Recently I was asked by a younger teacher, how I allocate my time because he knew that I teach both computer science and mathematics. I never thought much about it prior to his question. I responded to him with, I work on what needs to be done first. That has seemed to work for me but during the last two months I have been thinking more about his question. I have had to make choices and I had to say no to some requests because I just couldn’t “keep up” any more. I need to devise a system that allows me to prioritize and allocate time.
I am learning to say “I just can’t do” when I know I don’t have the time. However, teaching computer science is much more time consuming than teaching mathematics. I am constantly looking for ways to better convey a computer science topic to the students or I am opening the lab for the students to finish their programming projects. I want them to succeed and I feel I need to assist them and put the time in.
I know some of you have more preparations than I have and I am wondering, just like the younger teacher asked me, “how do you allocated your time so you get it all done and provide the best education for your students?”
Please share your thoughts.
Myra Deister
CSTA Board of Directors

This year, after the AP Computer Science exam, I gave my students a choice: robots or Android Apps. In April, my order of Scribbler 2 robots came in. I’ve used them in a summer program I teach in (California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science – COSMOS) and used them in my Robotics class. But, despite seeing them when they arrived and having interest in programming them, they opted to make Android Apps.
I hadn’t really played with it much, but we’re going to use it this year for COSMOS. So, my students and I embarked on playing with AppInventor together. Luckily, it was my APCS class and they could go from basic tutorials to more complicated ones in a short time frame. We went from the Kitty first application to an Amazon.com database search, to a GPS locator. We briefly went over the basics and I let them run with it. With the knowledge they gained from APCS, the concepts connected easily for them. If they didn’t understand the point of methods before, it was clear after using AppInventor.
The blocks editor in AppInventor reminds me of Scratch. But, naturally, there is something more inherently powerful with AppInventor since it can take live data from GPS or the internet to create applications that can be used on your Android device. My students don’t have Android phones or other devices, so we used the emulator. They enjoyed creating their own application. Some made games and some made paint programs or variations of the tutorials we completed.
I’m torn between having them work on it during the very beginning of school (or even as a summer assignment) to get their feet wet in the programming arena. I can see positives and negatives. One negative being I always need all the time I can get to delve into the material for APCS. But I will use it for my Robotics class next year and hope to get more ideas this summer.
I think the possibilities are almost endless to what students can get out of it. It makes software development truly real for them because they can create apps that they can immediately use and share!
Now, that’s good PR for CS in high school!
Shirley Miranda
CSTA Board Member

The term “precise language” has come up twice in the past few weeks in way that highlight the difference between computer science people and other people. (I wouldn’t want to call them “regular” people.)
I am involved in a project where we asked education graduate students, “How would you describe someone who is ‘techie’?” One of the most interesting responses (from someone who went to an East Coast Institute of Technology) was that techies use precise language.
While I wouldn’t have thought of it, that answer immediately resonated with me, from all the times I’ve had my vague language corrected to the very way that the techies I know talk all the time.
Then, this weekend I was sitting at a table with a bunch of techies computer science educators who were discussing whether an important part of computer science is using “accurate and precise language” to communicate. They were extremely concerned that if precision is an important descriptor that it will lead students to a level of detail that’s too great for an introductory CS class. Indeed, one of the techiest senior members of the group wanted to substitute “simple language” for “precise language” in order to encourage a higher level of abstraction than he felt “precise language” would elicit.
This, it seems, is one of the very differences between computer science people and humanities people (to broadly generalize). Regular people think that the kind of way computer scientists talk all the time is precise language. Computer scientists think they talk regular and that precise language is even more detailed. I think of the math or English teachers I know, for whom “simple language” would entail a level of vagueness and abstraction that isn’t what the document intended and that “accurate and precise” would be the appropriate amount of correctness.
I’d say it’s all a matter of perspective, but I suspect that some computer science educators would point out that perspective is something they teach in art and English…
Michelle Hutton
CSTA President

Last month, CSTA Executive Director Chris Stephenson and I attended the organizational meeting for the Partnership for Advancing Computing Education or PACE. PACE was formed with the goal to “provide a basis for computing education organizations to communicate, cooperate and collaborate on activities that will advance the state of computing education.”
Founding member organizations include CSTA, National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), IEEE Computer Society, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and Association for Information Systems (AIS). Mark Guzdial was appointed as the Director (you might want to check out Mark’s picture with the CSTA Sock Monkey in an earlier post) with Lecia Barker of NCWIT as chairperson and Andrew McGettrick as assistant chair of the Board.
CSTA hopes that the relationship with PACE and the other members will enhance our efforts to improve K-12 education. Each year, CSTA will send two representatives to the annual meeting of PACE with periodic phone conference calls in the interim. The goal for the organization within the next year is to increase the number of member organizations from five to ten.
If you know of an organization that is interested in joining PACE, contact CSTA and we can forward the information to Mark.
Dave Burkhart
CSTA Board of Directors