Teaching and learning with “gift code”

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Fred Martin

Last month I co-taught a two-and-a-half day workshop introducing students to building apps with MIT App Inventor. Some of our students had prior programming background, and others did not.

Here, our goal as teachers was to get our students engaged in their own original projects (rather than teaching any specific set of computing concepts).

I’ve done a bunch of workshops like this, with learners of all ages, and we’ve developed the concept of “gift code.” (Thanks, Michael Penta!)

With gift code, a student describes their idea to you, and you translate it back to them in the form of working code.

Ideally, gift code has the following properties:

It’s short. I’ll dictate the code and have the student type it in (or in the case of App Inventor, select and configure the code blocks). It really has to be small so neither of us gets impatient.

It works. The premise is that the student will understand the computational ideas in the code by seeing them work. Often the code will combine a bunch of concepts together—ideas that would be hard to explain individually, but make sense when combined into a working unit.

It’s the student’s idea. This is pretty important—the code should embody the student’s idea! But it’s OK to simplify what they said, as long as it demonstrates the essence of what they wanted.

It’s extensible. This is crucial. In a few minutes, I’m going to walk away and work with another student, and I want my student now to understand enough so that they can keep going. It’s fine if their next step is a copy-paste of the same code structure—e.g., adding a new condition-action rule.

It’s really fun when it works. Students are empowered because they can get complex things working quickly.

In the best case, an hour after receiving gift code, a student has full ownership over it. They understand it, they have added to it, and they don’t even remember that I gave it to them. (That’s totally fine with me.)

Do you use gift code in your own teaching?

Fred Martin
CSTA University Faculty Representative

A Resource for your Careers Unit

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Pat Phillips

Probably at some time during the next semester, you will guide your students through a unit on “career explorations.” Certainly, there are lots of resources out there to learn about CS careers, job prospects, pay, and education. The challenge comes in putting together a cohesive…not to mention up-to-date… series of lessons.

While cleaning off my work desk (an annual end-of-the-year event in my life), I found a suggestion on a scrap of paper I had torn from Tech & Learning several month ago that might just fit the bill.

The site reference is econedlink (http://www.econedlink.org/) from the Council for Economic Education. The specific lesson plan is “The 411 on College Education” (http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.php?lid=1103&type=student).

The lesson includes objectives such as:

The relationship between level of education and the average unemployment rate
Level of education and median weekly income
Choosing and financing college
College as an investment in human capital

The online lesson is designed to be used by students and includes activities, assessments, and an extension activity—all with links to reliable sources of information. Take a look…it might be a resource to complement career exploration in your classroom.

New Entrepreneur Unit for CS Classes

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Irene Lee

At the New Mexico Computer Science for All wrap-up meeting held on January 3^rd, 2015, Las Cruces High School CS teacher Elisa Cundiff shared an Entrepreneur Unit that she developed along with her co-teacher, Lauren Curry, and implemented last semester. (Elisa also recently presented this “nifty assignment” at the NSF-sponsored 100 CS teachers workshop in Washington, DC during CSEdWeek.)

The Entrepreneur Unit was developed for CS classes “because we require a new generation of problem solvers.” The unit, designed to run for a week but easily extendable, starts with research on current startups with the objective of identifying the problem that each startup is attempting to solve. Students are then tasked with recording what they are doing at 15 minutes throughout a day and making note of inefficiencies or frustrations they encountered. These problems then become a bank of issues any one of which their startups could attempt to solve.

Next, students brainstorm and select a startup idea and develop an elevator pitch with the knowledge that they would need to pitch it to a real industry executive the following day! Students finish the unit by researching their industry, their competition, and identifying their competitive advantage; creating a revenue model and discussing potential revenue sources.

For more information on this exciting unit for inclusion in CS classes, go to http://bit.ly/1zD9P7p where Elisa and Lauren have graciously shared all materials associated with this unit. Thanks to Elisa and Lauren for providing inspirations to CS teachers and being innovators themselves!

Irene Lee, CSTA CT Task Force Chair

CSEdWeek – Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Myra Deister

And so we begin a new year. A time to reflect. I have been reflecting on my activities for CSEdWeek. Since the first CSEdWeek in December 2009, I have celebrated the week on my campus trying different activities each year.

