It is perhaps fitting to write a blog about teaching programming while I sit here and monitor my students as they write the final exam. I did my other exam yesterday (same class, another lecture section) so the grading is very fresh in my mind.
For the last few years I have been teaching one of the first three courses in our major, and all of these involve programming. I tend these days to make my exams open book, open notes, open anything-printed, but closed to anything electronic. I don’t know how long the closed electronic can survive, but I don’t know another way to keep the students from getting too much help from outside. I do not mind if they print off piles of paper, but I also try to warn them that they need to have indexed all their material. I have seen too many students frantically searching through a thousand pages of stuff looking for the one relevant paragraph. Given the level of detail, I don’t mind that they would have written down good versions of code, provided they know what that code does… (I am thinking here of the question that asks for code to link a node into a linked list, and the thee students yesterday who wrote out the code to unlink a node … what were they thinking?).
By making all my exams open notes, I can’t ask some of the simple questions like definitions. But I can ask them to become good librarians and good at finding the references to the material. If they can properly index and organize the details, they have probably learned the material. And perhaps through sheer repetition, they might come to understand the precise way in which things are said and written. In general, their writing is fuzzy, which I think is because their thinking is fuzzy. But this isn’t a discipline where fuzzy thinking is a good idea.
For various reasons, I have been reading a lot of books of late “about” software and about how computing is changing the world. Dreaming in Code, by Scott Rosenberg; Distrust That Particular Flavor, by William Gibson; Programmed Visions, by Wendy Chun. I have also been working with faculty from across campus on digital humanities projects. We live in this strange world in which really great ideas all come down to the issue of SMOP (a Small Matter of Programming). There is a huge amount of work in getting a big software artifact written and tested. There can be major issues in dealing with APIs. All that cool stuff is available for programming iPhones, for example, but it is necessary to understand the classes and methods and how they interrelate. The big issue for me, after a long time teaching, is how to balance the need for “skill” in programming with the need for knowing how to think about putting the small pieces of code together. We still drill students in arithmetic and spelling, probably on the basis that they need to be facile with the basic skills in order to deal with higher concepts. Programming is much the same, except the skills are harder to learn and the higher concepts much harder to understand when they are fuzzy. We can read a bad essay and know that it is bad. It is harder to look at bad code, or to run bad code, and know why we don’t like what we see.
Duncan Buell
CSTA University Representative

Recently I have heard about and checked out some of the online course offerings by Stanford and MIT. I knew about MIT open courseware and the wealth of knowledge offered with the multitude of classes they provided. Then I recently heard that Stanford was offering courses online where anyone in the world can participate as if they were in the class. Interactive assignments are given, so you are able to take advantage of high level courses from an elite university for free. While you don’t receive college credit, you do receive a statement of achievement if you complete the course. This apparently has expanded to other university partners, as found on www.coursera.org.
The list of courses in various subjects is expanding. MIT has joined in with their own version, MITx, (mitx.mit.edu) where students learn in an online community. MIT students, as well as students around the world, can participate. I also recently came across another website, www.udacity.com, offering online interactive courses geared specifically towards computer science.
I am excited at this fantastic opportunity for new learning, not only for students but for myself. You can listen to university professors and industry standouts teaching actual classes and try the assignments yourself. I have mentioned it to a few of my more motivated and interested students to check out. Some of my students come to me self-taught in programming. They have been learning online for many years, because computer science is not taught in their schools. For students who really show an interest in computer science, this can be a way for them to delve more deeply into some higher level topics where they are supported by university educators and a community of like-minded learners. It can give them a taste for what to expect if they were to pursue a computer science major in college. And for students who don’t have access to computer science courses in their school, it is an alternate way to learn in a guided way.
What do you think of these online courses?
Do you think they will encourage more people to learn about computer science?
How will they change how we learn?
Karen Lang
CSTA 9-12 Representative

