By Dave Reed
Ah, the holiday break. Time to relax, catch up on sleep, and perhaps read a book or two. If you are looking for some interesting reading related to CS education, here are three books that I read over the summer and really enjoyed:
Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing, by Jane Margolis, Rachel Estrella, Joanna Goode (CSTA Board Member), Jennifer Jellison Holme, and Kimberly Nao. MIT Press, 2008.
Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. Little, Brown & Co., 2008.
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis. Addison-Wesley, 2008.
As a CS teacher, if you haven’t read Stuck in the Shallow End yet, you really should. It gives a detailed analysis of factors that have led to our shortage of CS students, especially among women and minorities, and describes the project currently underway in L.A. to try and address these factors. All of Malcolm Gladwell’s books are interesting and fun to read. This one looks at characteristics that lead to success (and so complements Margolis’ book very nicely). Blown to Bits is a great description of the technological changes going on in society and how they impact our lives. Lots of fascinating facts and anecdotes you can impress your students with ;-).
What other books are people reading that might be of interest to the CSTA community? Please follow up with your recommendations and reviews.
Dave Reed
CSTA Board of Directors

By Chris Stephenson
The fall 2009 issue of Journal for Computing Teachers is available at
http://iste.org/jct (direct link is http://tinyurl.com/yfq9qjz).
JCT is a K-12 oriented online periodical where the emphasis is teaching about computing. JCT is published under the auspices of the Special Interest Group for Computing Teachers (SIGCT) in the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The primary mission of SIGCT is to enhance precollege computing instruction.
You are encouraged to submit papers for possible publication in JCT. For your planning purposes, the submission deadline for the spring 2010 issue is February 15, 2010. Information on submissions can be found at http://iste.org/jct. Please contact John with your submission ideas and/or if you’re interested in serving on the Editorial Review Board for JCT.
Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director

Reposted from the Huffington Post
To the age-old question — “What do you want to do when you grow up?” — children today give many modern answers: “Help feed hungry families.” “Prevent and cure diseases.” “Find sources of renewable energy.” “Understand the universe.”
One clear path leads to each of these aspirations: the study of computer science. Computer models and applications enable farmers to increase crop yields, HIV-positive patients in Africa to receive lifesaving treatment, industry to reduce its carbon footprint, and explorers to study the stars. Computing has become the universal underpinning of scientific advancement and economic activity.
This week is the nation’s first Computer Science Education Week. It demonstrates that the hopes and dreams of our future leaders will not be realized by simply knowing how to turn on a computer, but by turning kids on to computer science.
This is not as easy as it sounds. Today’s Internet-savvy, video game-saturated culture has lulled parents into thinking that children already know what they need to know. But the ability to operate a PC, use a Wii, or surf the Web is no preparation for truly understanding computing.
That understanding starts early. And it starts with mastery of fundamental concepts related to computational thinking. Elementary and middle school students should be exposed to thinking about data, representing information, using computation and combining these concepts to solve problems as part of math and science courses. This basic knowledge can then form a foundation for more formal computer science courses in high school and beyond.
Unfortunately, nearly three out of four fourth-grade math and science teachers do not have a sufficient understanding of their subjects. In high-poverty middle and high schools, most did not even major or minor in math or science. “Too many middle school students are being taught by a generalist,” says U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Compounding the problem is curriculum. In 1983, the landmark A Nation at Risk report called for students to take three years of math and science to graduate. A quarter century later, nearly half the states still do not require this amount. It is shocking, but not surprising, that the U.S. ranked 35th out of 40 nations in math and 29th in science, according to the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
Schools struggling to teach basic core subjects are often unprepared to elevate computer science to its proper status. Many focus on teaching computer literacy – the ability to carry out basic tasks on a computer – sometimes confusing this with computer science – the study of computer processes and designs to solve problems. Most schools do not enhance other courses with sufficient deep computing concepts, and offer computer science only as an “elective” course or consign it to career and technical education.
Odd as it may seem in the Information Age, schools are actually scaling back computer science courses at all levels. A Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) survey found the percentage of high schools that offer rigorous computing courses has fallen from 40 percent to 27 percent from 2005-2009. And a majority of states do not have certification for computer science teachers or computer science standards to inform rigorous instruction.
Computer Science Education Week (www.csedweek) brings national attention to these challenges. The computing community, including industry leaders, is spotlighting the connection between computer science education and success in a digital world.
Together, we have already begun to develop and share best practices. The Association for Computing Machinery and the CSTA have issued a model computer science curriculum for K-12 education. The National Science Foundation is funding the creation of a rigorous new Advanced Placement Computer Science course for college-bound students. And we are working on strategies to address the significant shortage of women and minorities in the field.
We are seeing real progress across the nation. Texas, Ohio, Maryland, North Carolina, and Georgia are working on ways to count rigorous computer science courses as a mathematics or science credit toward meeting graduation requirements. Some states are changing their teacher credentialing process to allow computer science and other professionals to become adjunct teachers. Universities such as the University of California are adjusting admission requirements to give rigorous computer science courses more weight.
President Obama and Congress have provided national leadership. They have increased funding for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Now they need to elevate computer science within STEM majors and fields.
The myth that all computing jobs are going overseas is just that – a myth. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is one of fastest-growing and highest-paying sectors of the economy. More than 800,000 high-paying professional information technology jobs will be added between 2006 and 2016 – a 24 percent increase.
Simply put, computing drives innovation in all fields. Our society needs professionals with the ability to solve problems across multiple disciplines. And the rewards for doing so are huge. “‘Where is the money?’ I ask my students,” wrote nationally renowned calculus teacher Jaime Escalante. “It is in physics, computers, biology, chemistry, and electronics.”
In the 1950s, the launch of Sputnik compelled America to improve math and science education. Today, the mastery of cyberspace, not outer space, will determine our future. It is time to launch a new generation of innovative professionals. Computer Science Education Week is an excellent start.
Maria Klawe
President of Harvey Mudd College
Andrew Chien
Vice President at Intel Labs
Rick Rashid
Senior Vice President of Research at Microsoft, Inc.
Alfred Spector
Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at Google, Inc.

