October 27, 2009

Why Words Matter: Technology is not the same as Computing

Robb Cutler,
CSTA Past President

Posted by cstephenson at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2009

The Underlying Foundation of Professional Development

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

Posted by cstephenson at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2009

Binary "Bits" For All!

In 1988 David Macaulay's classic The Way Things Work was published. In 1998, he followed up this very successful book with The New Way Things Work, which includes a chapter entitled "The Digital Domain." This chapter begins with a very entertaining explanation of bits and binary arithmetic in a story that involves crating up pumpkins from a pumpkin patch. I had the good fortune to come across this story just before going to an elementary school to introduce the concept of binary numbers.

The plan was to teach children in 5th, 4th, and 2nd grade how digitized data is represented, using the "Count the Dots" activity in CS Unplugged:

http://www.csunplugged.org

The story was a great lead in, but I had no idea how timely the lesson was until after I presented it. Without realizing the connection, I brought big round, scalloped edge, orange sticky notes with me to use as dots on sheets of paper showing 1, 2, 4, and 8 dots. The sticky notes looked just like pumpkins! Moreover, the timing of the lesson, in the latter part of October shortly before Halloween, couldn't have been better, to attach the idea of pumpkins and binary numbers to something familiar in the childrens' experience. Even the 2nd graders got it.

Just a few more notes: The 5th graders had no problem including 16 dots on a sheet of paper, so we could represent larger values with them, but 2nd graders are not ready for that. 2nd graders are, however, good at doubling, so even though they haven't started multiplying in their math lessons, they do get the binary concept. I made individual sets of small cards for each child so they could practice representing numbers in binary, individually or in pairs. In the future, I will have the students build the large sheets of paper with the orange sticky note dots with me to increase their understanding. I will also have them make their own sets of individual cards and draw pumpkins on the cards for the dots. I showed YouTube videos (links from CS Unplugged and MathManiaCS) demonstrating counting in binary. The kids enjoy that and it is something they can try for themselves, counting on their fingers. Another link goes to a page where a clever piano keys activity for binary numbers is found.

A great introduction to binary numbers that can be used in an introductory programming class at the high school level can be found at:

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/courses/teachers_corner/45338.html

And more motivation comes with the Cisco Binary Game:

http://forums.cisco.com/CertCom/game/binary_game_page.htm

Be careful...this one is addictive!

Macauly, David. The New Way Things Work, Houghton Mifflin Company. (1998).
ISBN 10: 0-395-93647-3.

http://www.csunplugged.org
http://www.mathmaniacs.org
http://www.mathmaniacs.org/lessons/01-binary/Binary_Piano/

Contributed by Kathy Larson

Posted by cstephenson at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

Endings and Beginnings

Hurray! It's over! Another school year in the books. AP and IB testing are complete. Final exams are submitted, printed and ready to administer. It's time to sit back, relax, and enjoy life!

Wait, not so fast you say. What about next year? What about summer professional development programs? What about new textbooks, new programming labs, and new content? And, oh by the way, just what will I be teaching next year? No more AB level for my AP students. How many smiling faces will I see in September? What third prep awaits the unsuspecting Computer Science Teacher?

So goes the life of the high school computer science teacher. For many of us, teaching computer science is an avocation, not exactly a hobby, but certainly not our primary job. Many computer science teachers have two or more other classes they must teach in order to have that one section of AP or IB or just plain old Computer Science. How much effort is involved in our avocation as compared to our other classes? What can we do to better manage our time and control our destiny?

I don't have a solution. Unlike many of you, Computer Science has been my focus. However, looking ahead to the 2009 - 2010 school year, I see one section of AP Computer Science (20 students), one section of IB Higher Level Computer Science (6 students), 2 sections of Computer Programming with Alice (40 + students), and 2 sections of AP Statistics (40 + students). I see changes in both the AP and IB curriculum (though thankfully not major) and a new textbook (maybe one I can actually use). And don't even ask me about professional development this summer! Between AP, IB and CSTA commitments, I think I will get to relax for a week or two in August.

My school's total AP and IB examination numbers were up this year, over 1000 AP Exams and over 1200 IB exams (school population about 1800), and my AP and IB exam numbers showed some increase over past years. However, the Computer Science numbers are not growing as fast as other courses. We know there are major curriculum changes on the horizon for AP and IB Computer Science. How will that affect us?

What can we do? We need to be our own advocates, actively recruiting students by tying Computer Science to 21st Century Skills, touting the good jobs that are solving today's real-world problems in a collaborative environment. We need to break the stereotype of computer scientists as loner nerds who seldom bathe and eat only junk food. While that image sells movies, it isn't real and is hardly attractive to the kinds of students we want to recruit.

Where do we start? Join us in Washington, DC in June at the CS & IT Symposium (www.csitsymposium.org). Network with other computer science teachers to form professional learning communities, local CSTA Chapters, or just a valuable resource. Convince your guidance directors and building administrators that computer science is a viable career path for our talented students.

