Abstract:

Computing has developed tremendously in the almost 44 years I have been in the field. When I started at university, hardly anyone knew what it was, and I could not explain to my family or friends what I was studying except that it was something about computers and software. Today, computing transforms all disciplines and high-level politicians aim for computing as a fundamental subject in school. In Europe, we say Informatics for All. This journey is the most thrilling aspect of my professional life.

ACM SIGCSE has been transformative for my career. I became member in 1994 and attended my first Technical Symposium in 1995. That became the beginning of a long and enjoyable journey with lots of collaborations, joint publications, an abundance of acquaintances, and some very dear friends all over the world.

In my keynote, I will share some personal perspectives on the journey and discuss some of the opportunities and responsibilities we have when developing and implementing CS/Informatics for All.

Bio:

Michael E. Caspersen is Managing Director at It-vest – a network collaboration among the three universities in Western Denmark within IT education and research.

He is Honorary Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University where he founded Center for Computational Thinking.

Michael has been teaching for 40 years and has spent his academic life furthering computing education at all levels (primary, secondary, tertiary and continuing education).

He holds a PhD in computer science from Aarhus University and has published about 70 papers on computing education. He is co-author of a two-volume textbook on programming and co-editor of “Reflections on the Teaching of Programming” published by Springer-Verlag, 2008.

He has chaired ten international conferences on computing education (including ITiCSE, ICER and the Technical Symposium), served on more than 40 program committees and served on the editorial board of the international research journal Computer Science Education.

Michael is a founding member of the ITiCSE Steering Committee established jointly by ACM SIGCSE, ACM Europe and Informatics Europe, and he is member of ACM SIGCSE’s newly established Doctoral Consortium Steering Committee.

He is co-founder and chair of the steering committee for the Informatics for All coalition established jointly by ACM Europe, Informatics Europe, CEPIS (Council of European Professional Informatics Societies) and IFIP.

Michael is a Fellow of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences, Distinguished Member of ACM and recipient of the 2022 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award.

In 2022-2023, he served as special adviser on digital education to Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission.