Thinking big about computer science education means thinking about how we can guarantee that every American student has some formal computing education. There are many ideas for how we can go about doing this, but there are two tightly-coupled fundamental problems that must be solved if we’re going to realize this dream: where does computer science (CS) fit in American education and who will teach it?
The first problem is viewed as a zero-sum problem. If we propose adding CS education somewhere (anywhere) in the system what will we lose? Should CS replace some existing course or content? Should it be added on top of everything else we ask our students to do? I think that the CS teaching community (myself included) has difficulty being sensitive to this issue. I often catch myself operating under the assumption that it is a priori obvious to everyone that the world would be a better place if students learned some real computing in school. The reality is that very few people (and let’s focus here on school/district leadership, policy makers, and stake holders) have a visceral sense of what good and real computing education is or looks like because, of course, it’s likely they never had it themselves.
They know that computers and technology are important, but lack the confidence or experience to declare what they want in their schools. It’s difficult to pull the trigger on a big decision when there’s so much indecision in the air. This perhaps explains why our nation’s current efforts at CS education look like scatter shot. So by asking, say a school principal to add a computer science requirement, they may intellectually understand the argument, but they can only viscerally feel the potential loss: it’s either replacing something (a loss of that thing) or piling on more (a loss of free time and resources). And if you try to claim there isn’t a loss, you’re not being honest with yourself, and they won’t believe you anyway. It’s a big ask of an administrator who will get all the flak resulting from the perceived loss, and all of the flak that seems to naturally go along with disruptions or changes to the system.
At the same time, if you manage to succeed in adding a CS requirement you’re likely screwed for another reason. Who will teach the classes? Many schools in America do not have anyone on their staff qualified to teach CS and schools that are lucky enough to have a computer science teacher probably only have one of them. If you just added a graduation requirement at a high school, how are you going to handle teaching a real CS class to all of those students?
So the zero-sum problem is tightly coupled, in a chicken-and-egg way, with the rather large problem of not having enough teachers: we can’t add CS courses because there are no teachers and we can’t get teachers because there are no CS courses. We’ve been spiraling around these two fundamental problems for a long time with seemingly little progress.
But in Chicago we think we found a way in. Right now, with the help of three local universities and funding from a National Science Foundation CE21 grant, the Chicago chapter of CSTA is helping to develop 75 Chicago Public School teachers to teach Exploring Computer Science (a real CS curriculum) that is being implemented in those teachers’ schools as a required course. Did you hear the part about required? Did I mention this is happening right now?
How did we do it? We found schools that did not have the zero-sum problem. Career and Technical Education (CTE) schools around the country have students on a track for some kind of technical education. In Chicago there are about 35 of these schools and many of the CTE programs live as a sub-program within the local schools. They are not separate schools. All CTE students in Chicago were required to take a “classic” tech ed course for a year (basically Microsoft Office certification plus a few other tech literacy things).
What we saw were teachers in rooms with students and computers in a required course that wasn’t really doing that much for the students or the teachers. Through our advocacy work we were able to convince the director of the CTE program in Chicago to change this required course (common to all the CTE programs) into a “real” computer science course. And that’s how it started. We chose to teach the Exploring Computer Science curriculum because of it’s fantastic professional development model and I would describe the early results as transformative. Most of the teachers love teaching the class and now feel like they’re making a difference in their students’ lives rather than treading water in a classic “applications” course.
Are they “real” computer science teachers? Yes. But they’re different than the computer science teachers that we in the CS community are used to and that’s something we have to get used to but also what’s so great. These teachers are going to be able to reach students of all races, genders, creeds, and socio-economic status for the precise reason that they’re nothing like, well, me. I’m seeing it happen before my eyes and it’s amazing. The potential impact of this project is huge. In a few years time, we will have hundreds of computer science teachers teaching a required CS course in Chicago Public Schools.
So, I’m writing this as a piece of encouragement to you other potential cs advocates out there. Please steal our idea. Even beyond CTE schools, many schools have some kind of tech literacy requirement. If schools in your area have teachers in rooms with students and computers and aren’t teaching CS because the teacher just needs help learning how to teach CS content instead of tech ed, let’s go after them. If we can find schools where the only issue is professional development for the teacher and not trying to find a place for a CS class, that’s something we can do. And it’s something that school leaders are more receptive to. They all want to improve existing courses and staff.
Our project in Chicago is the culmination of a relatively small group of people who love teaching computer science and kept trying to figure out ways to have a larger impact beyond the walls of our schools. I should point out that we failed in many attempts to impact the Chicago Public School system. But we kept plugging away and looking for ins. We got there by welcoming teachers and local college professors into our chapter, and requesting meetings with officials and anyone who would listen to our passionate pleas for more and better computer science. We got bounced around a lot, and you will too. But eventually you end up talking to the right person at the right time and quicker than you can believe you’ve made a difference. It can be done. And you are the one to do it.
Baker Franke
CSTA Leadership Cohort