For the first CSEdWeek in 2009, I was able to arrange for an after school walking field trip to a nearby business, Hydraflow. It was exciting to see the expressions on my students’ faces as they toured the business and listened to how the company had gone completely paperless!

For the CSEdWeek in 2010, I wanted to do more! I was able to arrange for a walking field trip to Raytheon during the school day. The students were amazed at the “trailer” where equipment was set up to demonstrate a disaster and how Raytheon had built a system where different law enforcement agencies could “talk” to each other even though they were using various type of hardware. A parent from my school also graciously arranged for some employees from his company to speak to my students about how computer science had opened up opportunities for them.

For CSEdWeek 2011 the students once again had the opportunity to tour Raytheon and visit the “trailer” again as well as the outdoor mock-up of a toll system. I also arranged for a student ambassador from University of California, Irvine to visit the class and discuss his experiences as a computer science student in college.

For CSEdWeek 2012, I had asked the school board for my district to recognized CSEdWeek. They agreed to do that and I was asked to select two students to be honored at a board meeting. It was a difficult decision to only select two, but I was happy that I could have these students recognized! Raytheon tour was also a highlight of the week. The students appreciated meeting the wife of one of the school’s science teachers during the Raytheon tour. Additionally, one of my former students dropped by school and spoke to the students about her career working in the CS Field.

Last year we celebrate Hour of Code during CSEdWeek. The local community college assisted with advertising for our community event. There were about 30 community members that attended the event with the computer science students assisting them. Several students commented to me about how much they enjoyed helping others to learn to code. I also held a lunch time birthday party for the students at the high school to celebrate Grace Hopper’s birthday. The school board also recognized CSEdWeek and I selected two students to be recognized.

This year the CS students participated in a community Hour of Code event. I asked the local school principals to advertise the event on their webpages. There was such an overwhelming response that I had to shut down the Eventbrite Site. I continued to receive emails from parents that wanted to attend with their children. They were invited to attend. There were enough reservations to fill two classrooms. I was concerned about supervision until the online teacher contacted me and offered to help. My husband also stopped by and offered his help. We were ready to go! I had set up a poster on smore.com with choices for activities that students could use on the computers in the computer lab. You can view my poster at https://www.smore.com/180ce

In addition to the successful Hour of Code event, the students were able to connect with a Skype employee through Skype in the Classroom program. You can set up a session at https://education.skype.com/. The speakers were great and very patient answering the students’ questions.

The district school board also celebrated CSEd Week at the school board meeting. This year I was able to select three students to be honored. The school principal took picture of the event and uploaded them to the school’s Facebook page.

The week ended with a birthday celebration at lunch. All students were invited and the CS students served cake and assisted the students with Hour of Code activities.

I am looking ahead to next year’s CSEd Week. I plan to hold the community Hour of Code event in the library which the principal has already agreed to. I hope to add a Maker Faire with the help of the Engineering Classes. I will contact the principals at the local elementary and junior high schools to advertise the event and I will use Eventbrite again. Through Eventbrite, I have sent out a survey to this year’s attendees to evaluate and improve the Hour of Code event next year.

What did you plan for CS Week that was a success? I am looking for more activities to add to the week!

Myra Deister, CSTA At-large Representative

The Wonderful World of Wikimedia

Posted on November 20, 2014 by Mina Theofilatou

Let’s face it: Wikipedia may still be lacking in academic credibility, but that hasn’t stopped us from resorting to the world’s free online encyclopedia time and time again when we need quick facts on a new concept.

What many people don’t know is that Wikipedia is only one of a total of fifteen projects under the Wikimedia Foundation “umbrella,” and which absolutely anyone can edit. In learning communities, teachers and students are encouraged to introduce Wikipedia editing to the learning process: there are a number of Wikipedia Education Programs involving schools and universities all over the world, with impressive results.

