There have been some interesting discussions in the blogosphere recently about whether computer science could (or should) be taught in K-12 without programming.
At the elementary and middle school levels, the CS Unplugged curriculum is one way to engage students in real computer science without even needing computers. And when we do use programming tools at this level, they tend to be exploratory — a developmentally appropriate way to learn.
In the high schools though, I think we have it completely backwards. Too often, we teach programming without computer science. Courses such as “Introduction to Java” and “C++ Programming” abound. Even the remaining AP course is focused almost solely on programming. Although we’re now becoming “enlightened” and are moving towards programming environments such as Scratch, Greenfoot, and Alice, we still gear our courses around the tool rather than the computer science. We’re just replacing “Programming with C” courses with “Programming with Alice” courses.
There’s somewhat of an analogy in the mathematics curriculum these days. I recently tutored a student who wanted to review for the SAT math exam. As we were going over sample problems, we’d talk about approaches to solving the problem. Much too often, when I’d suggest the traditional mathematical solution (for example, using the quadratic formula or factoring a quadratic polynomial to find its zeros), she would tell me that she didn’t know how to use those methods. Instead, she’d graph the function on her calculator and use the built-in solver to get the answer. Moreover, she could get the answer in about one-third the time it took me to solve the problem by hand.
I hate this. Not because I dislike the tool, but because she (and too many students) use the tool to solve the problem without having any real understanding of the underlying math concepts. Take away the calculator and her SAT score would have dropped several hundred points.
While some would say my quarrel with the AP and SAT exams is an issue with standardized tests, not with mathematics or computer science education, I would argue that problems go well beyond those multiple choice exams — that the fault lies in our curricula and our approaches to education. Perhaps I’m too much of an idealist, but shouldn’t our students’ education be at a higher level? Whether it’s math or computer science, shouldn’t we first be teaching our students the conceptual framework and then (and only then) teaching them what buttons to push?
Robb Cutler
CSTA Past President

I began this school year with a renewed spirit, after having attending the Leadership Cohort in Chicago, IL this summer! It was so empowering to be amongst folks with like minds and a passion to grow our computer science programs at our schools.
As the Program Specialist for High Schools in Gwinnett County, Georgia, I serve as a liaison between the Computer Science teachers and the Director of Technical Education, Computer Science, and Apprenticeships. During the week of pre-planning, the Assistant Principal of Curriculum at my school stopped me in the hallway and asked me if I had any ideas about how I could possibly help to increase the number of students in the Computer Science program. I said, “Do I?!” He came into my classroom and I told him about the cohort, and all of the activities that we’d done to that end. So, we both left our little impromptu meeting feeling very encouraged. As part of an aggressive recruiting program this year, I will be at the feeder middle school’s Orientation Night, equipped with a Smartboard showing some Greenfoot programs, Scratch animations, and Alice movies. I will also take along a couple of Lego NXT robots. The idea is to get the upcoming freshman class students “amped up” to take computer science courses as early as their first semester in high school. To get some of the current students at the school interested in our courses, I’m going to work with teachers in other disciplines to create projects that incorporate computer science in their other courses. For example, one year, one of the Foreign Language teachers and I created a project in which my Advanced Web Design students created a Flash matching game to help with Spanish vocabulary. We each had our own rubric to grade the project, and the students were very proud of their work. I will also recruit more female students by going to the softball team and cheerleaders, and encouraging them to register for computer science courses with a “buddy”. There’s been some research that indicates that female students feel less isolated in a computer science course when they take the course with a friend. I’ve done this before, and it seemed to be true.
This summer, my goal is to facilitate 2 or 3 Computer Science camps at one of the local middle schools, to teach upcoming 7th and 8th graders Scratch, Alice, and Lego robots. I will also speak with the Program Specialist for Middle School Computer Science as well, to see if he’d be interested in participating in this project with me.
I’m very excited about my endeavors this year, and I’m hopeful that my efforts to create “One Voice” are successful.
Michelle Venable-Foster
South Gwinnett High School
Math / Computer Science Teacher
Program Specialist for High School Computer Science
Gwinnett County, Georgia

