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August 26, 2005

Finding Funding

Over the last twenty years, I have had the opportunity to work with many professional associations for teachers, both in Canada and the U.S. and one thing that has always amazed me is how hard these organizations must work to survive, and how many of them manage to do so.

Interesting research from Australia indicates that professional associations for teachers exist in a perpetual state of needs exceeded by resources. In an effort to provide as many benefits and services as possible to their members, they stretch themselves to the fiscal, intellectual, and emotional breaking point. While large associaitons may have the benefit of a greater pool of membership revenues, the reality is that very few have enough membership revenue to cover their expenses. They depend on their volunteers and they depend on external sources of funding.

External funding can take many forms: government grants, foundation grants, corporate support, or contracts for service to some external body. In all of these cases there is a bargain to be made, something that the funding organization wants in return, something that will require association resources (staff, volunteers, equipment) to produce. The best possible projects involve getting funding to do something that the association wants to do for its members anyway. These projects are high mission. Some, however, require doing something that is not much value to the membership, but brings in considerable money. These projects are high revenue. There are also moral questions to be considered. Just because someone will pay your association money to do something, does not mean that you should do it. It may not be in the best interest of your members or their students. Associations are in a constant struggle to balance these considerations.

Because CSTA has been in existence for less than a year and we provide members with free membership for their first year, we have no membership revenue yet to speak of. Instead, we have relied on the generous support of our parent organization (ACM) and many of its members who became charter donors to CSTA (honored on our website). The Special Interests Groups of ACM (under the auspices of the SIG Governing Board) have also made a significant financial commitment to helping CSTA address critical issues in K-12 computer science education. In these ways, ACM has provided the support we needed to get us going and to help us begin building the kinds of funding relationships associations need for long-term viability.

So far, with the help of our fabulous volunteers and mentors, we have done a pretty good job of beginning to build these relationships. IBM and Microsoft have become Gold Level Sponsors and have provided funding for new resources and for professional development events. We are also now in discussions with Sun Microsystems and CISCO. The Sloan Foundation provided funding to pilot six JETT (Java Engagement for Teacher Education) workshops and helped us to get this highly successful nation-wide project off the ground. The College Board has supported us in more ways than we can count. And two separate branches of the National Science Foundation have provided funding for multiple projects that we believe will have a profoundly positive impact on K-12 computer science education. All of these organizations have helped us significantly in our first year.

It is important for our members to know that ensuring CSTA's long term economic viability is a balancing act and we try to be very careful. We work hard to identify potential sources of funding and to design worthwhile projects. Our Board of Directors makes sure we stay on track. They keep our mission before us and the best interests of our members always in the forefront of our considerations.

Chris

Posted by cstephenson at 03:03 PM | Comments (2)

August 17, 2005

Designing Really Smart Computers

Sometimes I wonder if we are so enamored of technology and of our abilities to manipulate it that we are simply incapable of making sensible judgments about it.

I must begin by confessing that I do not love technology. I am not a toy person. It is not the gadgets that thrill me, but what I can do with them to make myself a more productive, more knowledgeable, or more interesting person. Anything that gets in the way of what I am really trying to accomplish at any given moment just annoys me.

This may be why I just do not get excited every time another feature-bloated piece of software comes on the market. Most of the time I would rather have an application that does a few things really well than some mammoth megabyte monster that does everything at the ultimate level of complexity.

Sometimes I think that the developers believe that if they keep us busy trying to figure out how to use the next new thing, we will not have time to realize that we expect far less of our computing technologies in term of ease-of-use than we do of just about any other technology in our lives,

I remember a lecture given by Bill Buxton at ACM 1 during which he compared his experiences in the public restrooms of the airport to his experiences with his office computer. Why, he mused, was a toilet in Chicago, with whom he had no previous relationship, capable of acknowledging his entry into and exit from the room and of taking the appropriate action, while his office computer, with whom he communed several hours each day, was incapable of any such thing?

Maybe as teachers responsible for educating the next generation of people who will build the tools, we can start to change the way the we all look at and use computers. Maybe we can begin by encouraging even our best students to view technology with a critical eye, to think about designing from the user's perspective, to see the world's users as diverse and deserving of technology that truly makes their lives easier.

The field of Human-Computer Interaction is rich with questions and ideas that need to be explored. If we open this world up for our students, maybe we can begin to break down the geek tradition. If we encourage all of our students, especially those who would never dream that computer science is for them, to ponder the hard questions about ease-of-use and simplicity and elegance, maybe we can open the doors to new ways of thinking about, designing, and using technology. Maybe we can begin to build computer technology that is at least as smart as an airport toilet.

Chris

Posted by cstephenson at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2005

A Little History and a Next Big Step

In 2002, with the impending transition of the AP exam from C++ to Java, ACM's K-12 Education Task Force (the precursor to CSTA) launched an ambitious partnership with the College Board to address the immediate and pressing need for high school computer science teachers to learn Java. With the very active support of ACM's then-president Maria Klawe and Gail Chapman of the College Board, the Java Engagement for Teacher Training (a.k.a. JETT) program was born.

JETT was conceived as more than a one-shot pd event for teachers. It was seen as a way of providing valuable, relevant skills upgrading for teachers while engaging colleges and universities across the country in the process of building on-going mentoring relationships with local high school teachers.

JETT began with a dedicated Steering Committee of representatives from the College Board, the K-12 Task Force, and four pilot test sites (Columbia, Duke, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Tufts University). A needs assessment was developed and sent to all secondary computer science AP Teachers to help the organizers understand the teachers' specific needs relating to the learning and teaching of Java. The results of this assessment were then used to create a series of learning modules around which local JETT host sites would organize their workshops.

