Mark Guzdial’s recent blog contained an interesting article from Eric Roberts:

Guest Post: Eric Roberts on the Dangers of Escalating Enrollments

Eric points out that CS enrollments at Stanford have rebounded to record numbers. Other responders to Eric’s comments note similar improvements in numbers of students in introductory computing classes at other bellwether schools. While this is likely good news for the US economy, and for the colleges that have not cut their CS departments so as not to be able to handle the soon to be increases in students, it raises the point that CS enrollments in college are cyclical. Following probably 4-5 years after industry crashes and booms (once a student is in a program, (s)he is somewhat stuck when the tech sector tanks – conversely, when it rebounds, students who chose to enter CS spend 4 years completing their baccalaureate degrees prior to entering the workforce).
My fear, as we see this (hoped for) rebound in numbers of students at the collegiate level is that the colleges will “forget about” the needs of teachers and students in K-12. I believe that during this past tech-downturn, many colleges and K-12 schools began to meet, talk, and build partnerships. College faculty rightly recognized that K-12 students’ insufficient exposure to computing was not making them more likely to sample computing classes at college. Certainly, many local CSTA chapters have significant higher ed contributions.
While colleges may well start to see this rebound in the number of students, the needs of K-12 educators remain, as do the challenges of exposing more K-12 students to high quality computing content. I think that the partnerships that have developed over the past several years should be maintained and grown, even if the colleges (temporarily) become less needing of the students from their K-12 brethren.
Steve Cooper
CSTA Vice-President

How do we try to encourage students to do computer science or engineering? How much does pop culture play into it? Does it hurt it? Can it help?
I recently found out that Mattel released a new Barbie – Computer Engineer Barbie:
http://www.chipchick.com/2010/02/computer-engineer-barbie.html
I’ve never been into Barbie dolls, but I found it interesting. Would girls having (or even knowing there exists) a Computer Engineer Barbie help encourage more girls to get interested in the field? At least it brings awareness to the field. They’ll know it exists. That’s a start and maybe a huge one.
We need to have more examples out there for girls and boys to see. Back in the 1980s there was a show called Knight Rider featuring a car (named K.I.T.T.). The car came complete with a talking onboard computer capable of controlling every aspect of the car, with or without the driver’s help. I have always wanted to have a car like K.I.T.T. New in-car technologies such as GPSs, self-parking, and emergency activated satellite tracking and calling are getting us closer to my dream car, but we are not quite there yet.
The other wonderful element of Knight Rider was that the person in charge of it was an amazing, intelligent engineer AND a woman. It was the first time I had heard of the term “computer engineer.” They showed her working to solve problems and create features in a tangible way. Programming and engineering at its finest.
It is important to meet students where they are and their point of reference. Having students meet and shadow real computer scientists and engineers is great, but this is not possible for many students.
So we need to highlight and emphasize these examples we see in the media (movies, television shows, etc.). They may not be perfect, but at least students can recognize them.
Barbie might not be showing what a computer engineer does, but at least she seems to be thinking about something besides marrying Ken. Perhaps Engineering Barbie can peak student interest and get a discussion going. Here’s hoping!
Shirley Miranda
CSTA Board of Directors

For those of us at universities, the school year is winding down. I am teaching our second semester course this spring, and I usually try to add some off-syllabus material at the end about Java Swing, layouts, event handling, and other things involved in programming window popping and GUIs. I have in the past used the first 15 pages or so from a book that doesn’t happen to be the textbook for the course, because that particular book happens to have the simplest, quickest, cleanest introduction to the topic of any text I have seen. And I have felt that excerpting 15 pages from a standard 500-plus book was legitimate fair use and did not create a copyright infringement problem.
However, when I went looking this semester for my book, I find that I have loaned out the book; I don’t have a copy, and I can’t find a copy in any of my colleagues’ offices either. And I can’t find the photocopy of the excerpt; that must be buried in a file cabinet that got reshuffled when I moved offices.
No problem, or so I thought. There is a new edition of the book that has come out, and I do happen to have a copy of that.
Or so I thought. Trouble is, the authors apparently couldn’t let well enough alone. The beauty of the earlier edition’s text was that it presented just enough to allow one to start doing Swing. Not all the bells and whistles were there, but there was enough to allow one to start with some basic programs, and then, with some effort in reading the Java documentation carefully, to expand on the basics to do more clever things. It was from that short excerpt that I started and then built out a Sudoku solving program with clicks and colors and logic. (I find that nearly all puzzles can be solved with an essentially greedy approach.)
The new edition, though, has expanded 15 pages into about 70. Yes, this is a lot more complete, but it’s also a lot harder to teach because it covers lots of details along the way, where the earlier edition just hit the high points.
Sometimes less is more. I find it hard to justify maybe three weeks of a semester just on the niceties of changing colors on windows, or showing how to make the lyrics of a Lada Gaga song flash on and off in a script font while the song is playing in the background. This is cool stuff, but it’s not really what our students need as core material. I would rather give them examples of the half-dozen options of The Big Picture and then let them explore details on their own.
Sometimes less is more.
Duncan Buell
CSTA Board of Directors