Summer is here. My textbooks are neatly placed on my bookshelf and my Kindle comes out. I rarely have time to pleasure read during the school year. What did I just write? It’s true. I most often use paper textbooks for educational needs and e-books for pleasure. I have mixed feelings about e-books. I own and love my Kindle but I have been known to purchase a paper copy of a book I have on my Kindle for easier reference to diagrams and such.
Many of the texts I use in class are available to students in the e-book format. Some students take advantage of this offering. Many of the reference texts I list for students are free on-line texts. Personally, I find it cumbersome to read a Java program that is pages long “on a screen”. With most e-books it difficult to print pages for easier reference.
In some CA school districts, e-texts have been used and administrators boast that “The greatest immediate observable result is how quickly the kids get engaged.” Yet several university students believe that e-book devices are good if you’re using them on “a beach or on an airplane,” but “not fully functional for a learning environment.”
I teach computer science. What does my ideal textbook look like? Ideally, it is an “interactive” e-book. I read sections, take self-check quizzes that give me immediate feedback, watch videos of algorithm animations, see diagrams of data storage, link to current events having that deal with computer science in the world today (I mean TODAY as in the day I am reading my text) , have the ability to highlight text and write in the margins, submit and/or answer questions to a blog or wiki, have the ability to print pages from the e-book, etc. Current technology provides all of this in different formats through different course delivery systems. I just haven’t found MY ideal e-textbook yet.
In most K-12 school districts, this type of e-textbook might be somewhat of a dream. Providing access to e-book devices for every student is costly and districts are finding ways to cut costs. Access to on-line materials for current events is not permitted in many public schools.
But, wouldn’t it be nice? Your thoughts on e-books?
Fran Trees
CSTA Chapter Liaison
Resources:
Reading from paper versus screens: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/Journals/Reading.htm
Pros and Cons: E-books and E-book readers: http://nssea.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/pros-and-cons-e-books-and-e-book-readers/
Book Smarts? E-Texts Receive Mixed Reviews From Students: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203577304574277041750084938.html
Tablets make digital textbooks cool on campus: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-06-17-digital-textbooks_n.htm

It is summer and time to reflect upon the past school year. Course evaluations are in, and provided some interesting insight into how my students perceived my class. The standard complaint is there. They don’t like the language I use (Racket). But two other recurring themes appeared that will change the way I teach next year.
The first negative came from the weaker students; that I assumed they knew what programming is and that the start of the year went too quickly for them. I have the luxury at my school that all students (high school juniors) must take computer science. The students are all high achieving students, yet computer science is a new subject to the vast majority of them, and many are intimidated at the beginning of the year. So, I intend to slow it down in the fall.
The second complaint came mostly from the more advanced students, but I saw it in many of the evaluations, so it struck a chord. The students complained about my strict requirements for thorough documentation and complete testing of their functions. My usual reaction to this complaint is, “you’ll thank me in ten years when you are out in the work world”, but my reaction this year is that I might be turning some students off to computer science because I am battering them with the not-so-fun aspect of computer science. Since it is the first time many of my students have been exposed to computer science and to programming, I believe I have to focus more on the fun aspects of computer science, that is, the problem solving. It will be a shift for me, but I want my students to end the year thinking, “that was fun, I want more”, rather than, “testing is unbearable, biology is looking good”.
I intend to let them play more, explore, get joy out of seeing their program finally execute and find satisfaction in arriving at a good solution to a given problem. I think I’ll have more fun too! What about you?
Karen Lang
CSTA Board Member

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a workshop (conveniently located) at Purdue University. The workshop was sponsored by an NSF project title CS4EDU (http://cs4edu.cs.purdue.edu/). The goal of the CS4EDU project is as follows: to create new pathways for undergraduate education majors to become computationally educated secondary teachers. This includes a joint effort between faculty in the Department of Computer Science and the College of Education to create a Computer Science Teaching Endorsement program, based on the educational computing standards set by the International Society for Technology in Education.
The workshop brought together people from many different entities: university personnel, NSF personnel, CSTA personnel, and many high school teachers. The intent of the workshop was to discuss the CS Principles course, to share ideas and experiences, and to learn what others are doing in computer science education. However, I think the outcome of the workshop provided so much more. At the end of the two days, the organizers had each participant state what they gained from attending this workshop. So many teachers mentioned that they were thankful for the opportunity to network and meet other teachers with similar goals to them.
As a deliverer of professional development workshops, I am often so worried about the content of said workshops that I forget that there is often a bigger focus and purpose to these events. Teachers need that time to get together with other teachers so they can get new ideas and share their current ideas with like-minded people. There is a flipside to this though too- I know quite a few teachers who select their professional development opportunities based on what they can get out of it (stipends, fun location, etc.) But how many people opt in to a workshop based on what they can GIVE to the workshop? I’d like to challenge your way of thinking as you go through the next year. Teachers need other teachers to be there for them. The content of a particular workshop may seem like something you already know- but just think of all the experience you could share with a community of colleagues with a common interest!
So who is willing to step up to the plate and ask not what your professional development can do for you but what you can do for your professional development?
Mindy Hart
Chair, CSTA Professional Development Committee

