Kissed by the Muse: Promoting Computer Science Education for All with the Calliope Board Maria Grandl 1 , Martin Ebner 1 1 Graz University of Technology, Austria Abstract A critical approach to new technologies requires a general understanding of the logical and technical aspects behind them. In the German-speaking part of Europe, we experience, that computer science education in school is still considered less important than other scientific subjects, especially in secondary and primary school. This is particularly disadvantageous for girls, as they stick to gender stereotypes and social expectation and do not opt for a male-dominated career path. To foster kids and teenagers’ interest in science, technology and particularly in programming, we believe, that active encouragement in school and hands-on experience play a vital role. Visual programming languages, age-appropriate development environments and educational robots or boards like the Calliope mini allow an easy entry into this field. To impart coding skills and to practise computational thinking, the Graz University of Technology offered workshops with the title “Coding with the Calliope mini - a playful approach to the digital world”. The aim of the paper is to present the Calliope initiative and to describe the importance of extracurricular offers to promote computer science education for boys and for girls. The outcome of the study shows that the Calliope mini can boost programming activities and attract students. Nevertheless, the results show, that it does not influence teenage girls’ decisions for their future life and career, which correspond to gender stereotypes. Introduction "School 4.0 - it's getting digital" - this is the title of the digitalisation strategy of the Austrian Ministry of Education. 1 Along the strategy, a new subject called “basic digital education” will be introduced in all Austrian secondary schools in September 2018, in which students should work with algorithms, create simple programs and use different programming languages in a creative way. Schools can decide independently on how this subject is integrated into the schools’ curriculum. There is no need to allocate additional time slots for the subject, as the content can also be integrated into other subjects in accordance with a cross-curricular approach. As a result, computer science is still not a compulsory subject at Austrian secondary schools. In England, the compulsory subject "computing" was introduced in 2014 at all state schools, starting from key stage 1 i.e. primary school. Especially in the German-speaking countries, computer science as a school subject is still not as important as other scientific subjects. (cf. Grandl & Ebner, 2017) Computer science lessons focus merely on application competencies of information and communication technologies (ICT) and on typical digital literacy than on basic concepts of computer science, like algorithmic thinking or programming. The approaches to integrate basic computer science education into other subjects are inadequate and lead to the following fact: "Not offering appropriate informatics education means that Europe is harming its new generation of citizens, educationally and economically.” (Informatics Europe/ACM Europe, 2013) In addition to increasing efforts at government level, there are a lot of extracurricular initiatives, organisations and companies throughout Europe with a clear objective: To attract more young people to computer science, by using age-appropriate software and hardware and to initiate changes in the schools’ curricular and organisation. For example, the field of educational robotics is booming. As well as that, we observe that different educational 1 https://www.schule40.at/ (2018-04-06) Originally published in: Grandl, M. & Ebner, M. (2018). Kissed by the Muse: Promoting Computer Science Education for All with the Calliope Board. In Proceedings of EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology (pp. 606-615). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).