There have been exciting developments in the Los Angeles Exploring Computer Science program.
This past week, the university-district-CSTA partnership received a large NSF grant from the Math-Science Partnership program of the National Science Foundation. A major part of this grant supports the development of a mobile phone computing curriculum for Los Angeles math, science, and computer science classrooms. Using smart-phones and a customized Android app, students will work in teams to collect data which describes a particular social or environmental issue in their community. Groups will then analyze their findings to create new knowledge about the community issues to present to others.
What I’m really excited about is that this experience explicitly connects computer science concepts with the experiences (and equipment) that students encounter daily. The curricular activities will reinforce the idea that computer science is all around us and can be used for social and environmental inquiry.
As I begin to think through possibilities for student engagement, I am curious about how other computing educators might be using mobile phone technology to collect data for computer science projects.
Have you heard of any great mobile phone computing projects for K-12?
Joanna Goode
CSTA Equity Chair