Education professionals from across the U.S. are set to attend CSEdCon this week in Las Vegas. Hosted by Code.org, CSEdCon is a global computer science (CS) education conference that draws CS educators, policy makers, state advocates, education officials, school administrators, industry professionals, and researchers to the annual event.

Lien Diaz, director of educational innovation and leadership at the Georgia Tech Constellations Center for Equity in Computing, is participating on a panel with Bryan Cox, a (CS) program specialist from the Georgia Department of Education, and Hillary Fleenor, an instructor and outreach coordinator at Columbus State University.

The panelists make up Georgia’s delegation from Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP), one of the event organizers, at this year’s conference where they will present the state’s approach to making CS more accessible to K-12 students. Georgia’s plans to increase the state’s capacity to train computing professionals and increase the number of qualified CS K-12 instructors is also on the panelists’ agenda.

“Meetings like these are so important in the battle to make computing education accessible to everyone. It’s encouraging to hear updates from other states on what is and is not working, and exciting to have thoughtful conversations about the changes we want to create,” said Diaz.

The state delegations will also be able to plan next steps for policy implementation with district decision-makers and other advocates.

More than 500 CSEdCon attendees will engage in content from five different focus areas: curriculum focus, district focus, international focus, regional focus, and policy focus. All focus areas were created with the goal of furthering computer science education.

The Georgia panel will be a part of the invite-only Policy Focus lens, hosted by Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), ECEP, and Code.org.

Geared towards those who are interested in tackling CS education issues practically, the Policy Focus track allows participants to engage with policymakers with diverse perspectives on education and spheres of influence. Policy Focus attendees will also have access to data, trends, and models and be able to explore professional development and computer science curriculum options from national providers.