Did You Miss It?

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Myra Deister

Miss what you ask? Why the CSTA Webinar presented by Beth Ziesenis, Nerdy Best Friend, on May 12, of course!

A special invitation was emailed to you on May 1. I opened the email and registered for it immediately! I wanted to know about apps that would help organize my life.

I was prepared to view it at school on May 12 and would you believe it, the school network decided on that very day to slow down to a crawl and I was unable to view the webinar. Never fear. I received another email that announced that it has been recorded. You can access the webinar at http://csta.acm.org/Communications/sub/Podcasts.html.

I viewed the recording and took notes about her suggestions. Some of the apps I plan to try out are listed below.

An app to control my email called 10 minute email. It is an email address that lasts 10 minutes so you can use it to sign-up for information that you only want one time. You can find it at: 10minuteemail.com

Create graphics using Canva. You can use it to create posters. I hope to have my student groups next year create a posters containing graphics to help the other students understand computer science vocabulary. This might be a great way to do it.

Utility: Is the problem with my school network or it is a problem for everyone. I can check that with downforeveryoneorjustme.com . I am sure I will be trying it out at school shortly.

Video post cards: I saw this demonstrated and I immediately thought Open House next school year – perfect. I will video a few of my students this year and have them introduce the class to the parents. The app she suggested was PicPlayPost. You can get it from Google Playstore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flambestudios.picplaypost&hl=en or

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/picplaypost/id498127541?mt=8

Want to stay ahead of your students with tech? Then Product Hunt is for you. It is a Reddit for new software and apps. You can view it at http://www.producthunt.com/

The last app I plan on trying out is Office Lens. You can take a picture of a document, business card or whiteboard and the app will straighten it out and upload it to Microsoft OneNote. You can do your own edits because the app runs it through OCR.

These are the apps that I selected from the webinar that I want to try out. You should view the webinar to determine if there are other apps you might like to try out.

Beth also set up a Google Form to crowdsource apps. If you know of apps that are your favorites you can add them to the Google Sheet using the Google Form at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LmQ1NI0uWIO021kFDVnysSz9kgnIDg5Jc52jr2N65Pk/viewform

You can view the apps that CSTA members have suggested at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4IHUOmbpGZawUPxfMepE3z_1063LibAPjuF_YFgQ10/edit?usp=sharing

I want to hear from you about your thoughts regarding the webinar or apps that I have selected.

Myra Deister
CSTA At-Large Representative

AccessCS10K: helping make high school computing courses more accessible and welcoming to students with disabilities

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Tiffany Nash

By: Richard E. Ladner
University of Washington

In 2010-2011, approximately 13 percent of K-12 students have a recognized disability according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This represents about 6.5 million students with disabilities in the K-12 education system. This only counts those students covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990. There are many more who have 504 plans (under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973). Students with 504 plans need some accommodation to attend school, but not an entire Individualized Education Plan (IEP) like those under IDEA. In any case, teachers of high school computing courses are likely to have students with disabilities in their classes.

One group of students, namely blind students, are already severely disadvantaged in high school computing classes that use programming tools such Scratch, Snap, Alice, Processing, Greenfoot, and other highly visual user interfaces that are generally inaccessible to blind users. Will teachers in these classes say, “Sorry you cannot take my computing course because you cannot use the tools we are using to teach programming?” Will a special education teacher or guidance counselor recommend to the student that she consider another career choice than the one the student wants to pursue? This should not happen. Computer science is a great profession for blind people and they should not be discouraged from pursuing it at an early age. (For profiles of blind individuals – and other individuals with disabilities – who have pursued computing visit the Choose Computing website.)

The goal of AccessCS10K is to help make it possible for all students with disabilities who are intellectually capable of learning computer science to have the opportunity to do so. The project is specifically focusing on the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) course and the Computer Science Principles (CSP) course, both of which are being supported by the National Science Foundation’s CS 10K initiative.

AccessCS10K has two objectives to reach its goal:

Build the capacity of ECS and CSP teachers to serve students with disabilities through professional development training and individualized real-time support.
Create accessible materials that ECS and CSP teachers can use in their classrooms, both tools and curricular units.

