CSTA 2007 December 14, 2007
Posted by Steve in CSTA, Information, Musing.trackback
2007 saw myself elected as the President of the Computing Studies Teachers Association as the past President, Glenda, desired to step aside since she had been President for a number of years.
I spent considerable time going through the past minutes and other documents to get a feel as to what needed to be carried out specifically. The core business of the CSTA is an easy one: inservice computing teachers once a term on a Monday evening at a school in the Sydney urban area.
The members voted with their feet and the number of participants at our inservices continued to be between 110 and 140 people at each inservice. The quality of the workshops are the key to the continued, impressive numbers.
A different strategy evolved when it came to assigning sessions to presenters. From research, I emailed several willing presenters that had not been used in the past and they all gave the ‘thumbs up’. However, instead of organising just one inservice, I found I was co-ordinating the three other inservices as well since presenters were not always available on the desired date. Most of the presenters came outside the committee in 2007 and that took some pressure off the committee.
I also took up the option to make use of docs.google.com where I uploaded the proposed agendas for each meeting as well as the proposed session assignments. This allowed for transparency in the decision making processes and it allowed the committee to see what I was on about. This software truly allows for proper collaboration where committee members can have input at their convenience.
The CSTA has been involved with the changes of the current IPT syllabus for a number of years. Thanks to Bill Biddle who provided the continuity for the lengthy process. The end result is a changed syllabus that encourages teachers to focus on practical projects that integrates several concepts. Of course, we hope that the changes will attract more students to our course.
A sub-committee successfully printed out the Certificates for inservice participation over the past three years. Hopefully, the printing will be carried out once or twice a year.
A sub-commitee has been investigating the revamping of the CSTA website which is ordinary at best. Joomla has been chosen as the content management system and the new site should come online at the end of 2007 or early 2008. It was vital that it interacted with the current scripting that takes place in the background.
The new website development had a rippling impact in that the CSTA logo was deemed to ancient and needed to be updated, hence, a new logo was created.
The CSTA was involved in the SIMERR project where we collated a huge number of bookmarks with Delicious. Several people worked on this over a weekend at Bowral. We received some funds from a grant to carry out this task. The funds went to reducing the cost of accommodation and hiring of a conference room over the weekend. A second group focused on the proposed changes to the IPT syllabus.
I attended my first Professional Teachers’ Council where we as an association received a certificate acknowledging the efforts we have given to education over the past year. In addition our nominee, Ellen Sheerin, received an Exceptional Service Award. It was a satisfying evening.
The committee members are the best group of people I have ever worked with and it is very fulfilling to work with people that are on the same page as oneself. It is a good opportunity for me to network with other computing teachers since there are now so few in schools.
2008 sees the CSTA Annual General Meeting moved to Macquarie University where we hope to make use of facilities that may not be found in high schools. It is hoped that we can increase the membership of the committee in the near future.
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