But what’s in it for students? Being a Wikipedia editor offers students a multitude of benefits:

Writing a Wikipedia article helps students develop their skills in spelling, vocabulary and grammar.
Properly referencing a Wikipedia article can be challenging: citations are necessary for even the simplest of articles (known to the Wikipedia community as “stubs”). This means that students need to learn how to identify valid sources, undoubtedly a useful skill for essay-writing.
You don’t need an account to edit Wikipedia, but if you do open an account you will soon find that you are a member of an exciting, multicultural community that values learning and volunteering. Editors are not paid for their work; what drives them is their passion for sharing knowledge.
Assignments don’t end up merely taking up space on a school shelf or hard disk: on Wikipedia they are dynamic content that can be expanded, translated, enhanced with multimedia etc. in spiraling progress… they may even have a chance at being nominated as featured articles!
A Wikipedia editor can proudly share the content he has created on social media, or monitor the popularity of the article she started or edited by viewing its statistics page (click the “View History” tab of an article and then “Page View Statistics”). She may be surprised by how many people found the article useful!
And much, much more…

What’s in it, especially for Computer Science students?

Using Wiki markup is an excellent introductory “exercise” to learning HTML (so long as you don’t opt-in to the Visual Editor). HTML is also used in wikitext: see the special “how-to” article here.
Wikimedia Commons – the Wikimedia Foundation’s multimedia repository – is a perfect place for aspiring computer scientists to share photos and/or videos of computer hardware, source code etc. and enhance Computer Science articles by introducing links to their files (provided they are willing to share their work under a proper license)
Girls interested in pursuing a career in Computer Science may be excited to find out that Wikipedia has an article titled “Women in Computing,” with ever-growing content that they can browse and edit. In fact, numerous Wikipedia “editathons” were held all over the world to celebrate Ada Lovelace day last year. Writing a new article (or expanding an existing one) on a notable woman computer scientist is a great way to draw inspiration and contribute to the available online knowledge on women in STEM.

I have been using Wikipedia and Wikimedia editing in the classroom since 2007, and my students have contributed to over 50 articles on Wikipedia and uploaded over 200 files to Commons. It is a rich experience, which earned us a significant distinction at a European STEM conference: “Why the High School Student Became a Wikipedia Editor” won first prize in the 1^st Scientix poster competition in Brussels, Belgium. We have worked on Greek Wikipedia, started two galleries on Wikimedia Commons and this year we’re adding local dialect words to Greek Wiktionary. If you decide to enter the wonderful world of Wikimedia and need guidance/inspiration, don’t hesitate to visit my user page and drop me a line!

Mina Theofilatou
CSTA International Representative
Kefalonia, Greece

Celebrate CS Ed Week, Celebrate You!

Posted on November 13, 2014 by admin

CS Ed Week is December 8-14th this year. Here are just a few ways as CSTA members you can get involved.

Faces of Computing Contest: You’ve still got time to submit a video entry for the Faces of Computing Contest. The deadline for submissions is November 20.

CS Ed Week CS Teachers Site: Check out this new resource for CS teachers. You’ll find examples of different events you can host, access to presentations, competitions, and more! Don’t forget to upload your events as well!

State Proclamations: For our members in the United States, don’t forget to ask your Governor to declare December 8-14th Computer Science Education Week.

Participate in Hour of Code: Short on time? There are lots of great activities to do with students and community members that only take one hour. Sign up and join in the Hour of Code.

Get Twitty With IT: Be sure to use the hashtag #CSEdWeek on Twitter to talk about your events, thoughts, and ideas. You can engage parents, community leaders, and even your students in why computer science education is a necessity in our world.

Engage Other CSTA Members: Start a conversation on the CSTA Membership listserv. Not yet a member of the listserv? Join here. You must be a CSTA member to join, but individual membership remains FREE, thanks to CSTA’s generous corporate sponsors: BirdBrain Technologies, the College Board, Google, Microsoft, Certiport, Oracle Academy, and Code.org.

Additional CS Ed Week Resources: Check out more CS Ed Week resources available to CSTA members on our CS Ed Week page. Download a poster, watch a video, or listen to an audio announcement that you can recreate in your own school.

CS Ed Week is really all about celebrating YOU, our CS educators, and all that you do to engage students in learning about computer science and the magic of the discipline. So go out and showcase your skills!

Moving Students Toward a “Growth Mindset” in Computer Science

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Myra Deister

At a recent mathematics educators’ conference during which I was both an attendee and presenter, I was bombarded with sessions about the current education theory, Growth Mindset. I had been introduced to this theory at several local edCamps that I have attended over the last few months.