I was talking to a gentleman the other day who has a successful mentorship program in his line of business. I was amazed at the simplicity of his model. It started many years back when a few young fellows started coming to him with questions about what he does and how he does it. And simply by sharing the basics of his job, these men became more interested and started asking more and more questions. It finally dawned on this older gentleman that this seemed to be working out pretty well for equipping people to do the job at hand. So he developed a system of looking for people with promise and then taking two of them under his wing at one time, even if they did not overtly have the interest or background at the beginning of the relationship. But the real key was that he each pair that he was training and mentoring to make it their mission to do the same thing for two other people, thus exponentially growing the pool of applicants to work in the field.
So I got to thinking. What if the equity issues in computing were addressed in this way? People who feel passionate about the underrepresented populations could reach out and form a personal mentoring relationship with a couple of individuals, mentoring these people and supporting their explorations of computer science and then, in turn, those individuals could choose another two and so the process would be repeated over and over again? Sure, some of this happens unintentionally already. But what I am talking about here is a real focused effort- built on relationships, not internships.
I hope that maybe you will just give this suggestion a whirl. Find a couple students in your schools who you think might have potential and invite them to give computer science a try. Build a relationship with them so that they feel they can ask questions, even though they may not know anything about computer science. And let’s just see where this puts us in 10 years.
Mindy Hart
CSTA Board of Directors