There are about 1800 students at Henry M. Gunn HS (Palo Alto, CA). Enrollment in CS has grown from 90 students three years ago to 110 to 130 last year to 190 this year. This has enabled me to be a full-time CS teacher (I remain in the Math department and am happy to be a member thereof) and to have a colleague teach a section of CS.
Growing the program has been a real team effort. My colleagues in the Math department have been outstanding in handing out literature and encouraging the students to enroll in CS classes. Teachers in some other classes have let me come in and talk about the advantages of learning computer science during high school. My engineering colleagues and I have sorted out pathways for kids who have a strong interest in the T and E parts of STEM (see http://paleyontology.com/engr). The administration has been incredibly supportive.
I have also been fortunate enough to teach in Google’s CAPE program the past two summers. If you are a high school teacher and you are serious about getting kids excited about CS and giving them opportunities to be creative, CAPE is fantastic. Yes, the stories about the food at Google are true, but they are relatively uninteresting compared to the intellectual capital of the people and the teaching resources that were provided. It was a lot of work, and it was incredibly fun. (Google is hiring for 2012; see http://www.google.com/edu/cape/ if you are interested.)
So, life has been terrific. It has also been exhausting. And that can be a problem if one has Crohn’s Disease, an affliction I have had for my whole life. Since last June, I have had a kidney stone, two Crohn’s Disease flares, and a bout of shingles that forced me to stay home for about five weeks. All of this is part of life and the show must go on.
During the five weeks I had shingles, the question for me was how to proceed, given that I could not go in to school to teach. There was no way that I was going to let the CS program decline; not after all the effort that it took to get it where it is.
What I am about to describe is not rocket science. It’s easy enough to do. It’s just a matter of doing it.
Making Lemonade
There is an old adage: “When life throws you a lemon, make lemonade.” If these health problems had happened to me 25 years ago, before the Web and Skype, the CS courses might have been in jeopardy and certainly would have been without a teacher. I have posted my courses on the Web since I got to Gunn, so students know where to find the things I expect them to do even if I am not present. It has been nice to leave the following lesson plan for substitutes: “The homework is online and the students know where to find it. Please make sure they do not take liberties by playing games, using Facebook, etc.” The Web is a game changer and it’s easy to edit content remotely in case I need to alter the pace of the course.
Despite missing over a month, I never needed to slow the pace of instruction. That is largely due to Skype. Many of my colleagues know about Skype as they have used it to do video calls to family. (If your in-laws are in Australia as mine are, it is sweet to avoid long-distance charges.) What people may not know is that, in addition to being able to show one’s face over the Internet, one can also choose to show what is appearing on the monitor. So, I Skyped into the classroom to deliver lectures, with actual code being presented live to the students.
To arrange this, the technical requirements were:

The IT team at Gunn was superhuman and incredibly understanding and accommodating and made sure all of the above were working. They helped the subs set up the teacher computer and log on to Skype, which might have been the biggest problem as having an IT person in the classroom meant being away from something else that was important. Note to everyone: be nice to the IT people. Good IT people (and we have some great IT people at my school) can be lifesavers.
We had everything but the video camera in place (we did get a camera for one session, but it only captured about half of the students), so the substitutes were asked to help call on students who had questions. I lectured approximately once per week per class, which is what I do normally (more on that another time). Students worked in groups and helped each other out, but some also sent me email during class if they had questions. I could not properly monitor what students were doing, but the stories I received from subs and administrators suggest that they were generally on task.
This seems to be confirmed by the results. The students were able to keep up and perform at the same level as students in previous years. There may be exceptions to this, but they are not apparent to me. I am still trying to sort out what that means. (If the lectures were good for the students, they were therapeutic for me. We humans are social creatures and the boredom level was just awful.)
The feedback that I received for using Skype was wonderful. Various administrators were complimentary and occasionally brought in people to watch parts of my lectures. Students sent me emails, saying that it really helped. I got an email or two from parents who had shingles and were thrilled that I was doing lectures despite the illness. And one of the subs left me a poem and an autographed Tim Lincecum poster. (I am not making this up. It’s really neat.)
Josh Paley
CSTA Leadership Cohort