So the people in the computer science field are constantly asking “Where do we fit in terms of technology literacy?” Some believe that every student should have some programming experience, while others believe that it should be selective students that get that instruction. (how we select is a whole different argument)
Maryland has adopted learning.com’s Tech Literacy assessment according to this article in order to gauge how well their 7th grade students are doing in acquiring 21st century skills. If you go to the TechLiteracy assessment modules page you can see the core skills they are working on.
It is anextensive list in terms of applications usage, but is lacking in the more conceptual knowledge (except the social and ethical tabs). Lets consider what would happen if we added another box: Computer Science. What 1 sentence description would you provide for the module? What elementary and middle school examples of computer science skills would you want all students to have? (answer one or both, doesn’t matter – I’ll post my own ideas later in the comments to let people think about what they value before they see what I do).
Leigh Ann Sudol

I am very excited to be a part of the CSTA Leadership Cohort. I was impressed at the workshop this summer with all of the insights into CS education, where we have been and where we hope to be. We are doing our best in Ohio to advocate for CS education. Our two main goals are to set up a CSTA chapter and have a CS emphasis one day at our state wide Etech conference.
My colleague Angie is working with contacts in Central Ohio to host a first CSTA meeting which hopefully will lead to the formation of a chapter. We have both been working on our Etech conference emphasis. It is a 3 day event and I am working with one of the program coordinators to have one day offer a computer science session for
each time slot. We are working with a professor and a couple other CSTA members along with ourselves to write proposals for sessions. Our topics are most likely going to include Alice, Scratch, CS Unplugged, Phidgets and some other topics. We want to offer sessions that will offer free solutions (or minimal cost) to add to school
curriculum. Our plan is that other CS educators will walk away from that day with a handful of ideas and resources plus our commitment to continue helping them advocate for CS in their school district. Our goals are lofty but are in the process of being realized.
We appreciate all the support we are getting and the excitement that is passing from us to those we come in contact with. Hopefully our efforts will help promote our “ONE VOICE” for CS and bring support to those trying to keep computer science in the schools.
Stephanie Hoeppner
Clermont Northeastern High School
Angie Thorne
Hilliard Davidson High School

I was asked to address all the teachers in my county (Fulton) in Georgia towards increasing teacher training and collaboration for teaching CS courses. Our county Department Chair, for Career Tech, Business and Computer Science at the county, asked me to conduct a survey on what kind of interest teachers would have towards being more successful in teaching CS courses. The choices offered had a wide range of courses from AP Computer Science to Introduction to Computer Programming. The response was awesome. Most teachers said they felt lost and responded that the training would help a lot. In Fulton (my county) since last year all students K-12 have an early release day once a month (Sept., Oct., Jan, Feb and March). Teachers are expected to use this extra time toward Professional Learning and counts towards adding to their PLUs. I am cashing into this and offering training in different CS courses. I plan to start with AP Computer Science (only because I have other teachers with whom I collaborate with and I have most success teaching this course).
This kind of project is the first of its kind. I am not sure how things will turn out. I guess I will solve the problems as they come along. As I progress, I will keep you posted of my successes, frustrations and failures.
Deepa Muralidhar
Northview High School
Johns Creek Georgia

In the face of the continuing computer science enrollment crisis more and more universities and colleges are doing outreach to middle and high schools. Post-secondary institutions know that in order to get more students into their classes they have to reach out to K-12 teachers and students, but how much value do they really place on the work of the faculty and staff who are running their outreach programs?
Last Thursday and Friday CSTA and SIGCSE co-hosted a workshop for colleges and universities who are doing or thinking of doing what we call “roadshows.” These institutions are sending faculty and students (graduate and undergraduate) into middle and high schools to do presentations about computer science, informatics, and information technology. Their goal is to provide students with information about computing as a discipline and a career option and to provide special encouragement to students who are traditionally under-represented in the discipline.
The workshop, hosted by Google at their Mountain View campus, was, to put it bluntly, amazing. Faculty and staff from 36 institutions (large and small) came from across the country to share their expertise and resources. Some of the participants were from schools with long-standing, high-quality outreach programs (such as Carnegie Mellon, Indiana University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and some were just starting out. The workshop addressed key issues for the “newbies” as well as the concerns of more mature programs with regard to maintaining and sustaining outreach programs over time.
But, as is often the case with these kinds of workshops, some of the most enlightening discussions took place outside the regularly-scheduled events. For me, the most engaging centered on the question of how much value universities really place on this kind of outreach work.
As we were transitioning from one session to another, I happened to comment on two very different experiences I had had regarding the letter of support we required from the participants’ Deans or Department Chairs. One Dean called me personally to say that, although her institution had virtually no money to support the outreach program, she saw it as exceedingly valuable and wanted to make sure that the applicant from her school would be able to attend. She made it very clear how much she respected and valued both the work being done and the person doing it. Another Dean sent me a letter that was so grudging in its support, I wondered how his faculty member actually managed to keep the program alive. Both of these faculty members were selected to participate in the workshop.
My off-the cuff story started the ball rolling and many of the participants noted that although their institutions want and need them to do outreach, they really don’t value it in all the ways that count for university faculty. As one participant noted “It doesn’t count for tenure, it doesn’t help you publish technical articles, it doesn’t count for service work, and it doesn’t bring in the big money grants. And the rest of the faculty do not respect the work that we are doing.”
When you consider that many of these outreach programs are scraping by on soft money or even no money, it is simply amazing that they are managing to do the work they do. College and university computer science and informatics programs need to move into this century. They need to realize that these kinds of outreach programs are critical to addressing the enrollment crisis and they need to recognize the folks who are doing it in the concrete ways that really count.