Personally, I intend to put my feet up, unwind, and enjoy the next few weeks as the school year winds down. Then, it's off on a whirlwind tour of the US, seeing old friends and making new in the pursuit of improving Computer Science education. Won't you join me?

John Harrison
CSTA Board of Directors

Posted by cstephenson at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2009

Student Speaks Out About Computer Science Curriculum

CSTA has spent the last several years arguing for rigorous computer science courses in high school, for emphasizing critical, computational thinking skills, and for standards-based curriculum. Many teachers have told us of their struggles in these areas. At the XImplosionX blog, Patrick Godwin has written High School Computer Science: A Student's Perspective echoing our thoughts.

While some of the problems he outlines are outside our ability to fix, some of them are achievable. What do you think about his call to emphasize style over syntax and teaching theory before practice?

Michelle Hutton
CSTA President

Posted by cstephenson at 12:11 PM | Comments (2)

April 13, 2009

Communication Skills for Computer Science Students

Becoming an effective problem solver is an important skill for our students to master. And, just as important is developing strong interpersonal skills. Our students must be able to communicate effectively with human beings as well as with their computers. They should be able to effectively communicate with technical and non-technical colleagues. As computer science teachers we stress that computer science is more than programming. Yet in some of our courses, most of the assignments are programming assignments.

Writing across the disciplines is a focus at all levels of education. How can we incorporate writing into our computer science curriculum? What are examples of good writing assignments? How do we grade a writing assignment?

I find that the most successful writing assignments are those that give very specific requirements and offer some ideas for research. I try to follow the format below.

The Assignment: State exactly what you expect as a final product.
Example: You will write a 3-page paper (double-spaced, 11-12 point font, 1 inch margins) that addresses one (or more) of the topics listed below. The paper will be graded for content and clear presentation of material. This paper must have content that is supported by references; therefore, include bibliographic references. It should be your own work based on your research. The paper should be submitted (uploaded) by day and time.

Goals: Why are you assigning this paper?
* to explore concerns about topic
* to research a bit of history and some of aspects of the potential problems of topic
* to practice your writing skills by preparing a paper expressing your opinion about this topic based on your readings and research
* to take notice of your how your environment fits into the picture of your research

Possible Questions/Topics for Paper Focus: List here a few possible start points.
* Much of the controversy about topic focuses on something here. Why is topic such an important issue now?
* Topic can be an effective tool for learning because...
* Reflecting on the intersections of real-life and topic....
* What are the pros and cons (or advantages and disadvantages) of topic
* List the impact of topic as it relates to your chosen area of interest (art, literature, medicine).

Some resources: List at least 5 resources here.

Writing assignments take longer to grade than math problems but they are no more difficult to grade than computer programs. And, most times, the logic is easier to follow! Although the following procedure might take some time, I find it works quite well.

1. Require the student to complete an almost final version of the paper. This version should follow the requirements listed in the assignment.

2. Now conduct a peer evaluation. Pair your students. Have them swap papers. The goal of this peer review is to improve the paper. You can choose to do the peer review in a variety of ways, I alternate between the two listed below.
* Require the reviewer to complete a comment sheet that you provide. See the following url for an example. http://euclid.butler.edu/~sorenson/teaching/comments.html
* Have the reviewer list three things the paper does well and then offer three suggestions for improvement.

The peer reviewer is also responsible for checking that the paper meets all the requirements set in the assignment description. You can collect the peer review with the final version of the paper or you can informally read them over before the final version of the paper is due.

3. Base your grade on:
* content and correctness (most weight here)
* grammar and mechanics
* clarity and style

Presentation, both written and oral, should be an integral part of any course, including computer science. You may follow the written assignment with an oral presentation or the oral presentation can be a separate assignment on a second topic of interest. Some guidelines for giving (and grading) an oral presentation are listed below and can be found at: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/teaching/research_skills/basics.html

The Presentation
Opening
1. Does your opening gain the group's attention?
2. Does it establish rapport with the group?
3. Does it indicate what you intend to explain?
The Key Points
1. Are your key points clearly expressed?
2. Are your examples interesting?
3. Are your qualifications of the key points clearly expressed?
4. Is each key point summarized?
5. Are the summaries clear?
6. Are the beginnings and ends of the key points clearly indicated?
The Summary
1. Does the summary bring together the main points?
2. Are your conclusions clearly stated?
3. Do you come to an effective stop?
Presenting
1. Can the group hear and see you?
2. Do you use eye contact to involve but not threaten?
3. Do you use audio/visual techniques effectively?
4. Are you fluent verbally?
5. Is your vocabulary appropriate for the group?
6. Do you make use of pauses and silences?
7. Do you vary your intonation?
8. Is the organization of your material clear?
9. Do you avoid vagueness and ambiguities?
10. Is the presentation as interesting as you can make

Students at all these levels need to communicate effectively. They must gain experience in reading and critiquing papers, both technical and non-technical. They should learn to organize knowledge in written form and be comfortable and confident with oral presentations. Students should to be able to evaluate their own work and openly defend their own ideas and opinions. It is our duty as teachers to help them learn the communication skills necessary to accomplish these tasks.

