Earlier this morning Marcia Linn gave the Keynote at ICER entitled “Learning to Teach Computer Programming”. The work that she talked about, while containing some historical perspective about teaching computer science, was mostly about a new report “Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge” and two initiatives: Computational Thinking and 21st Century Skills Movement.
I have not read the Cyberlearning report, so I do not have a lot to comment about it.
As far as the Computational Thinking and 21st Century Skills movement - first I was very happy to hear the “21st Century Skills” agenda introduced at a computer science. She even gave a link to the 21stcenturyskills.org website and showed their “rainbow” curriculum model.
Marcia showed us a simulation from the WISE collection of Science simulations and tried to model how this was a computational thinking/21st Century Skill activity. (It was about global temperature and you could control the amount of C02 that was added to the environment) I was not convinced that it was truly a computational thinking activity. One of the features of computational thinking that I was struck by the first time I heard Jeanette Wing speak about it was the idea that Automation was one of the three key aspects of computational thinking. Its not just about looking a representation of information, but it is about somehow automating some process. The WISE collection of activities is great, but I’m not sure its really computational thinking.
Marcia also talked about a cycle of knowledge building that can be used through a tutor or electronic environment where students go through a 4 stage process of generating ideas, adding ideas, evaluating those ideas and finally sorting the ideas based on the evaluation. This reminded me a little of the misconception research that says you need to expose student’s misconceptions in order to move past them, however it was unclear how incorrect ideas in this process would be “weeded out”.
Still processing what my take away from that talk will be.
The CSTA and others have been talking a lot about certification as their new report “Ensuring Exemplary Teaching in an Essential Discipline”. The question is as we talk about certification in CS I would caution us against relying too heavily on models of certification for other disciplines.
There was an interesting article a short time ago in Curriculum Matters (an Education Week blog) about some of the identified problems with the teaching profession, especially in STEM disciplines. Also at this year’s IES (Institute for Education Sciences) conference I attended a panel on teacher certification (they were comparing alternative certification against traditional certification, and showed no significant difference in student performance between the two.
As we move computer science forward and hope to better prepare our CS teachers for the classroom, lets make sure that the preparations themselves are right.
So this is a re-post from Peter Lee’s Blog. Apparently CMU professors were asked when the last Star Trek movie came out about how much of the Star Trek technology could become real one day.
This is a great video to show your students to help encourage them to not see technology as fixed, and that no idea is impossible to explore. It may not be possible to make right away - but isnt the journey just as fun?
So, those of you who have talked to me in the past year or two probably know my opinion about “computing for everyone”. I believe that we cannot push an additional course into the already packed HS student schedule, and should instead take advantage of the computer applications requirement that exists in most schools.
That means re-designing computer applications and providing quality professional development for MANY applications teachers that often have business backgrounds and not computer science ones. I think this is much more feasible than requiring a computer science course for every student in addition to the current requirements and trying to put a qualified computer science teacher in each of those classrooms.
In a resent browsing of academic standards in the 50 states for another research project (that you will hear more about later when it becomes public), I came across a newly minted course description for computer applications in Alabama. Now I know you may say - Alabama? when thinking about rigorous standards and technological advances your first thought probably isnt Alabama (unless you are going alphabetically). Yet they seem to be ahead of the rest of us. The course standards can be found here, Its the Technology Education Course of Study.
Tell me what you think. What are they missing? Why are they good standards for EVERY child in high school? I’d love to start a conversation about the standards (not the tools or languages - I think thats another conversation).
(BTW - I REALLY like this course description. REALLY REALLY… I think all they are missing is a standard about open source at this point.)
One of the things I love about being at CMU is the ability to see talks given by the professors here (and even sit in on some of their classes). One of the favorite lecturers in the CS department is Luis von Ahn. Luis developed an entirely new field of computer science called “human computation”. Here is a great video of Luis at the CCC event at the library of congress talking about how his research has changed the world.
I think this is a great thing to show students as it really starts to give them a window into the idea that computer science is not all about the programming - yes there is programming involved in a lot - but it is so much more than that.