A set of criteria was also developed to ensure that attending teachers received relevant and appropriate instruction. In addition to the Java modules, host sites were also required to include learning opportunities relating specifically to equity issues, with the goal of improving awareness and providing strategies to better engage under-represented students. They were also required to involve AP Computer Science Curriculum Consultants in the planning and delivery of the workshops.

Being a JETT host site required a considerable amount of effort and some funding. While ACM/CSTA provided assistance with promotion, registration, evaluation, and identification of the AP College Board Consultants, the host sites had to submit an application that was reviewed by the Steering Committee and were required to cover all the on-site costs. Despite the effort and costs involved, more than 50 universities and colleges across the U.S. have now served as JETT workshop host sites (some multiple times).

Although the number of attendees has varied greatly from site-to-site (depending on the relative strength of the local AP community) without exception, the sites have received glowing evaluations from teacher attendees and many have gone on to build strong mentoring and recruitment partnerships with local teachers. Last year, at the request of our now ACM president David Patterson, CSTA conducted a long-term evaluation of the JETT project and we were delighted to discover that 86% of the attendees indicated that they had learned and were now using new Java strategies as a result of attending a JETT workshop.

But what about the rest of the teachers, those who are teaching essential courses in computer science foundations at the pre-AP level? Where do they go for much-needed professional development?

Since January, our Professional Development Committee has been working on a new initiative—the Teacher Engagement for Computer Science (a.k.a. TECS) project. Like JETT, TECS involves colleges and universities in the provision of relevant professional development and community building for local high school computer science teachers. Starting in September, five host sites (CSU Chico, CUNY, Neumont (formally Northface) University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania) will be launching our program with six pilot TECS workshops. Once again, they will be making selections from among a set of recommended learning modules developed by the CSTA Professional Development Committee under the direction of Chair Fran Trees. This time, they will also have access to learning materials designed specifically for these modules by CSTA teacher volunteers.

JETT and TECS exist because of a large number of dedicated educators and staff. ACM and the College Board have provided unwavering support over the years, our original pilot sites helped us create an effective and efficient model, our JETT coordinator Jennifer Wroblewski has coaxed, coordinated, and charmed her way to a powerful and prolific network of dedicated host sites, and our host partners have given generously of their time, funding, good works, and good will.

Thanks to all of you for your hard work and dedication to providing professional development for computer science teachers. It would not have been possible without you!

For more information on the JETT workshops: http://jett.acm.org/

For more information on the TECS workshops: http://tecs.acm.org/

Chris

Posted by cstephenson at 04:00 PM | Comments (1)

August 02, 2005

The Power of Partnership

At this moment I am sitting in a meeting room in Portland OR surrounded by one of the most motivated and skilled work teams that I have had the pleasure of working with. This team consists of three teacher volunteers from CSTA (Margaret Butler from St. Francis High School in CA, Joon Yee Chuah from L. B. J. High School in TX, and Anita Verno from Bergen Community College in NJ) and three curriculum specialists from IBM (Jane Balin from CA, Cheri Borchardt from TX, and Bunny Taylor from GA). Our task, for the next four days, is to produce three brand new resources for computer science educators.

This project came about as a result of discussions we began with Robin Willner of the IBM Foundation many months ago. IBM was interested in working with CSTA to address the needs of K-12 computer science educators. One of the things that we agreed on very quickly was that teachers need access to more and better resources to improve student learning and also to allow them to continue to enhance their own teaching skills. And so, with funding from the IBM Foundation and help from several IBM resource people, we assembled a collection of learning materials that IBM had already created and put together a team. Our goal is to produce three new classroom-ready resources that address specific learning outcomes identified in the ACM Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science Education.

We began our meeting yesterday with each team member presenting an in-depth review of the example resources and a proposal for new resources that could be created. When the presentations were complete, the entire team decided that we would begin with three major themes and build a new resource for each that would draw on, enhance, and add to the original materials, The themes chosen were: principles of web design, object oriented programming, and project-based learning. The team divided into three work groups and by the end of the day each work group had produced and presented its project plan.

From now until Thursday afternoon, the groups will be working frantically to achieve their ambitious plans. The entire team will then come back together and each group will present its new resource for review and feedback. The resources will then be distributed to pilot schools who will continue the feedback loop to help us ensure that they are truly useful for teachers and students. Finally, the resources will be made available free of charge to teachers by both IBM and CSTA.

I think that this project is an excellent example of how professional organizations such as CSTA and major industry partners such as IBM can work together to do good things for education. We did not go to IBM hat in hand asking them to just write us a check. We asked for much more. We asked for a relationship. We asked them to share the time and expertise of their employees and consultants. We asked them to listen to teachers about what kinds of resources would be truly useful to them. And of course, we also asked IBM for staff and financial support. And here we are in Portland.

This is the true power of partnership, the power to bring people together, to create something new and useful, to share a commitment to teachers and students.

CSTA is a fairly new organization as educational associations go, but we believe in partnerships and we believe in our ability to work with companies such as IBM and Microsoft (who provides funding for our Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium). We know that there can be pitfalls to these relationships (being perceived as being under the influence of any one vendor) but we try to be sure that we begin with a shared understanding of our mutual goals and limitations. We know that the issues we need to address are too big for any one organization to take on alone. We need support from all levels of education, from industry, and from state and federal governments.

We know that supporting K-12 computer science is the key to future technological innovation and economic viability, and we are hoping that as more people come to understand this, they will join us in this partnership. It is truly a win-win opportunity.

Posted by cstephenson at 01:53 PM | Comments (2)