our efforts. If you are not a SIGCT member, please consider joining us in our efforts to reinvigorate our area of interest: teaching and learning about computing in PK–12.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Joe Kmoch
President, SIGCT
joe@jkmoch.com