STEAMing Ahead in 2022

Last year Google Canada worked with the Cobblestone Collective to host the first ever STEAMing Ahead summit. During the full day of virtual lessons, volunteer Googlers taught students and teachers from across Canada all about computer science (CS), through a range of topics in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math).

STEAMing Ahead is just one part of Google’s CS education program. Since 2018, we’ve been working with school boards, educators and students from across Canada to deliver CS lessons through CS First, a free introductory computer science curriculum. Our goal is to excite students, particularly those in historically underrepresented groups in technology, and empower the future of learning and work by achieving a more diverse population in tech.

On May 24, 2022, we kicked-off STEAMing Ahead 2.0, but this year, our goal was to answer one important question, ‘what after CS First?’ We wanted to showcase practical examples of what computer science can build, and share stories from Google software developers who used CS education to unlock a world of opportunities in their field.

Over 797 classrooms and teachers tuned in to the day of programming, which included lessons on Kaggle, breakbeatcode, Flutter and Grasshopper, free programs which are perfect entry points to the world of coding. Later that afternoon, we held a Q&A session where Googlers shared their personal journeys in tech, and answered questions about the pathways to CS.

In case you missed it, you can watch the recordings of STEAMing Ahead 2.0 below. These sessions are also available through the Cobblestone Collective here.