To build the capacity of teachers, AccessCS10K is partnering with as many of the CS 10K projects as possible to help them include information in their professional development about inclusive teaching strategies and accessible tools and curricula that can be used in the classroom. AccessCS10K holds capacity building institutes for the leaders of these projects as one way to help them integrate this information in their professional development. It maintains a community of practice whereby teachers can share resources among each other. It maintains a searchable knowledgebase of articles that can help teachers find information they need to solve problems. Finally, it provides real-time support for teachers who have specific questions about how to integrate a student with a disability in their computing class. To get support call 509-328-9331 or e-mail [email protected].

AccessCS10K is building accessible tools and curricula that can be used in ECS and CSP courses. One major tool is the Quorum language which is an easy to learn text-based programming language that can be used for both visual and non-visual projects. AccessCS10K’s development partners are working to make other accessible tools and curricula, not only for the programming components of these courses but for the other components as well.

In an upcoming blog post we will present an introduction to Quorum. If you are curious about Quorum we encourage you to visit the Quorum web site http://quorumlanguage.com/ or to try the Quorum Hour of Code http://quorumlanguage.com/documents/hourofcode/part1.php.

AccessCS10K is funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the Computing Education for the 21st Century program of the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (Grant #CNS1440843). AccessCS10k is a collaborative project between the University of Washington and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Public-Private Partnerships in Computer Science Education

Posted on May 5, 2015 by admin

By: Lorilyn Owens, Director, Oracle Academy North America

Industry partners are content providers, augmenting and enhancing curriculum resources. Industry partners are funding sources, helping support classroom resources, professional development, and extracurricular clubs and activities. Industry partners provide volunteers to support classroom teaching, lending expertise and credibility to real-world ideas. All of these ideas were expressed by experienced educators at the 2014 CSTA conference during the Oracle Academy panel discussion focused on how to maximize public-private partnerships to better support computer science (CS) education. When it comes to CS education, which approach is right? Or are they all right? The lively discussion only began to scratch the surface. We did learn, however, there is no one right answer.

For more than 20 years Oracle, through its flagship philanthropic Oracle Academy program, has worked to advance computer science education and make it more accessible and engaging to students everywhere. Oracle Academy supports continuous computer science learning at all levels, and makes available a variety of resources including technology, curriculum and courseware, student and educator training, and certification and exam preparation materials.

Over the years, we have seen tremendous progress with public-private partnerships. Recently there has been an influx of both industry and nonprofit organizations that provide support for computer science education. While some of the resources come with a hefty price tag, many of them are free or low cost. The resources often differ in scope and objective. Some resources are vendor specific and some are vendor neutral and focus on core concepts and foundational knowledge. Some resources are event driven and others are curriculum based. Some resources focus on students and others focus on educators. There are e-books, videos, software, games, and countless websites with downloadable resources. With so much available, how do you choose what is right for you and your students? Rather than solely considering the available resources, perhaps you should also look at the resource provider and seek an opportunity for a public-private partnership.

Although we cannot provide specific guidance, in our experience, effective public-private partnerships in support of CS education do three things:

They provide an opportunity for true engagement. If an industry partner is seen only as a project funder with little direct engagement with students or teachers, it is a missed opportunity for all involved. Seek a partnership that helps foster a strong and supportive community of practice, and provides support for educators at all levels.
They are mutually beneficial. The arrangement should clearly articulate what the industry partner can offer the educational institution and what the educational institution can offer the industry partner. All involved need to be sure they deliver on commitments.
They help address the need. Don’t lose sight of the problem you are trying to solve. Have a good understanding of what you are trying to accomplish and what is needed to achieve that goal. Then, seek a partnership that truly helps to deliver what is needed. Finally, consider including success metrics as a way to evaluate the effectiveness of the public-private partnership in addressing your needs.

Access to computer science education, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, is a defining 21^st century social issue. Technology permeates our lives and drives the global economy. Future growth requires people with strong computer science skills. As we work collectively to prepare the technology innovators of the future, consider engaging in public-private partnerships to support your efforts. They can be effective avenues to increase access and opportunity in CS education.

Computer Science in Other Disciplines

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Laura Blankenship

Many people argue against the teaching of Computer Science by saying that we shouldn’t create a bunch of programmers/computer scientists. I find this argument frustrating because we still teach Math, English, and even Biology even though we know that not all students will pursue these fields. Why do we teach different disciplines? Sometimes, it’s to expose students to career possibilities and sometimes it’s to provide them with skills for any career. CS is about both. It’s important to expose students to the field of CS itself, and let them see the many different forms it can take, but perhaps more importantly, the skills that one learns in CS apply everywhere.