A few of my favorite writing assignments have been:

1. Electronic Voting Machines: Based on the HBO video Hacking Democracy. This is a great assignment to give around election time.
* The video Hacking Democracyis available at http://video.google.com/videosearch? q=%22hacking+democracy%22&hl=en#q=%22hacking+democracy%22&hl=en&emb=0
or do a Google Video Search for "Hacking Democracy"
* The story is available at http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/synopsis.html

2. Job Outlooks:
Career overview:
http://www.careeroverview.com/job-outlook.html
http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco1002.htm

3. Second Life: I actually have my students sign up and create an avatar in Second life and then use the following outline:
Your paper should have a clear thesis and supporting discussion. You should include your own experience on Second Life. Some possible choices for topics (or choose your own area of interest):
a. Second Life can be an effective tool for learning because...
b. Artists in Second Life are making effective use of the medium by...
c. There are serious social implications of Second Life....
d. Reflecting on the intersections of real-life and "virtual" economies...
e. The virtual world of medicine has influenced....
f. Is Second Life a place for religious organizations to open virtual meeting places
g. Live music on Second Life enables....
h. Literature has taken an interest in virtual worlds and Second Life
Resources include:
Educators:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/11/13/second.life.university/index.html
Models of Learning:
http://secondlifegrid.net/slfe/education-use-virtual-world
Social Implications:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/13/second-life-divorce
Artists: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine/08flunot.html_r=4&pagewanted=1&ref=technology
Medicine:
http://scienceroll.com/2007/04/16/medicine-in-second-life-virtual-doctors-hospitals-and-of-course-sperm-donation/
Information on grading writing assignments:
http://www.virginia.edu/french/resource/teachers/admin/write.htm
Example of a peer review comment sheet:
http://euclid.butler.edu/~sorenson/teaching/comments.html

Information and tips for oral presentations:
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/teaching/research_skills/basics.html

Fran Trees
CSTA Chapter Liaison

Posted by cstephenson at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2009

Scratch Day

May 16, 2009 is Scratch day! This is an international celebration of Scratch, a software environment designed to help students create, learn, and program. Developed by the MIT Media Lab, students ages 8 and over can use Scratch to design their own stories, animations, music, and art. Students can share their projects with fellow "Scratchers" online. And the software download is free!

I have seen Scratch used in education in two places—both successfully. In a low-income community in South Los Angeles, the Computer Clubhouse provided urban youth assistance with Scratch and students created unique projects which incorporated their own images and music. Creating "low-riders" caught on as a popular activity. Computer science teachers I work with in Los Angeles public high schools have integrated Scratch successfully in their courses and report a high level of student engagement as students learn fundamental computing concepts. For either informal or formal computing experiences, Scratch is a wonderful way to introduce young people to computer science.

For Scratch Day events near you, check out the map at http://day.scratch.mit.edu/. If there are no events near you, consider hosting one. It's a great way to meet fellow educators interested in teaching students to use Scratch.

Scratch can be downloaded at:

http://scratch.mit.edu/

Joanna Goode
CSTA Board of Directors

Posted by cstephenson at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2009

New AccessIT Web Design & Development Curriculum

The University of Washington and a team of high school web design teachers have put together some free curriculum that is well organized, up to date, and full of resources. The curriculum is called AccessIT Web Design & Development I and is an introduction to the design, creation, and maintenance of web pages and websites. Students learn how to critically evaluate website quality, learn how to create and maintain quality web pages, learn about web design standards and why they're important, and learn to create and manipulate images.

The course progresses from introductory work on web design to a culminating project in which students design and develop websites for local community organizations. The Units cover the following material:

Unit 1: Designing and Planning Web Pages
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1.htm
Module 1: Website Evaluation and Rubric Creation
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module1.htm
* Lesson 1: Surveying the Possibilities http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module1/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Developing a Website Evaluation Tool
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module1/lesson2.htm
Module 2: Color Theory
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module2.htm
* Lesson 1: Color Theory in Web Design http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module2/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Selecting a Color Scheme
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module2/lesson2.htm
Module 3: Web Standards & Accessible Design
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module3.htm
* Lesson 1: Web Standards
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module3/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: How People with Disabilities Access the Web
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module3/lesson2.htm
Module 4: Planning a Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module4.htm
*Lesson 1: Organizing a Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit1/module4/lesson1.htm

