Work in progress - Project La COSTA: IT experiences for 8-10 graders in South Texas

Author

Hazlewood, Carol ; Montoya, Marco ; Slomka, Jeff ; Torres, Cruz ; Welborn, Ruth B.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Texas State Univ., San Marcos, TX

fYear

2005

fDate

19-22 Oct. 2005

Lastpage

3

Abstract

The results of the first year of the CSTEP Computer Science Training Academy Program (La COSTA) are described and evaluated. Project La COSTA consists of a three-year educational information technology (IT) experience for 250 eighth, ninth and tenth grade Hispanic boys and girls in five Central and South Texas school districts. Project La COSTA includes 120 hours of after-school, weekend, and summer activities integrating computer skills, family involvement, role modeling, tutoring, mentoring, career development, and externships. This project is a geographically distributed, informal IT education program that addresses the technical, social and economic needs of the students. In addition to leveraging the expertise of IT professionals and academicians, the project builds a network of family members, mentors and tutors to support student progress on an IT career path

Keywords

computer science education; educational courses; educational institutions; CSTEP; Computer Science Training Academy Program; IT professionals; La COSTA; career development; educational information technology; externships; mentoring; role modeling; tutoring; Computer networks; Computer science; Computer science education; Educational institutions; Educational programs; Employee welfare; Engineering profession; Information technology; Microcomputers; Sociology; K-12 education; geographically distributed education; informal IT education;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frontiers in Education, 2005. FIE '05. Proceedings 35th Annual Conference

Conference_Location

Indianopolis, IN

ISSN

0190-5848

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9077-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FIE.2005.1612113

Filename

1612113