In the March, 2008 issue of the CSTA Voice newsletter (csta.acm.org/Publications/sub/Periodicals.html), readers are invited to reflect upon and share professional development experiences that changed their lives. We all have stories of inspiring presenters, dramatic training, and “ah-ha!” moments that transformed our approach to students, what we teach, or even our direction in life.
As summer approaches and opportunities for professional development abound, we’d like to hear about the professional development experiences that truly made a difference in your life. CSTA is the proud sponsor of many professional development opportunities (csta.acm.org/index.html), and hearing from you will help us in planning memorable, maybe even life-changing, opportunities.
So in the spirit of sharing, let me tell you my story of life-changing professional development. I began my professional life as a home economist. In one of my first years of teaching, I attended a professional development event and listened to what we called way back in the early 80s, a “futurist.” I have long forgotten the person’s name, but the message was loud and clear: “Technology will change the lives of families in ways you cannot imagine. Those who prepare now for the technological future will have the opportunity to impact that future.”
I was so excited about the stories of smart devices, ubiquitous communication, and unbelievable opportunities, I barely slept for days. Within weeks, I reenrolled in college, figured out how I was going to be part of the exciting new world I had heard about, and announced to my fellow (and very skeptical) teachers that I was going to become a CS teacher!
Lo and behold, the future that I heard such wondrous things about is here and my life was changed forever because of a professional development event.
Please tell us about the impact of your professional development experiences.
Also, take a look at CSTA professional development offerings.
Get ready for life-changing experiences.
Pat Phillips
Editor, CSTA Voice

I think if there is one benefit to the current downturn in computer science enrollments it is that great minds are starting to wrestle with the complex challenge of how we improve computer science education so that we better engage all students.
This was the topic of a recent blog posting by Dan Reed on his Reed’s Ruminations blog (http://hpcdanreed.typepad.com/reeds_ruminations/). Here is some of what Dan had to say.
I believe we must rethink our computing education approaches in some deep and fundamental ways. First, as researchers and technologists we seek to reproduce students in our technical image, failing to acknowledge that most of our students will not develop compilers, write operating systems or design computer chips. Rather, they benefit from training in logical problem solving, knowledge of computing tools and their applicability to new domains.
In short, most of our graduates solve problems using computing rather than working in core computing technologies. We must recognize and embrace the universality of computing as a problem solving process and introduce computing via technically challenging and socially relevant problem domains.
The magic hierarchy of computing – from atoms to gates to bits to in-order instruction architecture and machine language to code translation to “hello world” was an attractive and emotionally enticing technology story to previous generations. It is often esoteric and off-putting to a generation of students reared on ubiquitous computing technology.
This does not mean we should eviscerate the intellectual core of computing. Rather, we must emphasize relevance and introduce computing as a means to solve problems. Show the importance of computing to elections and voting, energy management and eco-friendly design, health care and quality of life.
Second, we struggle to accept the fact that not every student needs detailed knowledge of every computing specialization. If I were to draw a tortured analogy with the history of automobile, drivers need not understand combustion dynamics, the stiff ODE solutions underlying antilock brakes or superheterodyne radio engineering. Drivers do need to understand how to operate a car safely and recognize the high-level principles underlying that operation.
All of this suggests we should create multiple educational tracks that emphasis the disparate aspects of computing, layered atop a smaller, common core. Of course, I could be wrong – I often am.
To read the full blog entry, you can go to the CRA blog at:
http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/000657.html
It is well worth the read.
Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director