Unit 2: Creating Pages with HTML
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2.htm
Module 1: Pre-Coding
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module1.htm
* Lesson 1: Pre-coding
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module1/lesson1.htm
Module 2: Basic HTML Markup
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module2.htm
* Lesson 1: Elements of Tags
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module2/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Essential Tags
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module2/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Common Tags
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module2/lesson3.htm
Module 3: HTML Lists
http//www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module3.htm
* Lesson 1: Unordered Lists
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module3/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Ordered Lists
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module3/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Nested Lists
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module3/lesson3.htm
Module 4: Creating Links
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module4.htm
* Lesson 1: Linking to External Internet Sites
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module4/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Linking to Pages Within Your Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module4/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Special Types of Links
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module4/lesson3.htm
Module 5: Creating a Data Table
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module5.htm
* Lesson 1: Creating a Data Table
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit2/module5/lesson1.htm

Unit 3: Formatting Web Pages with Style Sheet
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3.htm
Module 1: Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3/module1.htm
* Lesson 1: Anatomy of a Style
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3/module1/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Applying Styles
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3/module1/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Applying Styles to Data Tables
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3/module1/lesson3.htm
Module 2: Page Layout Techniques
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3/module2.htm
* Lesson 1: Layout with CSS
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3/module2/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Layout with Tables
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit3/module2/lesson2.htm

Unit 4: Graphics
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4.htm
Module 1: Introduction to Web Graphics
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module1.htm
* Lesson 1: Introduction to Web Graphics
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module1/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Copyright Law and Graphics on the Web
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module1/lesson2.htm
Module 2: Creating a Web Photo Album
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module2.htm
* Lesson 1: Understanding Web Graphics
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module2/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Acquiring Images for Web Graphics
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module2/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Cropping and Resizing
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module2/lesson3.htm
* Lesson 4: Adding Images to Your Web Page
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module2/lesson4.htm
Module 3: Creating Navigation Buttons
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module3.htm
* Lesson 1: Basic Shapes and Colors
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module3/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Working With Text
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module3/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Layer Basics
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module3/lesson3.htm
* Lesson 4: Optimizing GIF Images
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module3/lesson4.htm
Module 4: Creating a Web Page Banner
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module4.htm
* Lesson 1: Basic Image Manipulation
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module4/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Selection Tools
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module4/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Layer Effects and Blending
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit4/module4/lesson3.htm

Unit 5: Overall Site Design and Management
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5.htm
Module 1: Website Navigational Systems
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module1.htm
* Lesson 1: Testing the Usability of Navigational Systems
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module1/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Creating Your Own Navigational System
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module1/lesson2.htm
Module 2: Using an external style sheet
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module2.htm
* Lesson 1: Linking to an External Style Sheet
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module2/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Stylizing a Navigational Menu
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module2/lesson2.htm
Module 3: Scripts and Server-side technologies
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module3.htm
* Lesson 1: Scripting and the Web
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module3/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: A Simple Javascript Program
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module3/lesson2.htm
Module 4: Validating a Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module4.htm
* Lesson 1: Validating Your HTML
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module4/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Validating Your CSS
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module4/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Validating Your Accessibility
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit5/module4/lesson3.htm

Unit 6: Introduction to Web Authoring Software
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit6.htm
Module 1: Creating a Web Page using Web Authoring Software
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit6/module1.htm
* Lesson 1: Basic Features of Web Authoring Software
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit6/module1/lesson1.htm
Module 2 : Controlling Style using Web Authoring Software
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit6/module2.htm
* Lesson 1: CSS and Web Authoring Software: Controlling Presentation
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit6/module2/lesson1.htm
Module 3 : Site Management using Web Authoring Software
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit6/module3.htm
* Lesson 1: Overview of Site Management Features
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit6/module3/lesson1.htm

Unit 7: Client Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit7.htm
Module 1: Client Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit7/module1.htm
* Lesson 1: Planning the Client Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit7/module1/lesson1.htm
* Lesson 2: Constructing the Client Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit7/module1/lesson2.htm
* Lesson 3: Quality Control of the Client Website
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/student/unit7/module1/lesson3.htm

I was quite impressed that the creators of the curriculum made it so that it teaches standards-compliant web design and is itself grounded in national industry skills standards and national education standards.

Finally, the curriculum comes with video lessons for students and teachers to review. You can view the curriculum at http://www.washington.edu/accessit/webdesign/.

Brian Scarbeau
CSTA Board of Directors

Posted by cstephenson at 03:34 PM | Comments (1)

March 16, 2009

Differentiated Instruction

As I was grading a movie summary from my Fundamentals of Programming class, yesterday, I noticed the varying insights that the students had to the Charles Babbage movie I had shown in class. This assignment suggested to me that in my computer class I had been applying the techniques of differentiated instruction. I began to think of other ways that I had applied differentiated instruction.

