1. Magazine (PDF)

Once a year we produce around 21,000 copies of a glossy, A4 print magazine and post copies (free) to approximately 2,400 subscribing UK schools, librarians and home educators. This, issue 29, is the latest edition of the magazine and is about Diversity in Computing, with a particular focus on Black Computer Scientists. You can download a free PDF copy…

…or flip through the magazine online.

2. Posters of Black computer scientists

These posters were designed and created by Jane Waite.

2a. Vibrant palette

For Black History Month we have a set of posters (taken from of our wider Diversity posters) that feature Black computer scientists: the vibrant palette can be a way of celebrating them and their work.

⬇️ Download the vibrant palette posters of Black computer scientists (PDF)

2b. Muted palette

For other times of the year it can be helpful to normalise diversity with a fuller range of people (age, gender, sexuality, disability etc) displayed on classroom walls. Our larger muted palette (with 30 computer scientists) can help young people see the plurality of scientists who do, or have done, computing. However we do also have a muted palette file that focuses solely on Black computer scientists (taken from the larger file).

⬇️ Download the muted palette posters of Black computer scientists (PDF)
⬇️ Download the muted palette of the full set of Diversity in Computing posters (PDF)

You can find out more about the individual people in our posters (as well as other Black computer scientists for whom we don’t have posters) at our Black History in Computing page.

You can also download editable PPTX versions of our poster sets (e.g. to use as a rolling display) from this page.

Black history

An example is Kimberly Bryant –

Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code, born 14 January 1967

3. Black History Month articles (on the CS4FN blog)

We regularly publish articles on a variety of topics on our CS4FN blog. Below are some that are relevant for Black History Month.

Gladys West: Where’s my satellite? Where’s my child? #BlackHistoryMonth

Freddie Figgers – the abandoned baby who became a runaway telecom tech star

Mark Dean: An Inspiration

Writing together: Clarence ‘Skip’ Ellis #BlackHistoryMonth

Hidden Figures: NASA’s brilliant calculators #BlackHistoryMonth

Facing up to ALL faces

Devices that work for everyone #BlackHistoryMonth

Recognising (and addressing) bias in facial recognition tech #BlackHistoryMonth

4. Black History Month portal (on the CS4FN blog)

This portal gathers together some of our resources for Black History in Computer Science – there will be some overlap with other items on this page. We have lots of other portals too.

Black History, Present and Future

5. Additional resources

Computing and Society

Our Computing and Society page has articles about algorithmic bias etc.

Jo Brodie from CS4FN gave a talk to colleagues at Queen Mary University of London (where Teaching London Computing and CS4FN are based) about our free computing resources for teachers for Black History Month. The talk was recorded and is on YouTube and she’s put together some additional material, including information about culturally relevant pedagogy.