Last month I attended the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest annual convention held in Las Vegas. The 2012 CES featured more than 2,700 vendors, 1.8 million square feet of exhibits and 140,000 attendees. While there were many, many interesting new products, redesigned products and vendors that spent time talking to people about their products. For me, the interesting part of the activity was speaking with educators that are now using some of these new products in their classrooms or learning environments and finding out the effect of their use on their teaching and student learning. The Education-related products I found most interesting were:

Although there were eight teachers with whom I discussed these items, I would be interested in knowing if others are using either or both of these products and the experiences they have had with them.
Gladys Phillips-Evans
CSTA Board Member

I recently participated in a workshop held during SIGCSE 2012 in Raleigh, NC. The workshop was designed to expose beginners to a tool that will help students learn to program and to get excited about computer science. I am neither a beginner nor an expert on this tool; I attended the workshop to reinforce my skills, learn new tricks, and to share some wisdom I’ve gained. While this particular teaching tool has many online tutorials and active user groups, since it’s new, not all of the tutorials are well-written and some of them skip some necessary steps. I have spoken with teacher after teacher who says they benefit from a demonstration or hands-on session. Once they see the basics, they can then easily follow the tutorials or create their own lesson plans and strategies.
Often, during workshops such as these, teachers have questions about the installation of the tool and associated devices, especially since many of us have tight restrictions in our computer labs. (I was extremely interested to find out that even some college professors have strict limitations on what they can and can not install in their labs. I, naively, thought this fight was limited to K-12 teachers!) One workshop participant mentioned her difficulty with the use of this tool in her lab and someone quickly responded, “Use Macs, you won’t have any problem at all.” This knee-jerk response hit me hard. The person who said it perhaps doesn’t realize that 1) not all schools have Macs, 2) even if the teacher or school has money to buy Macs, sometimes districts won’t let schools or teachers make their own decisions on what they can buy, and 3) maybe the teacher/school doesn’t wish to use Macs (yes, there are those of us out there that actually enjoy using PCs). Regardless, this answer wasn’t helpful in any way. And perhaps obtaining the answer to this question was the main reason this teacher came to the workshop!
Teachers, it is okay to ask for help with the little details. I would be super disappointed to hear that a teacher gave up using this tool simply because of having difficulty installing the tool or getting started. And I would be even more disappointed to find that someone felt their question was too simple to ask and feared being mocked. If you encounter a person who won’t help you work out the kinks, then ask someone else. For every person who finds themselves too busy to answer a simple question, there is another person out there willing to help.
We are teachers after all!
Ria Galanos
CSTA 9-12 Representative

This fall I took an online class to learn about ways to use cellphones in the classroom. There has been much in the media recently about ways to utilize this ubiquitous technology in a positive way to enhance learning. While I learned many cool phone apps, I was not convinced that trying to use some of these apps on phones in my classroom would really work. Polling students for understanding a new concept, recording short summary statements about what they learned, capturing photos for later use in a presentation; are all neat applications that might prove useful.
As a faculty at my school, we’re now looking at iPads and how we might use them in the classroom. A “deal” from the local Apple salesman prompted our school director to ask the question, is this something we want to pursue? While I am certainly intrigued by the cool factor, and would love to own an iPad myself, I am struggling to see the benefits of using them in my classroom. The biggest roadblock to using iPads in a computer science classroom is the lack of programming apps. The only one I have heard of so far is Codea. And I wonder if the user interface of the iPad makes it too cumbersome to do heavy production work. Is programming an activity that just requires a laptop or desktop computer with a full keyboard, RAM, and a hard drive?
Considering other subject areas beyond computer science, are the iPads versatile enough to make them the device of choice for our students? Many of my students bring laptops to school, and are constantly using them during the school day, admittedly not always for educational purposes. But is a full featured computer replaceable with a tablet where files must be stored in the cloud, the display is smaller, and typing is difficult? You can buy a netbook with all these features for a lot less than even the cheapest iPad.
On the other hand, the number of apps for the iPad is just exploding. Certainly, many computer science teachers are starting to offer classes in programming for mobile devices.
If the software development world turning its focus to mobile devices, is it time to make the leap and start utilizing these technologies more in our classroom?
Karen Lang
CSTA Board of Directors
9-12 Representative