In the same class, my students have been taking advantage of the opportunity to bug test Alice 3. The Alice programming environment gives my students the opportunity to express their solution to the problem in the way that they feel fits the solution. One of the class assignments was to have a Hare take a bow and do a headstand. Another character has "built-in" methods for those tasks. The students have that character perform the tasks to see what a bow and handstand looks like. The Hare does not have the same functionality as the example character. The students were required to design a bow in a different way, but it needed to look like a bow. There were many varied solutions to the problem. The classroom at times was so quiet because the students were working so intently on the program.

It became clear as the hands started to raise, they all had their own solution! Some may have asked a neighbor for some help, but according to Center on Human Policy (http://www.disabilitystudiesforteachers.org/index.php?id=DifferentiatedInstruction) that is ok, in fact it is encouraged! I had the opportunity to view all the solutions, informally access each student and praise each solution.

Tomorrow is a special day at my school. We are expecting a visit from the Distinguished Schools Committee to verify the contents of our application. I do hope that they will visit my programming class so they can view what my students are accomplishing.

Myra Deister
CSTA Board Member

Posted by cstephenson at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2009

Growing a Computer Science Requirement

Japan has taken the bold step of recognizing a need for all high school graduates to have a formal computing course and has modified the high school graduation requirements to include a computing requirement.

Effective in 2003, the Japanese Ministry of Education required that, to graduate, all Japanese high school students complete a course of study called "Information". This course has three basic components:

* practical literacy: includes use of application software such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, and drawing;
* scientific concepts of computing: includes number representation, parts of a computer, computer organization, the role of software and hardware, operating systems, and networks;
* social issues: includes the positive and negative impact of computers on business, government, and hospitals; hackers and computer crime; and intellectual property.

Japanese high schools are required to offer at least one of the three approved versions of the "Information" course: version A with an emphasis on practical literacy, version B with an emphasis on scientific concepts, or version C with an emphasis on social issues. Each version of the "Information" course must include basic content from all three components.

Japan requires that all teachers are certified in their appropriate subject area. In anticipation of the new requirement, math and science teachers were given the opportunity to gain "Information" certification by completing a three-week (15-day) crash course in computer studies. The crash course focused on the "Information" Course of Studies as mandated by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Most teachers, feeling somewhat unsure about teaching this content with minimal training, initially offered the A course. It is estimated that approximately 80% of the schools offered only the A course during the first year of the requirement.

This statistic, however, is changing. The original teachers in Japan's crash course now seem to be more comfortable with the required "Information" concepts and are willing to venture into new content. In addition, new teachers have completed pre-service programs in "Information" Education that include degrees involving computing disciplines (CS, IT, Engineering) as well as a course in teaching CS. In 2009, it is believed that the version B and version C courses are offered more frequently, with the version A course still the only “Information” course offered in more than half of the schools.

Perhaps it is possible for the U.S. to learn from the example set by countries such as Japan, by requiring a computer course of all high school graduates and providing a progressive path that helps teachers move from the practical to the more academic concepts of CS.

Anita Verno
CSTA Board of Directors

Michio Chujo
Kwansei Gakuin University
Sanda, Japan

Posted by cstephenson at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2009

Looking for Research Participants

As the chair of CSTA's Professional Development Committee, I recently received a request from Mara Saeli, a PhD student at the University of Eindhoven (in the Netherlands), who is seeking some experienced CS teachers to participate in some interesting new research.

Mara is hoping to:

"uncover the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) of Programming (in the sense of Software development) and use this knowledge to broaden the actual knowledge about didactic of Programming for secondary level."

Mara continues:

"In order to do so I will use two instruments designed and used by researchers in Australia in the context of Science education for secondary school (CoRes and PaPers). The idea is to collect around 40 experienced teachers with well developed PCK and Computer Science background in different countries."

This sounds like a fascinating project that could provide considerable insight into the teaching of programming, as well as help us to refine our definitions of desired outcomes.

If you would like to consider participating in this project and would like more information, please contact Mara directly at:

m.saeli@tue.nl

Debbie Carter
Chair, CSTA Professional Development Committee

Posted by cstephenson at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2009

How the CSTA Elections Work

It is election time for the CSTA Board of Directors. This year, the K-8 representative, two 9-12 representatives, the school district representative, the college faculty representative, and the at-large representative need to be elected. Each member of the Board of Director serves for a two-year term.

We get a lot of queries about the election process at the CSTA. Here is the process we follow...

We get many applications for the various Board of Director positions. Each application is required to include a CV and a 130-word statement to be shared with the membership about the candidate's vision and/or qualifications. It is amazing how many folks get confused between 130 and 1300 for the length of the statement, and how many applications we receive after the deadline.

Once the valid applications are received, the Nominations Committee, headed by the Vice President, must select the top two candidates for each position. This is a challenging and important task because it involves choosing the people who will provide the vision for and lead the organization in the future. As a result, the committee considers many factors when choosing the candidates, including: educational and volunteer experience, commitment to CSTA's mission, leadership potential, and vision. The committee also has to look at the entire Board as a working group, with the goal of building a team that will work hard and in harmony but with a sufficient diversity of opinion and experience to ensure that all perspectives are well represented.