Growth Mindset was coined by Carol Dweck, Stanford University psychologist. “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.” (http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html) She defines the counterpart, a fixed mindset, “as the belief that traits are just givens. People have a certain amount of brains and talent and nothing can change that. If they have a lot, they’re all set, but if they don’t… So people in this mindset worry about their traits and how adequate they are. They have something to prove to themselves and others.” ( http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/themindsets/index.html)

I attended a Mindset session presented by Jo Boaler, (http://www.youcubed.org/) Stanford Professor of Mathematics Education. She discussed the growth mindset activities that she used with junior high students that were attending a summer school program due to poor grades in math. She demonstrated a problem that contained 3 sets of blocks that increase in number each step.

The students were asked to describe the pattern. There were different descriptions that were given. Some examples included a volcano, where the left and right sides increase. Another description was to add a row across the bottom.

I assigned the same problem to my computer science students. They also described the increase as a volcano and increasing from the bottom. We discussed how we could write a program to calculate the number of blocks from their descriptions and different approaches that could be used. I decided that this exercise was so successful that I would try a few more. Fawn Nguyen created the website http://www.visualpatterns.org/ that has 160 patterns. I began using those as Do Now activities to help students build their pattern recognition. The students have found different approaches to each pattern. We then discuss how these could be programmed. As the students are working on these problems, I walk around the room and if they are stuck I ask the students how they see each pattern growing and describe it to me. I suggest that they use their description to build an equation.

This week I had the students view a Kahn Academy video about “Growth Mindset” https://www.khanacademy.org/youcanlearnanything

The students answered 3 questions online and explained the why behind their answer. The 3 questions were:

Do you agree with Sal Khan that you can grow your mind? Why or Why not?
Do you agree with Sal Khan that you learn more from your mistakes? Why or why not?
Finally, how will this change your work in the computer science class?

Then each student responded to 2 other student posts.

I have just started with working on activities to help the students to move toward a “Growth Mindset”. A few other strategies I need to do is to remind the students that it is “ok” to make mistakes because they can learn more from the mistakes rather than just get the correct answer. I also need to investigate how to reward effort in my class. I had started awarding points for extending the code that we did together in class. I feel that this is a step in the right direction. Additionally, I want to create a display that “rewards” improving and effort. Maybe I can implement that second semester.

What activities can you suggest to move students toward a “Growth Mindset”?

What do you want your students to know?

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Stephanie Hoeppner

As I was rethinking some of my courses and the approach to take with my students this year I thought about why I want them to take my classes. While I had lots of great philosophical answers and typical CS catch phrases, I kept coming back to I want them to know how to think and to have fun. Those really are two of my core beliefs as I look at lessons and assignments. I want them to be in awe of what computer science is and what it can do. I want them to be excited. I want it to change the way they think about things. I love the #3 reason in the article Six Reasons Why Studying CS is Worth It. I laughed when I read it because I break everything down in my mind as well. This is what I want my students to do. Do I want them to major in CS? – sure that would be fantastic but if they don’t, I want them to think like a computer scientist and I want them to know that solving problems can be exciting and fun.

So what do you want your students to do with computer science? Is it different for different courses? Do you find that you focus solely on programming or do you encourage them to think about other perspectives of computer science? Here are some resources* I use to broaden my students thinking and how they should look at computer science in the world around them.

Blown to Bits – I use different chapters in different classes. I use this to also fulfill my districts reading and writing across the curriculum requirement.
Videos of CS from University of Washington – I use the Pathways in computer science to dispel the concept of CS people sitting behind a computer in a cubicle.
Luis Von Ahn – I don’t have a specific link because there is so much out there. In one of my classes we start talking about captchas and I let the students complain about them and how sometimes they can’t read them, etc and then I tell them about what really is going on and show them a talk he gave about it. We then talk about computer scientist are people who can solve larger problems. Again this is not the stereotypical geek image of CS and they see what it is doing. I also go on to show them Duolingo and the students are amazed.
Code.org – of course I also use the viral video that shows famous people talking about code but I only use this when we are specifically coding as I want my students to understand the multiple facets of computer science.
CSTA Resources – There also are several great videos and resources from our own CSTA website. There are posters and past those link are videos and resources about careers in CS.