I have just attended my first Grace Hopper conference organized by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. The conference sold out with over 1400 people attending. There were a few brave men at the conference but the vast majority of the attendees were women (they even changed some of the men’s bathrooms into women’s bathrooms). It was amazing and exciting to see so many technical women in a variety of shapes, colors, ages, and backgrounds. I was impressed with the energy, enthusiasm, and depth of knowledge.
The keynote speaker was Donna Dubinsky who is the founder of a new company Numenta that is trying to design a computer system that reasons using a model based on the neocortex of the brain. She was also president and CEO of Palm and had also co-founded Handspring.
Jeannette M. Wing from Carnegie Mellon University gave a very interesting speech about some of the great open questions in computer science such as, “What is computable?” and “What is intelligence?” I was standing behind Turing Award winner Fran Allen in line for drinks and got to ask her, “what attracted her to her career in computer science at IBM”. She said that she had big student loans and needed the money!
One of the interesting comments I heard was from a student who said that she was surprised at the number of older women at the conference. Many of the students didn’t know who Grace Hopper or Anita Borg were. I had an interesting talk with Kathryn Kleiman about a documentary that she is working on about the female programmers of the ENIAC and how they have never really gotten credit for their work. You can learn more about the female programmers of the ENIAC at www.eniacprogrammers.org.
There is a documentary fundraiser on Thursday, November 8th 2007 from 6pm – 9pm, at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. Tickets are $100.00 each and you can register at www.google.com/events/eniac.
Everyone has heard of Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs but very few people know about the important contributions of women in computer science. We need to do a better job of recognizing the contributions of women in computing and in educating both men and women about the role women have played in computing!
For more information on Grace Hopper see http://gracehopper.org/2007/about/grace-hopper/.
For more information on Anita Borg see http://anitaborg.org/about/history/anita-borg/.
For more information on the ENIAC programmers see http:// www.eniacprogrammers.org.
Barb Eriscon
CSTA Certification Chair

About six months ago, a group of department chairs, university and technical college faculty, teachers, and parents in South Carolina came together with the goal of bringing back the enrollments in undergraduate programs in computing. Now with the support of the South Carolina Superintendent of Education, Dr. Jim Rex, they are moving ahead on an ambitious plan to revamp high school computer science in South Carolina. Duncan Buell, Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina gave me the following update on the Computing Competitiveness Council’s plan.
Our committee’s goal is to improve students’ future employment opportunities and South Carolina’s share of the knowledge economy. Over the last few months we have developed an analysis of why computing education may be the way it is and a plan for changing the situation for the better.
One of the problems we see is that although there are departments of math, science, and business, there is no “department of computing” in the high schools, and thus there is no focus and no champion of computing per se. Over the long term we hope to change that situation, even if only to create virtual departments of computing comprising faculty from other departments. We feel we have made a major step forward in this direction in that the major guidance brochure for the STEM disciplines now features computer science prominently along with mathematics, science, and pre-engineering.
We have also, at least in the Columbia area where USC is located, identified a school district willing to work with us on curricular issues and program development. In South Carolina, high school students choose a major. Last week the district and I worked out a major in computer science that will be advertised as one of the STEM disciplines. At USC, we are also developing a variation of the ACM/CSTA Level II course that will be suitable for distance delivery and satisfy a state computer science requirement that all too often has turned into a computer literacy requirement.
We also intend to create a distance delivery version of the course and thus to mitigate problems with rural schools and the difficulties faced by school districts in justifying the staffing of computing classes with teachers. The other university participants in the CCC are currently searching for suitable districts in their regions of the state.
Finally, we will be planning teacher preparation courses for summer 2008 both in the new Level II course and in Advanced Placement Computer Science, whose enrollment has shrunk in South Carolina to less than ten percent of that of AP Calculus. As our plans develop, we will be asking the state for support for teachers to induce them to make the effort to prepare for teaching these classes.
Overall, our goal is to coordinate the presentation to students and parents of the message about computing as a discipline and computing as a career and to provide schools with the documentation, support, and teacher preparation necessary to deliver that message. It’s a tall order, but if we do not participate, then we can’t very well complain about what message does get sent.
Duncan Buell
BUELL@engr.sc.edu