In this current election, that meant sorting through nearly 40 valid applications to choose the top 12 candidates (two for each of the Board of Director representatives that are up for election). This was a fairly exhausting meeting, as there were far more highly qualified candidates than we had positions for.

Once the Nominations Committee has made its top-two choices for each position, CSTA mails out an official election ballot to all current CSTA members along with a document that provides all of the candidates' statements. The completed ballots must be mailed back to CSTA and must be postmarked no later than May 1, 2009.

Then the work begins.

Michelle Hutton
CSTA President

Posted by cstephenson at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2009

Some Very Interesting AP CS Numbers

The number of students taking the Advance Placement Computer Science A exam has been increasing since 2005. In 2008 15,014 students nationally took this exam. One might assume that the increase in students since 2005 is nationwide. But, that is not the case. It is especially striking that Maryland has steadily increased the number of students taking the CS AP A exam since 1998. Texas has been increasing since 2003. Both of these states have very strong teacher certification requirements. Some may argue that strong teaching requirements will reduce the number of students who take the AP CS exam, but the experience with Maryland and Texas would suggest otherwise.

The number of students taking the Advanced Placement Computer Science A exam for each state from 1998 to 2008 is available on the CSTA web site at:
http://csta.acm.org/ComputerScienceTeacherCertification/sub/TeacherCertificationRequi.html.

This data was compiled from the summary data for each year on the College Board's web site at: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd_sum/2008.html.

On reviewing the data from 1998-2008, only ten states had their highest number of students taking the CS AP A exam in 2008.

Table 1 shows those states that reported their highest number of students taking the exam in 2008.

Table 1
State Num in 2008
Arkansas 117
Colorado 250
Georgia 585
Illinois 473
Kentucky 168
Maine 68
Maryland 895
Texas 2951
Washington 296
Washington D.C. 51

What is especially striking is that some of the states that one might expect to be strong in high school computing education have not recovered from the dot-com crash of 2001.

Table 2 shows some of the states that have a large difference between the number of students who took the exam in 2008 and the maximum from 1998 to 2008. As you can see from the table New York and California are still well below their maximums.

Table 2
State 2008 - Max (1998-2008)
New York -627
California -529
New Jersey -216
Pennsylvania -212
Massachusetts -160
Ohio -106

It is disappointing to see that 26 states have never had over 100 students take the CS AP A exam.

Table 3
State 2008 Max (1998-2008)
Montana 6
North Dakota 12
South Dakota 18
Kansas 20
Nebraska 27
Alaska 31
Wyoming 35
Idaho 37
West Virginia 38
Oregon 38
Mississippi 40
Louisiana 43
Vermont 45
Washington D.C. 51
New Mexico 53
New Hampshire 57
Nevada 58
Alabama 58
Rhode Island 60
Iowa 62
Delaware 62
Maine 68
Hawaii 77
Arizona 87

This data clearly shows that access to high quality computing education is very limited in most states. Our hope is that stronger teacher certification will broaden access and interest.

If you would like the complete set of state AP CS data, CSTA has made it available for download from this url:

http://csta.acm.org/rss/States-CS-AP-A-98-2008.xls

Barb Ericson
CSTA Director

Posted by cstephenson at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2009

Is Open Source Software a Choice For My School?

Computing classes in our schools cost money. We have PCs running Windows. We need programming languages as well as application software for basic functionality such as word processing, presentations, spread sheeting, database management, graphical editing. In good economic times specialized computing classes may be at risk for funding to purchase the latest and the greatest software titles.

Given the weakened economy and the financial crunch anticipated in many schools, should we encourage our schools to consider Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)? Is it time to trade Oracle for MySQL and Microsoft Office for Open Office? Should we consider deploying the Linux operating system?

Can you help those of us considering how our schools should fit into the open source environment by answering a few of these questions?

* Do you currently use and/or teach open source software? Are you satisfied with the software?
* What open source products do you currently use at your school?
* Are there open source titles you recommend to students for use at home? Which titles?
* What open source software would you like to consider for use at your school?
* If you use/suggest open source software, what is your primary motivation for doing so? Is it financial, quality of software, access to the program code, or some other reason?
* What are the impediments to including open source software in your class / at your school?

Anita Verno
CSTA Director

Posted by cstephenson at 07:57 PM | Comments (1)

January 20, 2009

Observations from New Zealand

My husband, Dr. Mark Guzdial, and I are at the ACSW 2009 conference in Wellington, New Zealand. Dr. Wayne Mapp, the Minister for Research, Science, and Technology opened the conference and announced that the government of New Zealand is going to spend money to upgrade the country’s access to high speed broadband internet. He said that computing knowledge is essential in today’s economy and that the increases in productivity and efficiency that come from innovations in computing will help pull the global economy out of the current recession.

