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Sheraton Austin Georgetown Hotel and Conference Center – Georgetown, TX
avatar for John B Owen

John B Owen

WeTeach_CS, Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
Computer Science Project Manager
The University of Texas at Austin

Contact Me

John B. Owen is a founding member of WeTeach_CS, in partnership with Dr. Carol Fletcher and Amy Carrell, and serves as the chief writer and producer of all computer science related professional development. This includes several projects since 2015, including in-person workshops for certification, Java programming, and computer science pedagogy. He also wrote and produced several online courses, include the Foundations of CS For Teachers prep courses for both the TExES 241, Praxis and Pearson based CS certification tests. He also wrote and produced the WeTeach_CS For HS curriculum for a first year computer science course, aligned with the Texas CS1 TEKS, and is currently working on a follow-up curriculum for the newly revised College Board Advanced Placement Computer Science A course requirements.

He was a highly successful computer science teacher at the middle and high school level, taught 33 years in Texas, with students achieving high honors in state and national competitions, achieving top scores on the CS AP test, many now working in the software development industry as well as teaching computer science in schools. In 2009 he was honored as the HEB Secondary Lifetime Achievement state winner and was a 2010 National Teacher's Hall of Fame Finalist.

His work has resulted in a significant increase in the number of teachers becoming Computer Science certified throughout the state of Texas and beyond, recently reaching the 600 milestone. In addition to his role with UT Austin and WeTeach_CS, in the past he served as an instructor for Oracle Academy’s Java series of courses (Fundamentals, Programming, Foundations), was a facilitator for Code.org’s new Discoveries curriculum, and is currently chairman of the state competition committee for computer science for the Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) statewide competition organization.
johnbowen@utexas.edu / weteachcs.org