I had planned to give a presentation, "The Gap Between Washington's EdTech and CS Standards," at NCCE (Northwest Council for Computer Education) 2025 on 02/26/2025. While I could not give my presentation due to health issues, I am providing a synopsis and links below so that my preparation for the conference isn't a total loss.
While the presentation was created for Washington, it applies nationwide as well. Washington's EdTech standards are much more detailed than the 2024 ISTE Standards for Students. Among other features, Washington's EdTech standards list connected standards to various other subjects – including computer science. Using CSTA's K-12 Standard Progression Chart, one can create a "crosswalk" document that shows how well the EdTech standards cover CS standards.
The rest of the presentation is my interpretation of the crosswalk document and more. Conclusions:
Abstraction is the computational thinking concept
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- Missing from EdTech standards
- Most difficult for elementary/middle school teachers to teach/understand
Understanding the power of layers of abstraction is critical to explaining
· Why all students need to learn basic computer science
· Why computer science is the bridge literacy between math and natural language
· How humans can work with computers
Link to PowerPoint version. PDF version attached.
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Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer/Advocacy Lead, CSTA Washington
Winner, Men's and Women's Brackets
2024 CSTA Chapter Leaders March Madness Challenge
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher CTE (retired)
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