What I found striking is that I can't remember any computing conference in the United States that had a politician of similar stature talk about the importance of computing. Most politicians in the United States don’t know what computing is and don't understand the value of it in our economy. Most of the discussion in the United States on how to get out of the current recession focuses on bailouts, tax cuts, preventing foreclosures, and money for physical infrastructure.

In Mark’s keynote on contextualized computing, he argued that everyone should learn some computing and programming. He also talked about how at Georgia Tech we do make everyone on campus take a course on computing. He talked about former students asking for reference letters to work as a legislative intern and for law school. Perhaps if we do improve the knowledge about computing in the general population, and especially in our politicians, we will generate more support for computing education and research. And, perhaps there will come a time when an American politician will come to a computing conference and talk about the importance of computing.

Barb Ericson
CSTA Director

Posted by cstephenson at 01:48 PM | Comments (1)

January 19, 2009

A Computer Science Honor Society?

Does your high school have chapters of any subject-specific honor societies, such as Mu Alpha Theta (math), Science National Honor Society, Tri-M (music), or one or more honor societies for specific foreign languages?

From time to time, CSTA has received inquiries about an honor society for CS students. We've done some research into how other subjects' honor societies operate, and we've discussed it at a couple of meetings of the Board of Directors. Our conversations have included discussions about what services that the sponsoring organization might provide (from defining membership standards to producing "official" certificates of membership), as well as any perceived value of such membership (to students, administrators, and colleges). We've also looked at the way some of the other subject-specific honor societies are managed, whether by a national organization of teachers of a subject, a university-level organization for a subject, or an organization of professionals in that field.

But we kept coming back to one question: would people (students, administrators, colleges) perceive value in selection for such an honor society? And we realized that the most important information needed to come from you, the teachers in secondary schools. You would be the most likely force for starting chapters of a CS honor society at your schools, as well as the most logical advisors for such chapters. So here are some questions that we would love for you to answer.

1. Would your school administration be likely to find value in hosting a chapter of a CS honor society at your school? Would students perceive value in being selected?

2. Would you be willing to serve as the advisor for a chapter of a CS honor society?

3. How many students would you expect to induct in an average year?

4. In what kinds of activities (in addition to an induction ceremony) would you expect such a chapter to engage?

5. What services would you need the sponsoring organization (CSTA or another group) to provide (as a minimum)? What else would be on your wish list?

Please also tell us at what level (middle or high school) you teach.

We eagerly await your responses. Thanks!

Debbie Carter
CS Teacher, Roxbury High School, NJ
CSTA Board of Directors

Posted by cstephenson at 10:24 PM | Comments (2)

January 14, 2009

The Beauty of Computing is Not in Problem Solving

As part of a recent discussion on the Rebooting Computing listserv Rosemary Michelle Simpson made the following comments in response to a discussion about the discovering the beauty of computer science. We thought her comments were particularly profound and well stated, and so, with her permission, we are sharing them with our CSTA community.

My perspective on computer science is perhaps somewhat different from that of many people in computing and the sciences. I believe that problem solving is not the only approach to computing, mathematics, and science.

Much has been said about the social and special domain interests of many women, but less about those women who are solitary explorers and pattern seekers. Their rewards are centered about the joys of seeing relationships emerge, new connections, grouping and classifying them, forming new abstractions and relationships among different levels of abstractions, representations, and their criteria.

I'm an explorer, a naturalist in the 19th century sense - like Darwin on the Beagle, or a naturalist on Mars - not a problem-solver. I'm curious about what I'm seeing, enjoy gathering data, describing it, and watching patterns emerge. I hate hierarchies, as limited structures that have consumed computer science because they are easy to work with - like Nasrudin looking for his lost keys under the lamppost because it was easy to see in the light. I love the power of general bi-directional graphs for modeling complex, dynamic ecologies of ideas.

I couldn't care less about 'finding my question', solving puzzles, playing games, or learning problem-solving techniques except as an adjunct to my primary interests - seeing surprises, patterns emerge. I don't like competing with anyone, including myself. What drives me is primarily an aesthetic sense of the beauty of multi-dimensional patterns. Soaring abstractions, and their representations and relationships. Connecting things for the sake of seeing connection spaces, as an end in itself.

In College, I started out as an advance-placed chemistry major, but before the end of my freshman year had switched to history with a combined philosophy and english minor. I made the change because history's timeline provided an organizing structure around which all the various themes I was finding/discovering could play. Along the way I learned about critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, research strategies, and other skills through the vehicle of papers and exams. They helped me to structure my thinking and writing, and to uncover new insights and relationships. A good exam was one where I walked out knowing more than I did when I walked in.

This led me into hypertext: dynamic, emerging, changing relationships and fluid structures to support and model them. For me the process is what counts. In my hypertext development days, links were first-class functional objects, the relationships were foregrounded, not the end-points.