Many of these resources still point students to a career in CS and above I claimed I know they all will not. What I think these resources do is show how problem solving, computational thinking, and aspects of computer science are different than what my students believe them to be. I think some students do not want to go into CS because they have a misconception of what it really is. So yes I love CS, I love teaching, but most of all I want my students to see the excitement and wonder of the world through the lens of CS and how the skills they learn could aid them in anything they chose to do.
(* There are many resources out there and I am only listing ones I frequently use – feel free to comment below this blog with your own resources)

Stephanie Hoeppner
9-12 Representative

Do Your Students Still Surprise You?

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Stephanie Hoeppner

As my year concluded I was reflecting on the students, my courses, and the changes I need to make for next year. I was thinking about what students surprised me and which I thought could have done more. That led to me thinking about why some students surprise me. What was it that gave me the impression that they may not do well or like computer science? Mostly the answer was lack of response on the students part or their demeanor in the classroom; however, as the class went on their spirit and their faces lifted. That proverbial “light bulb” turning on is what surprised me in some.

So why would these students surprise me? I was making an assumption that when they walked in my room the attitude or lack there of that they gave me was accurate. I took their first reaction as an true representation and it was a bias of a different sort on my part. It was not a gender, ethnic, privileged, etc bias it was simply a bias based on what they gave me the first few days of class.

While I am excited and completely tuned into computer science I forgot that my students are not initially that way. I forgot that they are used to typical classes and have a preconceived notion what will occur in a classroom when they walk in. I live in my own little world of CS bliss and forgot that not everyone else does ( What? Not everyone else does? Crazy, I know!).

The good thing is that I proceed full steam ahead in my bliss and most if not all students jump on board somewhere along the way. My class plays with toys, makes things, tries new things, eats worms (gummy ones that is, for a project), and many other non-typical classroom activities. This is when the light bulb comes on for some and the students “surprise me”.

So this fall I vow to not believe the opinions and attitudes of the students. I vow to believe that all students love CS and it just has not manifested itself on their faces yet. I vow to excite and challenge them all and expect great things out of them. While this may sound a little fairy-tale-ish, I don’t want to judge any student as I fear it may subconsciously affect how I deal with them. In my reflecting I do not feel there was anything really different in my teaching but I want to look at my students differently and I want to look at them in such as way that they do not surprise me if they do well or really get into what we are doing.

So I challenge you to think about how you look at your students when they come in to your room this fall. What do you believe of them, what do you want from them, and will you make them play, stretch their minds, and just expect that the light bulb comes on?

Stephanie Hoeppner
9-12 Rep

Enough with the Lecturing, Already!

Posted on May 28, 2014 by CSTA Blog

Findings from studies comparing lecturing to active learning in undergraduate education show that fewer students fail science, engineering and math courses that are taught in an active-learning style than with lectures. The study was reported on in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May (summary here).

On average across all the studies, about one-third of students in traditional lecture classes failed (withdrew or got Fs or Ds). About one-fifth of the students fail in classes with active learning.

According to Scott Freeman, University of Washington, and lead author of the study, “If you have a course with 100 students signed up, about 34 fail if they get lectured to but only 22 fail if they do active learning, according to our analysis. There are hundreds of thousands of students taking STEM courses in U.S. colleges every year, so we’re talking about tens of thousands of students who could stay in STEM majors instead of flunking out every year.”
For me, the main take-away from this is: Traditional teaching styles can kill the excitement, joy, and passion for learning CS, and if they don’t love it, they won’t stay. Perhaps we can help fill the pipeline we have been crying about for years by merely changing teaching styles! While the study was on undergraduate students, I’d bet similar patterns could be found with high school students.

The good news is that there are many resources for adding more active learning into high school CS classrooms. Check out the latest on the CSTA website under “Curriculum” and “Resources.” See what’s being recommended in the Exploring CS (http://www.exploringcs.org/) and CS Principles (http://www.csprinciples.org) curriculum. And a quick scan of the Session Descriptions for the 2014 CSTA Annual Conference reveals that almost EVERY session is about adding excitement to the CS classroom with innovative programs and activities.

No excuses now….drop the lecture.
Pat Phillips
Editor, CSTA Voice

The CSTA Advocate Blog

Category Archives: Teaching Methods