Why does it always feel as thought we are moving one step forward and two steps back?
After holding an annual summer camp in January (Yes, here in New Zealand it is summer) for 23 students in various stages of programming expertise, I was heartened by the way that the participating students have continued working and helping each other via a Google group. The more experienced students are helping out the newbies and encouraging them along. Students who have come to camp in past years have built a training site. And another former student is rebuilding our organisation’s website and wants to get an alumni organised.
I was also heartened by a new summer camp in Computer Science, held for 14 year old girls. This camp was held in conjunction with a CS4HS workshop for teachers. The girls had a great time and learned heaps. Many staff and students at the university gave up their time voluntarily in their summer holidays to help out. All this gives a sense of moving forward.
Today, however, one of the students from the programming summer camp reported to me that he wouldn’t be able to get supervision at his school for a contest he needs to participate in so that he can be selected to represent New Zealand in the International Olympics in Informatics. “They have told me that they take no part in computer sciences, as it’s not a part of their curriculum”, he said.
So I am sad to say that despite our occasional wins and the clear interest, enthusiasm, and dedication of our students, the war for our subject to be fully accepted isn’t won.
Thank goodness for all those students who plough on, regardless of the lack of formal tuition, support, or community.
So when you look around your programs, where do you see the wins and losses?
Margot Phillipps
CSTA Board of Directors
International Representative

I’ve recently come across two perspectives on undergraduate enrollments, one about STEM disciplines, one specifically about CS. Both warrant comment.
First, there’s a recent posting on the SLATE Moneybox blog that looks at general STEM enrollments. The author, Matthew Yglesias, counterposes efforts to recruit more students into STEM undergraduate majors against the research interests of some STEM faculty and the research funding model that supports many universities. He suggests that there are STEM faculty who do not want to see enrollments grow, based on the following logic (I’ve added some detail, consistent with his picture): more undergraduates will require that more graduate students will have to work as teaching assistants, which means there will be fewer graduate students available to work on faculty research, which means research will progress more slowly, which means that faculty will have to take more time between grant applications, which means that less research money will come into the universities.
Clearly this is a very contradictory situation. We have an incredible need for more STEM majors. In particular, there is tremendous demand for CS majors, far outstripping the numbers currently graduating. We need to encourage students who have nascent interest, not drive them away. And we should not mortgage our long term research and innovation possibilities, and our ongoing ability to apply technology to ever more areas of life, because of fears about short term research slowdown. Perhaps, as Yglesias says, reviewing the financing model for research and for graduate students at colleges and universities is called for.
There’s a second enrollment related issue that’s also brewing. At some colleges and universities CS enrollments are booming. This is great news and problematic at the same time. And the picture is not uniform. Eric Roberts addressed the situation in a 2011 blog post, hypothesizing reasons for Stanford’s booming enrollments. We get a small college perspective from a recent article in the Swarthmore College Daily Gazette. In both cases, enrollments are straining the teaching capacity of the department.
The difficulties inherent in addressing rapid enrollment increase are very real and require some amount of administrative creativity, faculty nimbleness, etc. The overall gap between supply and demand in industry is quite large, and is not likely to be satisfied by a few years of increased enrollment at a few schools. However, I urge those at schools with these increases to recognize, as Roberts did in his posting, that the situation is not the same at all schools, and in some cases irreparable harm has already been done. The combination of low enrollments and a tight economic situation put CS departments on the chopping block at several institutions. We can’t expect to see those departments return any time soon. At other schools the CS major was eliminated, leaving behind minimal CS faculty and just a minor program. Some schools are just “doing okay”, modest enrollments, justifying their faculty lines, but that’s about it. Furthermore, small schools have limited ability to adjust to enrollment swings. At a small college that favors small class size and highly interactive hands-on pedagogy we cannot simply shoehorn more students into a class when enrollments go up. There simply is not room, so we rely on the willingness of faculty to teach overload sections, which is an unsustainable strategy for the long term.
I could go on at length about the vagaries of college and universities, and a model that makes it difficult to adjust staffing in response to enrollment shifts, but that would take us too far afield. Suffice it to say that the current CS enrollment picture, still uneven across the country, is complex, and nobody should draw conclusions about the whole picture based on their local situation.
Valerie Barr
CSTA Task Force Chair

