President's Message
Onward and Upward for SIGCT…with your help…and a challenge
Joe Kmoch, SIGCT President
As I bring to a close six years as the SIGCT (nee SIGCS) leader, I’ve had many wonderful opportunities and interactions with a number of individuals committed to the mission of SIGCT. I really want to thank all of you who have volunteered so much time and energy to work together toward moving SIGCT forward. This SIG is the only SIG in ISTE whose mission is to serve ISTE members interested in teaching about computing in addition to teaching with computing.
To continue moving forward to make SIGCT better and more useful for you our members, we really need your time and help. The current volunteer group of elected officers and committee chairs has done a lot. Their accomplishments include:
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Breakfast Forums: Created Breakfast Forums at NECC where issues can be discussed and networking among our membership can occur.
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Journal for Computing Teachers (JCT): Rejuvenated and rebranded our journal as JCT under the editorship of John Thompson who has volunteered immense amounts of time to create three substantial issues (so far) with more articles (peer reviewed and editor-reviewed) than all of the issues since about 2001 combined.
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Newsletter: Wrote a monthly newsletter that provides information to our membership on SIGCT activities, activities of related organizations, and links to articles and sites of interest to our members.
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Workshops: Offered two sponsored workshops at NECC.
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NCWIT: Facilitated a budding collaboration with the National Center for Women and Information Technology (an organization whose mission we share) including an upcoming Webinar sponsored by SIGCT, which will provide professional opportunities related to NCWIT's revised Gotta Have IT resource kit.
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NETS-A: Provided significant input to the upcoming NETS for Administrators (NETS-A) so that our voice and mission - teaching and learning about computing - will be included in this most important standard document.
Future activities could include book club readings, position papers to provide direction and our voice to the NETS-A standards as well as the other NETS standards, additional Webinars to provide professional development opportunities, collaborations with other ISTE SIGs on common issues (e.g., teacher certification and curriculum), and collaborations with other organizations outside of ISTE whose missions we share in whole or in part (e.g., CompTIA, CSTA, ITEA, TCEA).
However, to continue what has been started and to move into additional areas, we need many more individuals willing to volunteer even just a little time and a lot of expertise. Too often, we do these activities with too few people taking on the time-intensive work. We need more of you to work with the SIGCT Board to provide ever better service and opportunities for all of our 4800+ members and to the larger community of those who teach about computing.
As I leave the President's position and become the Immediate Past President, here are challenges I make to each of our SIGCT members:
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Attend activities we put together for your professional networking and professional development opportunities, such as the Breakfast Forum at NECC and SIGCT chosen presentations at NECC.
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Volunteer to be on a committee. For example, we really are thankful that 30 of our members volunteered to be on a NCWIT committee. We have not been so fortunate with other committees.
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Consider nominating yourself for an elective office on our Board.
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Think about writing an article for JCT, particularly if you are a K-12 teacher.
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Consider joining and posting questions on the SIGCT-discussion list. There are plenty of juicy issues to discuss and even a post to ascertain some information is welcome.
We've come a long way in the past few years and SIGCT's future is bright if more of you get involved in some way with SIGCT.
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