Following a grant from Google, more Mississippi teachers will receive training in teaching computer science.
The $35,000 grant will be used to train middle school teachers in teaching computer science as part of the Computer Science for Mississippi (CS4MS) program designed by the Mississippi State University Research and Curriculum Unit for the Mississippi Department of Education. Under initial guidelines, plans were made to train approximately 60 teachers over the summer.
However, with the recently awarded grant, the RCU will be able to train even more. Among the trainees will be teachers from the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District.
“We’ve got a group of teachers that are going to Atlanta for training, and a group that will be trained in-state,” said RCU Project Manager Shelly Hollis. “It’s the in-state people that we’re using this funding for. We have eight Starkville middle school teachers. That’s really the teachers that will be impacted in this area.”
Hollis said the Starkville teachers would be part of a group of 35 receiving the training together. The grant will also help create a community of practice, allowing teachers receiving computer science training to network and share ideas.
She said the RCU applied for the grant in early March. “It’s something that Google has been doing for the past several years,” Hollis said. “We just found out about it through emails and stuff from Google, and it was mentioned at some national conferences we attended.”
The yearly Google grant program has benefitted more than 40,000 educators since 2008, and in turn, impacted more than 1 million students. The grants are designed to provide localized professional development to computer science teachers.
“We are very excited to receive this support from Google. We weren’t sure how we would be able to meet the demand of all the middle school teachers requesting training, and this money helped solve that problem,” Hollis said. “With Google’s help, we can train these middle school teachers and help them better offer computer science content in their classroom. As a regional partner of Code.org, we will be providing training to teachers in the Computer Science Discoveries course.”
Hollis said the Google grant was the first financial support CS4MS had received from a corporation. However, firms including C Spire have supported CS4MS in other ways, including holding coding nights at schools across the state.
The CS4MS pilot program was used in 75 districts across the state, with the aim of being in all schools by 2024. New computer science standards will come into place in the coming academic year.