I read John Harrison’s recent blog asking the question whether students are good problem solvers or mimics and it made me consider my latest school experiment.
Each term our principal polls the faculty to ask for elective offerings for the upcoming term. Since it is meant to be more relaxed than an academic period for students, I decided to offer an elective I called Down and Dirty Programming, specifically to prepare students to compete in programming contests. I am often unable to field a junior team because I use Scheme in my class and most contests are limited to Java, C++, and VB. I know there is much debate on the pros and cons of programming competitions themselves, however, my belief is that my students love to compete and going to an event that promotes CS and gets them pumped up is a good thing. But that’s a topic for another blog.
I warned the five students (four males and one female) who signed up that the course would work very differently from my normal CS class. All good programming practices would go out the window. They grinned at the thought: no documentation needed, no design recipe! They wouldn’t learn OOP, they would focus on solving problems quickly, and might get dirty doing it. I warned that it would be largely self-directed. I would give minimal instruction of basic programming concepts, enough to get them going on some practice problems, and later we would work on competition strategies.
I was curious to compare how learning occurred in the elective and in my regular Computer Science class. All five students are in my regular class too, as all juniors are required to take CS. Three of the five students had never programmed before, other than the few weeks of Scheme they have had so far this year. I gave them very brief introductions to conditionals, looping, and arrays and a short set of problems on each. The other two students had some Java experience so I set them off to do practice problems on the USACO training website.
How are students solving problems? There is an immense amount of googling for sample code and copying/pasting of code snippets to accomplish minor tasks like opening and closing a file. So, is that mimicking or is it problem solving? Since competition problems are often so unique, complex, and unrelated to real life, students have never come across problems quite like these and they must apply several different concepts to solve them. They are not mimicking, they are gathering from a set of tools to put together a solution. They must come up with the algorithm that solves the problem.
The class is incredibly collaborative, with the more seasoned programmers eagerly helping the others. The newbies compete to see who solves a problem first. However, I don’t think there is necessarily a higher level of collaboration than in the regular class. The atmosphere is more relaxed than in the regular class. There is no stress on what the grade will be or whether they will complete the problem by the end of class. They are just enjoying the learning process.
The big difference between the elective and the regular CS class is the lack of directed guidance. Labs in the regular CS class are directed, methodically leading students through each concept, building upon each skill. The learning in the elective is very ad hoc, depending on what the student needs to know to accomplish a given problem. Which is the better method? Which method applies more to real-life and to how the students are going to learn new skills in the future? I am still questioning this myself and wondering what others think. I am also reflecting upon what I may bring back to my regular classes from this experience.
Karen Lang
CSTA Board of Directors

