Machshava – Israel National Center for Computer Science Teachers
The Israeli National Center for Computer Science Teachers
was founded in 2000 by the Israeli Ministry of Education.
The center’s Hebrew name “Machshava” (a Hebrew word with connotations
for both computer "Machshev" and thought) implies to our belief that
in CSE there should be a strong emphasis on thinking processes.
The center is considered as the professional home for all
Israeli computer science teachers.
The center activities are organized around five major
themes:
·
Helping create a professional
community of computer science teachers;
·
Fostering the professional
leadership of computer science teachers;
·
Supporting, assisting and
consulting academic computer science education groups, and computer science
teacher educators and researchers;
·
Collecting and distributing
computer science education knowledge and experience;
·
Researching and evaluating
computer science teachers’ needs and the center’s activities.
Some examples of “Machshava” activities:
·
An annual teacher conference with
plenary lectures, parallel sessions, discussions, posters, and an exhibition of
CSE materials;
·
Courses and meetings on specific
issues from the high school CS curriculum, such as recursion or software
design;
·
Publication of annotated papers
on different topics, such as novice difficulties, learning and teaching
recursion;
·
Publication of learning materials
suited for the Israeli curriculum, such as questions and laboratories;
Publication of a journal for teachers, called “Hebetim” (meaning “Aspects in
CSE”) twice a year.
The activities of the center are published and accompanied
by the Hebrew website http://cse.proj.ac.il
Leading Teachers:
One of the main goals of Machshava is to foster professional
leadership of CS teachers. Among the
many definitions, we believe that a leading teacher is someone inspiring a
community of colleagues to pursue continuous improvement and growth.
Since the establishment of Machshava in 2000, several
courses were organized for the professional development of leading teachers
with an overall total of over 120 participants from all over the country. Each of these courses had a different flavor
but they were all based on the conviction that experienced and enthusiastic
teachers can be the best coaches for their
colleagues. For example, in 2008 we
selected a group of 27 leading teachers to run six regional workshops (pedagogical
aspects of teaching “Software Design” in Java and C#) in different areas of the country. (see Brandes et al
for details)
As a supplement to the courses, we organize a special summer
seminar for CS leading teachers, called “On the frontier of computer science”
(see Lapidot
& Aharoni for details)