In need of a Base Case
Comments about coding, research and life

Computational Thinking, another term in the long list of things that are supposed to help bring CS to the forefront in education.

Unfortunately we are still preaching to the choir and boy do we love to hear our own voices.

So today I managed to get into parts of a seminar at CMU on computational thinking. The best part of the day was the last panel where there were professors from a variety of disciplines as well as some CS professors and people from Microsoft Research.

Unfortunately it wasnt as good as I’d hoped. After the first hour of the panel which was mostly a review of a project by one of the panel members (1/2 with slides) and then introductions and the first couple of questions about how computational ______ sometimes isnt viewed as “real” science I had to leave to go to class.

When I came back (45 minutes later) the discussion was centering around how to change curriculum in the k12 arena (although to be fair it was mostly centered on HS) and what could be done.

CMU does some awesome and amazing outreach geared at teachers. However not everyone understands the severity of the problem. One audience member suggested that colleges band together and change their entrance requirements, unfortunately I dont think that will help. I made the comment that we need to infuse computational thinking into other subjects rather than treat it as a subject in isolation. Just as it is making its way into the research areas for just about every other science and many humanities, students need to be taught about how to think about large quantities of data and what processes are available to them in order to make that information meaningful.

We also need to inform the public about what computing really is and how it has come to shape our lives in this way. I posed the question to the room (mostly microsoft researchers and CS professors):

1. How many people know the name of the person who invented the printing press?

2. Good, now how many of you can tell me the name of at least one person involved in the creation of the internet?

The internet has produced a revolution in the life of people in ways that are almost as important as the printing press, and yet why are we so ignorant? Why do we not celebrate the pioneering spirit of the scientists who struggled to give us probably one of the most used pieces of technology today? Curriculum.

CS has gotten a bad rap, and people believe that they know what they need to in order to function. (phishers and spammers take full advantage of this) and unfortunately we are leaving all of the interesting discoveries out of history, all the important social implications out of social studies, mass data collection and analysis out of sciences (what other things can you do with excel other than sort, sum, and average?), and so much more.

We are still a baby discipline, working on growing up to walking, and even we dont yet know where our place is in the race for the next big discovery. All we know is that we need talented, diverse minds to get us there.

Anyway, thats enough of a rant for now. I’m going to go distill this and post a better version on the CSTA blog.

So one of the things I try to do for my students is give them a chance to at least play with some of the really cool research thats going on in CS. While algorithms are an important part of whats happening, the field of computer science is focusing more and more on integration of their discoveries into larger applications, as well as those applications themselves.

Today I went to a lecture given by a recipient of the Katayanagi prize as well as several other awards for his contributions to computer graphics. His ideas are based in not making more complex graphics, but the interaction with the human during a “rough sketching” process.

I highly recommend checking out his website at http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo and playing with the tools that are available.

I also recommend that you look for things like this to allow your students to play with. We have to learn the basics first. We need to understand simple things like decision and looping structures as well as basic principals of object oriented programming and design in order to ever get to this place, but it doesn’t hurt to show them that with a little study, these are the problems that computer scientists are working on. Not how to search for a name in a phone book. Foundations are exceedingly important, and we need to learn how to mix the batter before we can bake and eat the cake - but don’t you prefer the cookbooks that show you a picture of the finished cake?

So one thing I am trying to do in the “coding” of the essays I am reading is to make sure that I mark both positive and negative comments the students are expressing about the experience.

I was also wondering if I should somehow remove their names from the essays and if coding it by the exact book they read, or even the type of book (there were two main categories they had to choose from) would be helpful.

oh! and ask me why it was a very good morning if you talk to me.

So here goes my first attempt to write a paper for SIGCSE. I am analyzing papers written by my students here at CMU to see if having them read a book and reflect on it brought forth any patterns of thinking. Should be interesting.

The idea behind the research is to not go into it with any preconcieved notions. Instead you need to just look at key ideas expressed in the papers and play with post it notes to sort and categorize what was said. Should be interesting.

I also needed to do a workshop today on using human subjects in experiments. Sadly all I am doing is pulling quotes out of students papers, but I got a full dose of the legalities involved in using humans for any kind of research. CMU has a deal with the National Cancer Institute where researchers can take their online course so it had a lot to do with medical studies.

One of the things I plan to do with this blog is help myself manage resources, so here are the articles I read today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/diia/assessment/iar/how_to/methods/doc_analysis.php
and
the first source listed at the bottom of the wikipedia article.

I also aquired some new books for my bookshelves. Some are straight programming texts from SIGCSE. One I borrowed from Mark Stelik (Studying the novice programmer) and some are just from home for me to re-read and annotate with a new set of eyes (The art of changing the brain by Zull, Teaching with Technology, Creating Student-Centered Classrooms by Sandholtz, and How People Learn by the National Research Council) all of which I think are going to help me focus and move forward.

I am also going to redo virtualcompsci.net It needs to be less reflective of AP CS and more reflective of me as a professional at this point.

Well thats enough for now. Onward!

Sorry folks, the first post is just for testing..