I was planning on writing up all the exciting CS Education work I got to be involved in these past two days but I saw a post on one of the CS discussion forums that got me riled. There's a teacher (name withheld to protect the innocent) who wants to create an advanced course for his students but his administration is requesting an outside measure of accountability. This sounds reasonable on the surface but I found it really insulting.

The most recent NYC CSTA chapter meeting was "How do I assess CS?" I wanted to go but it's been such a crazy month I was just too wiped out. Fortunately, the meetup was recorded. I was able to watch the first half this morning while working out on my stationary trainer which leads me to today's rare Saturday morning blog post. The meetup consisted of two panels. The first was made up of K12 teachers who taught CS.

I'm now well behind in Advent of Code. Traveling up to Michigan to see my son and my brother and his family will do that. I was planning on working to catch up but got distracted earlier by this thread on the Advent of Code subreddit. Specifically this comment by Eric Wastl, the contest creator. The thread is about the level of difficulty of the various problems and Eric's comment talks about some of the factors that go into creating a good collection of problems for a contest and the difficulties involved.

This past weekend was Catskillsconf - my favorite event of the year. I spent the weekend up in Ulster County with a bunch of my students. some great friends old and new, and Devorah. It was a great weekend but I was mostly offline. As a result I missed a rather heated discussion in the CS Ed Facebook groups. The debate was over whether or not Strong AP CSP exam results are indicative of a good curriculum or good professional development (PD).