We argue that CS teaches problem solving, logic, and more, and it’s true, and those skills are useful in many contexts. There are always problems to solve, no matter what career you choose, and increasingly, there are programming or technical needs in any career you choose. But don’t take it from me. Take it from one of my former students, Rebecca, now studying Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve:

Even though I am not planning on going in a strictly Computer Science direction (I am currently studying Biomedical Engineering with a Biomaterials concentration), my experience with programming has taught me how to approach problems, and has given me enough background experience to apply to Biomedical Imaging labs- where computers are taught to distinguish cancerous tissue from healthy tissue in MRI images by searching for specific attributes and patterns in the image. Even in the medical field in widespread projects like cancer research, people with programming backgrounds are needed. Some are needed to actually write code, but many more are needed to understand how the data is being created and used so that they know how to implement it in future experiments.

Most of my CS students are not going to be computer scientists, but most of them will pursue careers where their CS experience will help them. We need to keep reminding people that CS is not just for computer scientists and programmers, but for everyone!

How to prepare educators to teach coding/CS

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Sheena Vaidyanathan

As part of my role as the CSTA Board member for K-8, I have been working with an amazing team of computer science (CS) educators – the CSTA K-8 Task force to host Twitter chats every other Wednesday using the hashtag #CSK8. The last chat was on the topic – ‘How to prepare educators to teach coding/CS’. This chat generated an interesting discussion among educators and made me think more on how much CS content knowledge is necessary at the K-8 level. Can we reduce or eliminate professional development (PD) completely to quickly address the shortage of teachers?

Several CS advocates believe that with two powerful strategies – online self-guided tutorials and peer instruction, teachers need little or no PD to teach CS. Coding clubs run by volunteers who have limited experience in CS, but hand out solutions, point to videos and peers are coming up everywhere. While this approach may work in after school situations, can this work in schools trying to reach ‘all’ students? The emphasis is on the “all,” reaching every student and not only those already interested or confident of learning CS. We expect K-8 Math teachers to know some math, should we expect teachers who teach CS to know at least some CS? If CS is to include more than coding (which it should!), does the answer change?

Based on my last six years of experience teaching CS to 6th graders across a public district in California, I want to share my concerns about relying on online courses and peer instruction to reach all students.

Online tutorials have many advantages and work well in so many cases, that it is very tempting to focus on that success alone. It is tempting to ignore all those who do not learn well by passively watching videos and those who need the concept explained again in a different way. It is also easy to celebrate the cool structured projects made by students following an online recipe and declare that they have learned to code. Some of my students who have completed an entire online course of structured exercises on their own, are unable to solve simple debug challenges or make a completely different kind of project. That certificate or badge from their online learning site does not mean they have actually learned the why and how behind the coding concepts. It does not mean they are expert problem solvers, or understand basic algorithms.

Peer instruction is a powerful teaching strategy and I use it extensively. The advanced student who has finished the exercise is challenged to help someone else. Students love teaching others, and learning from others. However, I often find that peer instructors quickly fix the problem without being able to show the thinking behind the solution. Even though I strongly encourage my peer instructors to explain and not actually touch the keyboard, it does not always work. These peer instructors are more advanced coders, but are not necessarily natural teachers. In later projects, struggling students then start relying on this group of student experts, further reinforcing the belief that they can never do this on their own.

Adult teachers are more likely to guide / encourage/ give hints/re-explain and help the student discover and learn the concept rather than just give them the solution. Teaching is messy after all, and takes work. Instead of quickly pointing to a video or giving the solved solution/recipe, teachers who know the content can focus on explaining the fundamental concept. In addition, as the twitter chat pointed out, if PD comes from actual teachers in the classroom, educators can learn beyond the CS content. They can also learn strategies from experienced teachers on what specifically works well in the CS classroom. This can further increase the chance of success with all students.

So going back to the the question – should educators have some CS experience, my answer is yes. Of course, depending on the age group they are teaching, the ‘some’ varies. Teachers do not need advanced degrees in computer science, and can always be learning more along with their students. However they must have some CS content and pedagogy knowledge so they can inspire, engage, and guide every student. It is especially important if we are to reach students who are struggling or believe they do not fit the CS stereotype. These students are not excitedly watching videos online, they need help from a human teacher. Preparing our educators to teach CS is the only way to reach ‘all’ our students, and address the equity issue in computing.