I am currently serving on a committee where I am the only public school K-12 educator. The other members are college educators. The educators on this committee are spread throughout the U.S. During a recent teleconference, we were discussing mobile devices and one of the participants made the statement that within six months every student in school will have a mobile device. I was taken aback by that statement because I had hoped to use Poll Everywhere in my math class but not enough students have access to the Internet through a mobile device. I also mentioned to the committee participant that my school does not have wireless access. He seemed genuinely surprised. Additionally, I did not think that within six months all of my students will have a mobile device. I asked the question, “How can we deal with equal access?” My question was not addressed.
I spoke to Joanna Goode, CSTA Teacher Education Representative, about his statement and her response was that if it is question of owning a mobile device or putting food on the table, the family will choose not to purchase the mobile device. I also read an article in our local paper (the Orange County Register) which reiterates Joanna’s comment.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/home-325490-ezequiel-family.html
The family that is highlighted in the article had given up nearly all of their technology because they just could not afford it.
I really thought my colleague’s comment was isolation until I read the Winter 2011 issue of OnCUE, a publication for members of Computer Using Educators (CUE). In his article Mobile Devices and the Future of Learning David D. Thornburg states: “Educators are starting to realize that every child is coming to school with a powerful mobile device. If this is not true in your school, it will be in six months.” Thornburg does not address Equal Access. I assume he did not feel he needed to since every student will have a mobile device.
In another article in the same publication, Tm Landeck makes the statement: “Of course this requires that all students have a cell phone, but then what happens when a student’s cell phone is dead, forgotten at home, or they just don’t have one?” That is a question I really needed an answer to, but his article never gave an answer.
Equal access is something I deal with in my computer class. I have students that don’t have computers at home or have a computer at home and no Internet access. Is my school that unique? I supervise the computer lab at lunch and after school to accommodate these students. We don’t have a loaner problem and when I mention it to my administration I receive a negative response.
How do you deal with equal access?
What is your reaction to the statement, “All students will have a powerful mobile device within six months”?
Myra Deister
CSTA At-Large Representative

Each year, the College Board provides state-by-state statistics for each Advanced Placement (AP) exam, broken down by various demographics. The numbers of women taking the AP Computer Science exam in 2011 are illustrative of the continuing gender imbalance in computing. The table linked below organizes the 50 states and District of Columbia according to the percentage of AP CS exam takers who were women. The percentages of women across all AP exams are also listed for comparison, as well as the overall percentage of exams that AP CS constitutes for each state.
While nearly 55% of all AP exam takers are women, the percentage for AP Computer Science is much lower, only 18.9%, with a median percentage across all states of 15.4%. It is interesting to note that two states, Texas and California, account for more than 31% of all AP CS exams and both have higher than average participation by women (24% and 21%, respectively). If the numbers from these two states are omitted, the remaining percentage of AP CS participation by women for the rest of the country is 17.1%.
The numbers in this table are collected from the College Board state-by-state data files at:
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd_sum/2011.html.
The table of state-by-state results (both pdf and Excel versions) are on the CSTA website at:
http://csta.acm.org/Research/sub/CSTAResearch.html
Dave Reed
CSTA Board of Directors

While not the latest trend, I find that more of the teachers in one district I serve are using ‘smart’ phones among their educational tools for learning. One teacher in particular, has found some success reaching students in a low income area high school. She uses text polling and other methods for pre- assessment, regular assessment and summative assessment. She started using ‘smart’ phones because almost 85% of her students have phones and knowing that, she created assessments and even projects that could completed through the use of the phone. Some of her colleagues think that by using these tools, the students may not attend class regularly. For this teacher however, she has not seen such a drop off and still (and strongly) believes that whatever means she can find to get and keep students involved, especially in an area that has at least a 33% drop-out rate, is the best tool to use.
Are there others who are using such tools who may have suggestions or advice?
Gladys Phillips-Evans
CSTA Board of Directors