Recently there has been an ongoing thread on the SIGCSE list serv about whether or not there is a need for a CS Education PhD. The conversation has gone in multiple directions, some arguing that everyone needs an education degree, and talk about K12 teachers. Here’s my reply:
I have been lurking on this thread for a couple of days, and I would like to weigh in.
I am currently pursuing a self-defined PhD in Computer Science Education from Carnegie Mellon University. The reason it is self defined is because there is no formal program for this. I am building on a core of cognitive science work and computer science fundamentals (since CMU is granting me the degree through the CS department they want to make sure I am qualified).
Before starting this degree I taught K12 for 10 years, and I do not believe that this degree is about making me a better teacher. I do not believe that you need a degree in CS Education to be a good CS teacher at the college or HS level. I do however believe that we need people with CS Education PhD’s to help us shape the curriculum and understand how our students learn.
I have a lot of respect for the work that the SIGCSE community does, however the more work I do in this degree the more I come to understand that education research, especially at the cognitive science level is HARD to do well. In our community we have a large number of CS researchers who are exceptional educators and are doing good research, however there needs to be more work done about the underlying cognitive processes that support the learning of CS.
Not everyone needs a CS PhD’s to be an exceptional teacher, however we do need some CS Ed PhD’s in order to help understand our students, our curriculum and WHY some of our teachers are so exceptional so that we can begin to replicate the small bubbles of excellence that we see throughout high schools and CS departments all over.
I know that there are a large number of people out there doing excellent work to encourage girls in computer science. A new US Department of Education program named Women’s Educational Equity. This has prompted 13 groups to apply and be awarded this funding. An interesting article here - is one of these institutions near you? Any of them doing computer science or just more general STEM?
I have been involved in the creation of the Sci-Tech high school in Pittsburgh. I’m not 100% positive but I believe some of the grant money awarded to Pgh public schools is going to the sci-tech program. One of the “strands” through the high school is computer science, and its interesting to see how this is growing.
Wow. Just go and read the press release. This is very exciting and hopeuflly a sign that more and more people are recognizing that K12 has a very large place in the discussion of computer science education. And on the other hand, it gives me hope that the STEM supporters are recognizing that something other than technology usage (like word and powerpoint) need to make up the T in STEM.
The ACM recently commissioned a marketing research report to find out what kind of message would be most successful in changing the attitudes of today’s youth towards computer science as a potential career path, and hopefully at the same time encouraging more people to enroll in computer science degree programs.
The report, which can be found here details the research methodology as well as the results.
In addition to the message findings, one of the more intriguing findings to me was that while there was significant difference for gender, there was no significant difference between ethnicities. African American and Latino boys were just as likely as Caucasian boys to think that computing is a viable and interesting career choice. This supports the research that Jane Margolis did in Stuck in the Shallow End, which indicated that inequities in the educational system were a large factor in why certain populations were missing from the computer science landscape.
In terms of messaging, the message that was most successful with the women was that Computing empowers you to do good. 38% of women reported this message as “Very Compelling”, and it was the third best ranked message overall.
Something in the key results that echoes a comment I made during a session at SIGCSE was that “The strongest positive driver towards computer science, or an openness to a career in computing is ‘having the power to create and discover new things’.” I made the comment that so many of our assignments are about recreating programs that students can find faster on Google than they can even load up the IDE and begin to think about programming it. Again I recommend to the community that we use this information to continue to design assignments that make use of new technology and social patterns within the use of computing in order to inspire our students and engage them in our classes.
The list of speakers (Tim Bell, Michael Kolling, and more) as well as the goals of the sessions are a good start to providing computer science for all to the population that needs to hear it - teachers.
If the requirements for joining the Computing at School group didnt involve travel to their meetings and putting time into a project (but just being a part of the conversation), I would sign up. Maybe when I’m done with the degree.
I would love to see how the presenters are approaching the CS for all movement (since I have great respect for the ones I am familiar with). Taking an interdisciplinary approach, or still holding CS as an individual subject. Either way is valid, but both have implications for dissemination of the ideas.