(See more on this topic by reading responses from a variety of educators on the #CSK8 chat archive at https://storify.com/xanekka/csk8-csta. For archives of other CSTA K-8 Twitter chats and other topics of interest to K-8, check out the CSTA K-8 g+ Community at http://goo.gl/Zx3Dh2

Sheena Vaidyanathan

6th Grade Computer Science Teacher
Los Altos School District, California
CSTA Board Rep for K-8

New IT Roles Produce a Slew of New Job Titles

Posted on April 7, 2015 by admin

In case you missed this CIO.com article in March, I thought I would share it here. The topic is a good one for discussion with students who might not see themselves as software engineers or computer scientists. The article discusses the new business landscape for some of the larger IT companies and how they are redesigning their infrastructures to accommodate the changing needs of the industry. The article touches on a few of the less talked about job positions that are needed for a vast majority of new, or re-envisioned jobs, for the changing IT landscape. This includes roles such as project manager, solution architect, data scientist, and new customer service oriented positions that some companies are developing outside the traditional “customer service” role.

http://www.cio.com/article/2899037/careers-staffing/new-it-roles-produce-a-slew-of-new-job-titles.html

Nifty Assignments from SIGCSE

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Dave Reed

I got back last week from another great SIGCSE Conference. If you don’t know about it, SIGCSE is the annual conference for the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education. While the conference has traditionally focused on higher-ed CS, it has been putting greater emphasis on K-12 topics in recent years, including a special two-day registration rate for K-12 teachers.

For many attendees, myself included, the highlight of the conference is the Nifty Assignments panel, which is run each year by Nick Parlante and Julie Zelenski. This panel presents creative, classroom-tested assignments, along with resources to help teachers adapt the assignments to their courses. These assignments can range from the simple and creative, to the complex and mind-boggling. Personally, I have been inspired by a number of the nifty assignments over the years, and have integrated variants of nifty assignments in my courses. This year, two of the nifty assignments particularly appealled to me, due to their “niftiness” and relative simplicity. Peter-Michael Osera presented the Speed Reader assignment, which had students write a program (in Python) for displaying words in succession and measuring a person’s reading rate. Stuart Reges presented the GeoLocator assignment, which had students write a program (in Java) that utilized the Google Map API to locate and calculate the distances between landmarks. Both assignments were farily simple to understand, could be easily ported to different languages, and would be motivational to many students.

All of the Nifty Assignments from past years can be found online at http://nifty.stanford.edu. Check them out if you are looking for inspiration on creating or adapting your own “nifty” assignments.

Dave Reed
College Faculty Representative, Chair-elect

Governance Committee

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Myra Deister

Governance Committee

The Governance Committee reviews how the board is functioning and when necessary recommends to the board revisions to the Policy and Procedure Manual as well as the By-Laws. Both documents are posted on the CSTA website. These changes could include revisions of the roles and responsibilities of the board members, board committees, conflict of interest procedures, and procedures for nomination, selection and removal of board members. The Governance Committee is charged with ensuring the board is governing the organization effectively and efficiently.

Currently, the Governance Committee is recommending to the board members a Conflict of Interest Policy for the CSTA Board members, one for CSALT members and another for Chapter Leadership. It will be put to a vote at the next board meeting. Recently, the Governance Committee has recommended a Code of Conduct for attendees at CSTA Conferences to assure our members a safe and welcoming conference experience.

This committee is comprised of two members: Myra Deister, chair and one member, Alfred Thompson.

Myra Deister, Governance Committee Chair and At-Large Representative

Advocating the “Coolness” of CS

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Stephanie Hoeppner

Quick – what is one “cool thing” about computer science? Hopefully several thought flooded your brain and you probably had trouble deciding what one thing you would reply with. I would assume that would be the case with most CS Educators and supporters; however, what would your students say?

It is scheduling time at our high school and students are making decisions about what courses to take and why. When a student looks that the computer science offerings what comes to their minds? What message have you gotten out to the students? Do they think it is cool? Important? Necessary for future? Fun?

