Education
When was the report "Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age" released?
Computer science
Computer science Kathy Sierra TeachEngineering Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California History of military technology
Computer_science-Education Kathy_Sierra-Education_and_career TeachEngineering-History Corporation_for_Education_Network_Initiatives_in_California-K12_High_Speed_Network History_of_military_technology-Computing
Some universities teach computer science as a theoretical study of computation and algorithmic reasoning. These programs often feature the theory of computation, analysis of algorithms, formal methods, concurrency theory, databases, computer graphics, and systems analysis, among others. They typically also teach computer programming, but treat it as a vessel for the support of other fields of computer science rather than a central focus of high-level study. The ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Curriculum Task Force "Computing Curriculum 2005" (and 2008 update) gives a guideline for university curriculum. Other colleges and universities, as well as secondary schools and vocational programs that teach computer science, emphasize the practice of advanced programming rather than the theory of algorithms and computation in their computer science curricula. Such curricula tend to focus on those skills that are important to workers entering the software industry. The process aspects of computer programming are often referred to as software engineering. While computer science professions increasingly drive the U.S. economy, computer science education is absent in most American K-12 curricula. A report entitled "Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age" was released in October 2010 by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), and revealed that only 14 states have adopted significant education standards for high school computer science. The report also found that only nine states count high school computer science courses as a core academic subject in their graduation requirements. In tandem with "Running on Empty", a new non-partisan advocacy coalition - Computing in the Core (CinC) - was founded to influence federal and state policy, such as the Computer Science Education Act, which calls for grants to states to develop plans for improving computer science education and supporting computer science teachers. Within the United States a gender gap in computer science education has been observed as well. Research conducted by the WGBH Educational Foundation and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) revealed that more than twice as many high school boys considered computer science to be a “very good” or “good” college major than high school girls. In addition, the high school Advanced Placement (AP) exam for computer science has displayed a disparity in gender. Compared to other AP subjects it has the lowest number of female participants, with a composition of about 15 percent women. This gender gap in computer science is further witnessed at the college level, where 31 percent of undergraduate computer science degrees are earned by women and only 8 percent of computer science faculty consists of women. According to an article published by the Epistemic Games Group in August 2012, the number of women graduates in the computer science field has declined to 13 percent.
Sierra attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a major in exercise physiology and spent 10 years working in the fitness industry. She changed careers after attending programming classes at UCLA, later returning to teach a course on "new media interactivity" for UCLA Extension. She also led the new media team at Mind over Macintosh, a Los Angeles training center that provided training to advertising and entertainment corporations adapting digital technologies in the mid 1990s. She says that her interest in cognitive science was motivated by her epilepsy, a condition for which she takes anti-seizure medication. "My interest in the brain began when I had my first grand mal seizure at the age of four," she wrote on her personal weblog. She was the lead programmer on the computer games "Terratopia", a 1998 children's adventure game released by Virgin Sound & Vision, and "All Dogs Go to Heaven", a film-based game released as a free cereal premium by MGM. She also worked as a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Java instructors how to introduce new Java technologies and developing certification exams. In 1998, she founded the Java programmer's online community JavaRanch. After years of being mostly absent from the open internet, in July 2013 she started the site "Serious Pony" including a blog, together with a Twitter account by the same name. 
In January 2003, a team of university researchers received National Science Foundation funding to create the web-based TeachEngineering.org digital library collection - populated with searchable, standards-based K-12 curricula for use by science teachers and engineering faculty to teach engineering in K-12 settings. The grant was a collaborative effort between professors in Information Systems and Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, Duke University, Colorado School of Mines, Oregon State University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The idea was to build upon the extensive K-12 engineering curriculum already developed by four universities with National Science Foundation's GK-12 program funding, and merge the curricula from these individual sites into a unified and useful collection of free and accessible resources. The Oregon State University Open Source Lab provides hosting and system administration for the TeachEngineering website and development servers. 
CalREN was expanded by funding through the state of California and its Digital California Project to include K-12 public education. When funding sources changed, the K-12 portion became the K-12 High Speed Network (K12HSN), which is managed by the Imperial County Office of Education. 
The complex histories of computer science and computer engineering were shaped, in the first decades of digital computing, almost entirely by military funding. Most of the basic component technologies for digital computing were developed through the course of the long-running Whirlwind-SAGE program to develop an automated radar shield. Virtually unlimited funds enabled two decades of research that only began producing useful technologies by the end of the 50s; even the final version of the SAGE command and control system had only marginal military utility. More so than with previously-established disciplines receiving military funding, the culture of computer science was permeated with a Cold War military perspective. Indirectly, the ideas of computer science also had a profound effect on psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience through the mind-computer analogy. 