Can you remember life without email and texting?
BITD B4 the EMSG, we talked, in person or on the phone, and wrote in a language that was readable. Now, most of our communication is done via email and texting. This sometimes includes a new vocabulary and a new dictionary [7, 8].
Communicating on a personal level and communicating on a professional level are two different animals. Many of us use email for professional communications, which stresses the importance of knowing proper email etiquette. I’m sure many of us have, at least once, pressed that SEND button too quickly or received an email that we had to ponder over trying to make sense of its meaning or intent. Email can be very easy to misinterpret. According to research done by Nicholas Epley (University of Chicago) and Justin Kruger (New York University) and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, there’s only a 50% chance of correctly ascertaining the tone in an email message but people think they have correctly interpreted the tone 90% of the time.
People often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they hear the tone they intend in their head as they write. At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations. [5]
I found the following Tips for Writing Emails helpful (and sometimes amusing). How many of these “tips” hit home with you (either as the sender or the recipient)?
1. The subject line: The subject line is the only thing you’re sure the recipient will read. “Re: re: re:” is not helpful in this regard. But neither is “Project Update.” Be as specific and clear in the subject as every other part of the email [3].
2. Say it up front. What is the purpose of your email? Say it in the first line. Can the reader tell from the subject line and first sentence what you are writing about? If not, why are you insisting that they guess? [1].
3. Call to action. The number one thing that separates a memo, report, or PowerPoint from a novel is a call to action. Does your email ask the reader to do anything? If not, why are you sending it [1]?
4. Assume nothing. Let the reader know what thinking has gone on behind the scenes. And when following up, don’t assume everyone remembers everything you’ve said. If you’ve got any worries that an acronym, term, or reference is going to elicit a confused moment, just explain it. Are you hiding anything from the reader unintentionally or assuming that your audience has prior information [1]? If so, clarify and explain.
5. Do the thinking. How many times have you gotten an email that says, What are your thoughts? followed by a forwarded chain of messages. That’s the writer saying, I can’t be bothered to explain my reasoning or what I want you to focus on. When you write, make sure you’ve explained what you’re thinking and what you want the reader to spend time on [1].
6. Share your train of thought. If I know why you emailed me 37 spreadsheets and asked for me to combine them by Tuesday, it allows me to be part of the process rather than feel like a cog being dumped on [4].
7. Delete redundancies. Say it once. That’s enough. If you’re repetitive, the reader will stop reading and start skimming (Like you probably just did.)[2].
8. Use numbers and specifics instead of adverbs and adjectives. Johnnie is currently way behind schedule on major assignments, is not as clear as Johnnie’s science project is 3 weeks late [2].
9. Delete off-topic material. The best emails say one thing and say it clearly. One-subject emails also make it easier for the recipient to file the message once they’ve taken action, something anyone who uses Outlook to manage tasks appreciates [2].
10. Delete anything written in the heat of emotion. Will this sentence show them who’s been right about the project since the beginning? Yes? Cut it [2].
11. DON’T SHOUT IN EMAIL!!! don’t mumble in email, either. Avoid writing your message using all upper case or all lower case [6].
12. Shorten. Remember the reader struggling to digest your message on the run. A BlackBerry or an iPhone gets about 40 words per screen. What looks short on your desktop monitor is an epic epistle on their mobile device [2].
13. Give it a day. With time, what seemed so urgent may no longer need to be said. And one less email is something everyone will thank you for [2].
14. Toss useless words. “In fact,” “personally,” “I think,” “actually,” “literally” and their like are almost always empty of meaning [3].
15. Don’t BCC. Remember that no matter how you send it, email is as private as a postcard slapped to the water cooler. If someone needs to know something secretly, call them and whisper [3].
16. Format. Use bolded headings, bullet points, and numbered lists to allow the reader to scan for your main points [3].
17. Use Paragraphs. Similarly, use blank lines to separate paragraphs. You do use paragraphs, right [3]?
18. Use Spell check. Have it? Use it.
19. Look at your email address. What does it say about you? Are you a [email protected]? or [email protected]? First initial, last name might be a better option [6].
20. Save the txt abbreviations for your friends.
Remember, you could always use the phone or snail mail. Enjoy your *$ and HAG1!
References
[1] 4 Tips for Writing Better Email
[2] How to Revise an Email so the People Will read It
[3] How To Revise an Email Revised
[4] Is Your Email Businesslike or Brusque?
[5] The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
[6] Email Etiquette: Why is it Important
[7] E-Mail Etiquette
[8] NetLingo List of Internet Acronyms & Text Message Jargon
Translations
* first phrase in this blog: Back in the days before the email message…
* last sentence: Enjoy your Starbucks and have a good one!
Fran Trees
CSTA Chapter Liaison

Seen in the stairwell of the Purdue Student Health Center…

Robb Cutler
CSTA Past President

Robb Cutler,
CSTA Past President

If I were to ask the question: “What should be the underlying foundation of every professional development opportunity?” many of you would immediately have an answer. Some of you might say it has to be interesting. While others may suggest it has to be relative to what you are teaching. And still others would suggest that it has to be fun (or if you want to be more sensitive we could combine those three together and call it engaging.)
But I am going to take you a different route and suggest that the underlying foundation of professional development is really all about communication. A large portion of my job responsibility revolves around creating and providing professional development to the K-12 environment. The formula for a good professional development opportunity is simple:
my compelling message + my effective demonstration + your understanding + your willingness to implement = growth
And over the years the one thing that has become clear is that if just one of these elements is missing, we approach what has come to be known as epic fail. You see, if I have an idea of what I am trying to tell you as a provider of professional development, but I am not communicating that well, it will not translate into anything useful. Additionally, if I have a great message and a whiz bang demonstration, but a teacher is just there to put in time and get some continuing education credits, once again, there is a break down in the communication cycle and the professional development opportunity is for naught.
Here are a few suggested questions to ask yourself to help make sure your next professional development opportunity is worthwhile (while ensuring the foundation of communication is intact).
1) What do I think is the goal of this presentation/ workshop/ video, etc?
2) What is ONE useful/ implementable thing I can take away from this presentation/ workshop/ video, etc?
3) What will never work with my students? Why?
4) What do I not understand about what is being presented?
5) Who else would benefit from knowing some of this?
Mindy Hart
CSTA Board of Directors