This month's topic: Teaching Girls and Boys to Program Computers

Why is it that the percentage of women graduating with computer science degrees around 50% in countries like Sweden, China and India, but less than 20% in America? As a "Geekdad" with a daughter, I found this unacceptable, and decided to do something about it... I went back to school... elementary school that is, to teach programming to the kids. My goal was to find an environment and a style that would encourage girls with curiosity to enjoy being controlling computers in creative ways, and in the process, encourage and involve every kid.

My talk discusses the journey of coming up with a girl-friendly curriculum for teaching programming that boys wouldn't notice anything different. I then show off some of the new crop of "Integrated Learning Environments", i.e. Alice, E-Toys and Scratch. I finally give an overview of my "Computer Club" and how others can use what I've done to teach others.

Speaker: Howard Abrams

My first job in high school was teaching Basic and Logo programming to 8 year old kids; however, I haven't taught since graduating from college. After programming for 25 years (and Java for 12), I'm now intrigue about returning to my roots and working with the next generation.

PJUG meetings start with some time to eat and socialize (pizza and beverages are provided), followed by the featured speaker, then Q&A, discussion, sometimes a drawing to give away swag. :)

Though we like knowing how many people to expect, you don't have to RSVP, on Upcoming or otherwise. Go ahead and just show up!

Many people also go for a drink and further discussion following the meeting, usually at McMenamin's Market Street Pub at 10th and Market: http://www.mcmenamins.com/328 (but sometimes this changes).

http://twitter.com/pjug http://pjug.org/ (join our mailing list, linked from the website!) http://bit.ly/pjuglive (live streaming video, plus archived videos from past meetings)

This month we are all in for a double dose of awesome! Our special guest will be Arun Gupta (founding member of the Java EE team at Sun Microsystems and director of developer advocacy at Red Hat in San Francisco). He will give not one, but 2 talks:

Devoxx4Kids:

So your kid is interested in programming, robotics, engineering?

Devoxx4Kids is a worldwide initiative that introduces programming, robotics, and engineering to kids at an early age. This is achieved by organizing events where children can develop computer games, program robots and also have an introduction to electronics. This effort won Duke’s Choice Awards at JavaOne 2013. This session will share how Devoxx4Kids is engaging kids at an early age and teaching them computing concepts using Scratch, Greenfoot, Minecraft, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, NAO, Tynker. The session will show a path that can be followed by parents to keep their kids engaged and build, instead of just play games. The attendees will learn best practices to organize similar workshops in their local setting. Tips on opening a local US chapter and how to build attendee base will be shared.

Continuous Integration using Java EE 7

Techniques such as automated testing, continuous integration and continuous deployment allow software to be developed to a high standard and easily packaged and deployed to test environments, resulting in the ability to rapidly, reliably and repeatedly push out enhancements and bug fixes to customers at low risk and with minimal manual overhead. What container-agnostic tools are available for testing, continuous integration and deployment of a Java EE 7 application?

This talk will provide a quick overview of Arquillian and how it helps in testing across multiple containers. Separate approaches for greenfield and brownfield applications will be shown. Configuring Jenkins for Continuous Integration will be shown. Setting up multiple WildFly containers on OpenShift for testing and production will be shown in detail. At the end of this session, attendees would have converted their development environment to leverage the power of Jenkins, Arquillian, and OpenShift to setup an automated Continuous Delivery pipeline.

Doors will open at 5:30, and the presentation will begin right at 6p. The food and drinks are provided by Bellagios and New Relic.

Please RSVP via Eventbrite HERE

*Arun Gupta is Director of Developer Advocacy at Red Hat and focuses on JBoss Middleware. As a founding member of the Java EE team at Sun Microsystems, he spread the love for technology all around the world. At Oracle, he led a cross-functional team to drive the global launch of the Java EE 7 platform through strategy, planning, and execution of content, marketing campaigns, and program. After authoring ~1400 blogs at blogs.oracle.com/arungupta on different Java technologies, he continues to promote Red Hat technologies and products at blog.arungupta.me.

Arun has extensive speaking experience in ~40 countries on myriad topics and is a JavaOne Rockstar. He also founded the Devoxx4Kids chapter in the USA and continues to promoting technology education amongst kids. An author of a best-selling book, an avid runner, a globe trotter, a Java Champion, JUG leader, he is easily accessible at @arungupta.*

› FutureTalk is brought to you by New Relic in collaboration with TAO

This group is for all educators interested in learning about the K-12 Computer Science Framework Core Concepts and Core Practices and how to integrate computer science into any content area.

In this meeting, you will code to learn and show what you know using Scratch. Participants will tell a story and demonstrate a deep understanding of social studies (or any!) content. Coding and computing will become a game-changing skill for our students. By learning to integrate it seamlessly into our core content - rather than adding computer science as another subject to teach, we are preparing students for the future and providing unparalleled motivation and challenge to our curriculum.

Let us help you get started integrating and aligning computer science today! This is the perfect place to begin building your computer science Professional Learning Network.

You will need to bring your laptop computer 💻to participate in this meeting!

Thank you to Alchemy Code Lab for supporting K-12 computer science education!