Now that CSTA 2020's over time for some more thoughts on the conference and also on virtual conferences in general. I only got to attend a couple of sessions as I was working my CS teacher certification program but a nice feature is that I was able to hop in and out of sessions without disturbing or disrupting. You can't really do that in person. I'm also looking forward to when they release the sessions for later viewing.

I wasn't supposed to be in NYC this week. I was supposed to be in Arlington Virginia with around one thousand of my CS Teacher friends at CSTA2020. Devorah was going to spend the days at the GitHub booth teaching knitting and I was going to do a GitHub workshop and generally enjoy the show Of course nobody's traveling these days and CSTA2020 is running remote. This is my second virtual conference as I attended parts of MongoDB world a few weeks ago.

I'm guessing that pretty much everyone who stops by this blog knows about the CSTA (Computer Science Teacher's Association) and most of you probably know about some awards they, well, award. Just in case, I thought I'd share. Here are three awards, two of which are open for nominations / applications now. If you know someone deserving, nominate them. I'm guessing students don't really know about the Cutler-Bell award so if you have any deserving students, please share the info with them.

So, I got back from CSTA2019 and promptly got a summer cold which laid me up for the past couple of days. Phoenix was beautiful even with it being unbearably hot at times and it's a place I think I'd like to visit again when it's a bit cooler. I said in an earlier post that for me, CSTA is typically more of a person conference and less of a session conference and that held true again.

It's Monday morning, 7:45AM local time. Being on East Coast time, Devorah and I have already been up for about 3 hours, hit the gym and our first cups of our chosen caffeinated beverages. Since it's not unbearably hot outside - a cool and dry 80 in the shade - we're sitting outside. Devorah's knitting another square for Blanket Statement so I figured I'd write a few words about what we've been doing here in Phoenix leading up to our starting with our conference later today.

Looking forward to flying out to Phoenix for CSTA-2019 Saturday morning. The conference doesn't officially start until Sunday, Monday for me since I'm not doing any of the pre-conference workshops. We'll have most of Saturday as long as we're up to it, Sunday, and Monday morning. Actually, there is the GitHub reception on Sunday evening so that's kind of official conference stuff. As to the conference, I'm super looking forward to it.

<figure class="z_image_center"><img src="" width="250px"/> </figure> Ok, probably more knitting but Crochet at CSTA was the line used in the newsletter and it sounds better. As some of you know, my wife Devorah is all about the fiber arts. Knitting, spinning, dying, weaving, the works. We've got a loom, two spinning wheels, two bobbin lace pillows, and bins and bins of deconstructed sheep, llamas, alpacas, and angora bunnies. I even got her some straw once to spin into gold.

With ISTE ending, the next big event for CS treachers is the annual CSTA Conference. I first attended two years ago in Baltimore. Last year the conference, in Omaha was bigger and better in every way imaginable. I expect this year to be the best yet. I don't go to a lot of conferences so I don't have much to compare CSTA with but I like the fact that it's is about half the size of SIGCSE.

In addition to everything I wrote about last time there were a couple of other big announcements at this year's CSTA conference. Both announcements deal with funding. First, there is a new class of CSTA membership. The free tier remains but now for $50 you can join CSTA+. This new level of membership comes with a bunch of extras that are probably good for K12 teachers but I doubt I'll use any of them.