Home / Talks & Presentations / Fostering Interest in Computer Science

Abstract In order to increase the quality and quantity of Computer Scientists graduating for universities, we need to spark their interest early. In this talk, I talk about a few differnt project ideas tailored to students of various ages to peak their interest. In practice, I have found that these particular projects originally caught the attention of many computer scientists I know and work with.

Resources Slides (Power Point) (45KB) Slides (PDF) (38KB)

Josh Hyman is current a graduate student at UCLA School of Engineering in the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) working towards a PhD in Computer Science. He received is BS in Computer Science and Engineering from UCLA in 2005. Currently, he is employed as a Software Engineer at Google Inc. in Santa Monica, Ca.

CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) is a new effort by UCLA, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Washington with additional funding from Google to provide high school (and K-8) teachers with resources for teaching computer science principles to their students in a fun and relevant way. Our goals include helping teachers present exciting possibilities available in computer science careers, a broader perspective of computer science beyond programming languages, and a computer science curriculum that supports gender and socio-economic diversity.

[1] CS4HS Home Page
[2] CS4HS Summer Workshop 2007 at UCLA