A March 29th press release by Northrop Grumman Corporation (1) on STEM education captured my attention. The headline was “Azusa campus recently hosted the Lego STEM project competition, to introduce [middle school] students to the practical application of science, technology, engineering and mathematics”. The goal of this competition was to challenge students to design a solar-powered product with their Lego kits that would benefit the environment.
To support the competition, Stephen J. Toner (VP of Northrop’s Azusa Operations) wrote that “Tomorrow’s leaders in the STEM fields need to be cultivated at an early age during their academic journey in the educational system.” As I’ve expressed in earlier blogs, I fully agree with Toner’s belief that early exposure to computer science increases the likelihood of students’ future interest in STEM careers.
This competition exemplified the core ideals I have been sharing with my students since the beginning of the school year. The information contained within the release provided examples of how other organizations were utilizing computer programming to address environmental concerns. I was busy planning my school’s annual Earth Day celebration, so the timing of this article couldn’t have been better.
Environmental literacy is an important part of a framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2). So I decided to focus the students’ energy on investigating and analyzing environmental issues and then coming up with technological solutions. In addition to researching concerns and brainstorming ideas, I was eager to have my students design solutions which would inspire action on environmental issues – another important component of the 21st Century framework.
Using technology as a tool for change is not a new idea. While preparing my unit, I came across a few other programming competitions with similar goals. One such competition, Games for Change (3) states on their website that their mission is to “Catalyze Social Impact Through Digital Games” by “facilitating the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts”.
After I presented the challenge to my students, I was pleasantly surprised when, in addition to the usual onslaught of PowerPoint slide shows and Animoto Videos, a couple of my students set their sights a little higher. They decided to create Scratch programs or design their own websites.
I have always been a big proponent of social action. Thanks to current research supporting social justice initiatives in education, I now have the tools to make this happen and the impetus to see it through.
Earth Day is only three days away. My students are eagerly putting the finishing touches on their projects to share them with their classmates. Their excitement is palpable. They believe their actions can make a difference, and so do I. A popular quote by Bill Gates says it all “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others”. Thanks to technology, my students can now be an instrument for change. What more could a teacher ask for?
1. http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=250665.
2. http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21_Framework_Definitions.pdf.
3. http://www.gamesforchange.org/.
Patrice Gans
CSTA K-8 Representative

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting with Bill Mitchell, Director of the BCS Academy of Computing in the United Kingdom (UK). It was interesting to chat with Bill about the role that BCS has played in the formation of the Computing at Schools (CAS) group and to learn how closely the relationship between the BCS and CAS resembles that between ACM and CSTA.
Both BCS and ACM saw the need to improve how computer science was being taught in K-12 and both took the leap of supporting the development of a new professional organization–grounded in real school realities, built upon full community engagement, and dedicated to teasing out the issues–and then tackled the hard task of making profound and sustained changes to education.
My conversation with Bill convinced me that the experiences of both CSTA and BCS point to four ingredients that provide the foundation for enabling these new K-12 groups to truly impact computer science in schools.
1. A Perceived Need:
Someone has to have figured out that all is not well in computer science education in schools and that there are profound issues concerning who is and is not being taught, what is being taught, and how well teachers are prepared to teach it.
2. An Organizational Champion Providing Financial Support
In order to begin doing the work that needs to be done, CSTA- or CAS-like organizations require financial support and someone in a leadership position willing to make a real commitment. At BCS, this person is Bill, while at ACM it is Executive Director John White. The support of these two leaders is significant to the fact that both BSC and ACM commit a level of annual funding to support their respective K-12 groups.
3. An Industry Champion
CAS has been incredibly fortunate to have the support of Simon Peyton-Jones of Microsoft. Simon, an incredibly dynamic and enthusiastic supporter of K-12 computer science education in the UK plays the role of evangelist, convincing anyone who will listen (and in Simon’s case this means many of the most influential policy-makers in Britain) that improving computer science education in schools is critical to students, to industry, and to the UK’s long-term national economic survival in the global marketplace.
4. Worker Bees
This is the collection of staff and volunteers who dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to work: to planning the events, doing the research, writing the standards and curricula, providing professional development, talking to teachers, and to tirelessly doing the million things that need to be done.
Both CAS and CSTA have been fortunate enough to have these factors in place and the fervent hope is that, with this recipe in mind, organizations will arise in other countries to take on this important task of ensuring that students have the opportunity to learn the skills that will enable them to thrive in a field that truly prepares them for the jobs of the future.
Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director