I am in the midst of a three-times-normal-speed theory of computing class for graduate students who need to know this material for the qualifying exam, so I have not had lots of time to contemplate metaphysical things (or write a blog post). On the other hand, Michelle Hutton’s post of 6 June, 2011 resonates with me as I try to get the students to think (and write) in precise mathematical ways.
I am reminded of the time many years ago when I had breakfast at a restaurant in Tallahassee on a lecture trip. As I looked at the sentence with the options of toast, biscuits, hash browns, grits, etc., I noticed that whoever had written the menu had clearly not studied disjunctive and conjunctive normal forms of Boolean expressions. Although I suspect very few people misunderstood what was intended as the possible set of options (breakfast, after all, not being rocket science), what was written would not have been parsed as intended by the Gnu Breakfast Compiler.
We have had similar issues in the theory class. It is one thing to ask: For every integer n, describe a finite automaton F that will multiply by n. It is quite another thing to ask: Describe a finite automaton F that will multiply by n for every n. But our students learn this kind of precision; it doesn’t (seem to) come as a natural part of the rest of their experience and education.
My wife used to teach technical writing. She always argued that the purpose of technical writing was to be clear, not to be great literature. And as I try to impress on students: the problems in software, as in nearly all technical projects, lie at the interface between two human beings. Inside one (technically competent) person’s head, there usually isn’t much confusion about what ought to be done and what is being done. It’s the communication from that person to the next one down the line that causes the problems.
Being clear in one’s writing and speaking is very important.
Duncan Buell
CSTA Board of Directors

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

Having women in the department is just step one. But then there is the issue of how teaching assignments are distributed. There I was, idly looking over my department’s teaching responsibilities for 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, congratulating myself for being so on top of things that I had planned the next two year. But then the little irritating voice in the back of my head began to get louder and louder and ever more clear. I looked closely at the schedule and had a distressing realization. Despite that fact that my department faculty is half women (unfortunately that will drop to one-third in the fall), graduating CS majors are likely to have had only one intermediate or upper level course taught by a woman.
Why is this? you might ask. Well, an interesting situation has evolved. We basically have three groups of courses: Group 1: a large number of introductory courses (six different theme-based CS1 courses); Group 2: a set of intermediate courses that students can take after the intro – a CS major can count only one of these, but non-majors, CS minors, and computational methods minors can count many; Group 3: the intermediate and upper level courses that are taken by majors. Guess what. The majority of Group 1 and Group 2 courses are taught by the women faculty. But the only Group 3 courses taken by majors that are regularly taught by women are the courses that count toward the theory requirement. Everything else in Group 3 that is offered on a regular basis is usually taught by a male faculty member.
So, is this the result of some concerted calculated effort by a group of male computer scientists? No! I’ve been making the schedule every year for the last seven years! But then why did this happen? My guess is that the women in the department have been more enthusiastic about recruiting new students through the cool intro and non-majors intermediate courses, and the men have been more comfortable sticking with the tried and true courses that you usually find in a CS major.
What will we do about it? Fortunately, I have a giant spreadsheet of everyone’s teaching preferences, so I know exactly what courses they are willing to teach, and we can start to mix it up more. And when I stop being department chair and teach more courses I’ll take on more of those upper level courses. That should balance things out a bit.
But I think there’s a lesson here. Be ever vigilant, because there’s always a deeper level of analysis you can do before you decide that you’ve truly addressed the gender issues or the women in computing question. I don’t think that you have to have women faculty in order to recruit women into CS, but if you have women faculty then they really should be well represented at every level of your curricular structure, both in K-12 CS as well as at the college level.
Lesson learned here. I hope I’ll have better news down the road!
Valerie Barr
Chair, CSTA Computational Thinking Task Force

In a previous blog entry, I argued that we should address equity in computer science from a civil rights perspective, considering the importance of computing to all social and academic endeavors in the 21st century. I argued that rather than an economic framing; we need to address equity for what it is: an equal opportunity to fully participate in educational and social systems in our society. This, not future jobs, is the imperative to center equity in discussions around computer science education. In this blog, I will discuss what equity looks like within this social justice framework.
1. Availability of Courses for All Students in All Schools: Until computing courses are universally available in schools, severe equity issues will be pervasive. Bluntly put, without courses in the schools, students cannot easily access this content knowledge. With many schools in the U.S. being highly segregated by race and social class, data has shown that more affluent, White schools are much more likely to offer computing courses to students. A fundamental step towards making computer science more accessible is to build courses at all schools, so any interested student is able to learn about computing. I am not advocating that computing be required of all students, but instead, be available for any student who desires to access this critical 21st century knowledge, regardless of whether the student is college-bound or not.
2. Curriculum and Assessment must be tailored towards students in meaningful ways. The “one size fits all” approach to computing, for generations, has marginalized students of color and females. We cannot simply bring underrepresented students into “traditional” classroom spaces and expect them to engage in a curricular model that has typically captivated the intrests of only a small sample of the population. Instead, curricular resources need to be created to reach the interests and prior knowledge of particular minority communities and girls. This type of resources could include materials such as Ron Eglash’s culturally situated design tools to showcase the cultural dimensions of computing. A second approach would be to include project-based curriculum that encourages students to draw from their own community knowledge to examine social and environmental issues through a computing perspective. Curriculum and assessment must be carefully developed to highlight the multiple ways of knowing , and showing, students bring to classrooms.
3. Teachers must be supported in developing an inclusive pedagogy that is effective for engaging girls and students of color. Moving towards an inquiry-based teaching strategy has been shown to be effective for reaching underrepresented students in computing and in other STEM disciplines. Having pre-service opportunities and professional development workshops that help communities of teachers sharing strategies for teaching underrepresented students, English language learners, etc. is critical in developing these pedagogical skills.
These three elements are part of a cohesive whole, and must be tackled together. If particular organizations, universities, schools, or industries are firmly committed to working towards equity in computer science education, the action plans must address all three of these dimensions in an integrated method to make real change.
Or, perhaps there are more dimensions? What other dimensions might people consider when working on equity issues in K-12 computer science education?
Joanna Goode
CSTA Equity Committee Chair