We send messages to all students in our classes and I think we need to be purposeful about those messages sometimes. Over the past month I have reiterated how cool computer science is in my programming class by promoting “there is no one right answer – you can solve problems how your brain works and thinks”. My programming class had an ah ha moment when we were working on a program and I showed a couple different ways it had been completed and that both ways worked. For my part I did mention that as you learned more there may be better solutions in term of speed, efficiency, etc. but that right now I just wanted them to solve problems how they saw them.

A couple days ago we were removing an object (a car) that got to the edge of the screen (a frogger simulation game). We discussed a removeObject method and how you would go about using it and they all were happy they could now remove the pile up occurring on the side of their screen. I stopped them though and said….there is another way of doing this – maybe better or maybe not – but it is how I saw the program for the first time. Then I began to explain I wouldn’t remove the cars. I would reset their location on the screen and reuse them as if they spawned on the other side. Because of that I also would not continually create new cars, instead I would create a set number and kept reusing them. I said that is how my brain envisioned the game the first time I saw the program. There were some nods of understanding and then I said “but that is the beauty of programming, I could do it that way and others could remove cars but we would all still have a working frogger style game.”

I think we need to remind students why CS is awesome, why we love CS, and I think it is important we share how we view solutions especially when they may not be the most common way. It makes other students more comfortable to solve something the way they see it. Then maybe they tell their friends “Computer Science is cool. I can solve problems the way my brain thinks.”

On Our Way with CS Education Today

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Deborah Seehorn

For various reasons I shall not discuss, this Advocate Blog post has been a very long time coming. And, of course, I have changed the topic of the post since my first thoughts of it. It is all good, however.

It would be pretty much impossible for one to miss all the press (mostly good and positive) surrounding computer science, specifically computer science education. Perhaps the interest in that press was sparked during CS Education week, the Hour of Code, the CS Day at the White House, or President Obama urging students, “Don’t just play games on your phone; program it!” Or perhaps it was the relentless diligence and hard work of many of our CSTA members advocating to “Make CS Count” in their own states. In any case, the press is bringing a great deal of attention to CS education and then naturally to CSTA. And this is a good thing.

In my role as CSTA Board Chair, I have been contacted by several reporters recently for a phone interview for an article they are writing about CS education. It is pure delight to talk with the reporters and help enlighten them about CS education. One of my favorite reporter questions was about the one thing that would really help to promote K-12 CS education in the United States. Really? Just ONE thing? Would that it were so simple! With the help of CSTA and our wonderful sponsors, supporters, and partners, we would have the K-12 CS education dilemma all resolved immediately! We need teachers, who need CS licensure/certification, oh and CS pedagogy courses to help them learn how to teach CS. We need standards-based rigorous curriculum for our K-12 students. We need for CS to Count—preferably as a math or science credit towards high school graduation. We need administrators, school boards, legislators, and parents who understand the critical need to teach computer science in the K-12 space. We need time in the school day/schedule for another course offering (that rigorous CS course). We need computer equipment and other technology resources for the classrooms. And I have probably omitted some critical need, but you get the gist of the needs we have for K-12 computer science education.

The very good news is that we are making progress. We are not there yet, but we know where we are going, and we are on our way. We know that the CS community has to work together to solve this seemingly insurmountable task. And we are doing just that. Our good friends and supporters (far too many to mention—but you know who they are) are working to provide standards-based curriculum for teachers. Several states are working with CSTA members and other CS advocates to create a path to licensure/certification if one does not already exist. Some of those same CSTA members and CS advocates are working state by state to make CS count in each state. CSTA members advocate on an almost daily basis to enlighten administrators, school boards, legislators, and parents about the crucial need for computer science education in the K-12 classroom. And administrators are collaborating with teachers to find room in the school day/schedule to offer CS courses or integrate CS into existing courses. We are not there yet, but we are on our way.

I am so heartened to read news stories about how students are using computer science in the K-12 classroom—and what awesome projects they have developed, or what pressing problems they have solved. I am thrilled to read about all the support that business and industry friends are affording our K-12 CS educators. And, I was particularly encouraged by the caliber of applicants we had for the three open CSTA board positions. We had an incredibly talented and highly qualified pool of applicants—so many that selecting the top two candidates was a definite challenge for the CSTA Elections Committee. What a good challenge to have!

We are not there yet, but we are well on our way, and we are keeping up our momentum! It is all good.

Deborah Seehorn, CSTA Board of Directors Chair

The CSTA Advocate Blog

Category Archives: Points of Interest