The University of Iowa College of Engineering is hosting eight Project Lead The Way (PLTW) teachers from around the country this week. Four male and four female teachers from

California, Minnesota, Missouri, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Texas are in Iowa City to train as master teachers for PLTW’s Computer Science Pathway course: Introduction to Computer Science (ICS). The master teachers are being trained by four facilitators from the national PLTW program headquartered in Indianapolis, IN. The only other ICS master teacher training was held earlier this month in Indianapolis and hosted ten teachers from around the country. These newly trained master teachers are scheduled to conduct up to 19 ICS trainings nationwide this summer.

ICS is the newest course in PLTW’s Computer Science Pathway. It may be taught as a semester-long course at the high school level or two, nine-week modules (ICS I & II) at the middle school level. The course is designed to introduce students who have never written code to the world of computer science and computational thinking. Students create basic apps for mobile devices using MIT App Inventor. They then build on this experience and add to their computer science foundation by working with Python, a text programming language.

The College of Engineering will be hosting a PLTW Introduction to Computer Science training for high school and middle school teachers July 19-24. For more information about Project Lead The Way, go to http://www.pltw.org. For more information about Project Lead The Way in Iowa, go to http://www.pltwiowa.org.