About Vicky

As a child, Vicky always imagined that she would be a teacher when she grew up and in fact that was her major in college. But, rather than teaching, she started her adult working life, in the late 1970s, as a computer operator on DEC mainframe machines and Basic4 mini computers. Vicky taught herself to program and spent years designing and writing accounting, property management, & construction software. After her youngest daughter was born, Vicky became a stay at home mom and started creating web sites – first just for herself and then she began creating sites for others. She still manages The Cowsills website and Facebook page.

In the summer of 2007, the computer teacher at her youngest daughter’s school left and Vicky agreed to take over the computer classes. She taught at the school from the fall of 2007 until 2019, when the school unfortunately closed. Creating and continually updating a curriculum for Kindergarten through 8th grade was very rewarding and allowed Vicky to share her passion for technology and computer science. In December 2019, Vicky started teaching computer science at a K-6 private school in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles), mostly to the K-3 students there, and retired from teaching in June 2023.

Vicky served as a K-8 Representative on the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Board of Directors from July 2017 to July 2021 and is currently President of the CSTA Greater Los Angeles Chapter. She moderated the #csk8 chat on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month during the school year on Twitter from 2015 until June 2023. Vicky was a writer on the CSTA K-12 2017 Standards and on the CSTA Standards for CS Educators and was the K-2 Grade Band Lead on AI for K12 Initiative. She is also currently a member of the AI for CA project of CSforCA and the Elementary Grade Band Lead on the CSTA K-12 Standards Revision.