Thus, I'm relationship-centric, not object-centric. I hated/hate the rigidity and object-centricity of the object-oriented paradigm, much preferring a functional approach that foregrounds the relationships, not the objects. In short, I was concerned with fluid, emergent behavior and structures that modeled evolving change in the environment, in which objects and behaviors morph, merge, diverge, and interact with each other in time and space.

Rosemary Michelle Simpson
Brown University

Posted by cstephenson at 12:02 PM | Comments (1)

January 11, 2009

Gender and Race Issues in Computing

On several mailing lists that I monitor when the issue of gender and/or race is brought up there is a group that responds that any attempt to increase the percentage of women or underrepresented minorities in computing would be disastrous. They typically seem to think that this means "watering down" the content, or forcing people to study something that they aren't really interested in and don't have the aptitude for. They also seem to be under the impression that there are no barriers to studying computing.

They couldn't be more wrong. As Jane Margolis points out in her new book "Stuck in the Shallow End" there are many barriers to computing, especially for under-represented minorities and women. The biggest barrier highlighted in the book is the lack of access to high quality computing courses in most high schools. Often only private schools and high-end public schools offer computing courses that teach problem solving and critical thinking instead of the cut and paste type of learning found in some low end computing courses. Even when a high quality course is offered, access to it is often limited by the misconception that only white and Asian males have an aptitude for computing. Teachers, administrators, and counselors often perpetuate this myth.

One of the stories in the book is about a female student with excellent math grades and an interest in computing who gets placed in a low-end computing course instead of Advanced Placement computer science by her counselor. She isn't even informed that the AP CS course exists. I have heard of similar problems. A teacher once told me that she had a girl in middle school who was on the robot competition team and excelled at programming, but her high school counselor wouldn't let her sign up for AP CS. The counselor told her it, "wasn't for her" and "not something she needed for college." Her parents had to demand that she be allowed to take it.

One of the saddest parts of the book is that teachers and administrators claim that the students at a majority minority school aren't interested in computing courses, but interviews with students at the school show that there are many who are interested. I have seen similar attitudes in Georgia. There is a teacher at a majority minority school who has a master's degree in computer science and who has been teaching an introductory programming class. When I visited his class the students (all under-represented minorities) showed me some amazing animations they had built in Alice, and they were also learning Media Computation in Java. But, when I asked if the teacher would offer AP CS he said his principal wouldn't let him because the principal said, "these kids aren't going to college and something like Cisco or A+ would be better for them."

Women and under-represented minorities often have less experience in computing, but this doesn't mean that they have less aptitude. When Carnegie Mellon University changed their admission requirements to give less weight to previous programming experience they were able to greatly increase the percentage of women in computing at CMU (see Unlocking the Clubhouse, also from Jane Margolis).

Let's not blame the victims of our educational system for their lack of access to and experience with computing. Let's instead try to provide high quality computing courses for all students. And, let's work to educate everyone that computing isn't just for white and Asian males.

Barb Ericson
CSTA Board

Posted by cstephenson at 03:28 PM | Comments (2)

December 30, 2008

Teaching CS to Middle School Students

As I middle school teacher, I think it is my responsibility to expose my students to a variety of topics within my subject area. In just a few short months or years, they will be off to high school where they will need to choose their own classes. If they haven't been exposed to a topic, then how will they know that they might have an interest in the topic which they may be able to pursue at the high school or even college level?

Computer Science is just one of those topics. By the sixth grade, my students have been exposed to the computer, but not to the topics involving Computer Science. The question then becomes, how do I successfully introduce Computer Science topics to my students to encourage an interest in the field?

Recently, I came across a discussion board posting announcing the launch of Small Basic. The posting touted Small Basic as a "simple, easy to use, and uncomplicated version of Basic." It sounded good, but would it be something that my inexperienced middle school students would embrace and enjoy? Further research into Small Basic at http://blogs.msdn.com/smallbasic/default.aspx is where I found a link to download the application. This download also provides an easy to follow tutorial that I plan to start using with my new class of students as we begin the next quarter of classes in January.

At this same Web site, users can find a Sample of the Week for exploring what others are doing with Small Basic. One of December's samples is the Small Basic version of Tetris. Recreating this game is made simple by copying and pasting it into the Small Basis interface. Once this is done, students can start investigating the code to learn how the code affects the behaviors on the screen or students can experiment with code to see how their changes affect the end result.

I have learned through the CSTA organization that when you find something exciting like Small Basic, you need to share the excitement with others. I hope that you will find Small Basic as exciting as I do and will pass on the word to others.

Dave Burkhart
CSTA Board of Directors

Posted by cstephenson at 01:05 PM | Comments (1)

December 12, 2008

Real World Learning in a Web Design Class

I started teaching web design to students when the World Wide Web started to explode in 1994. Back then my students used HTML and notepad to create the school's website. Web design tools have come a long way since then. So I am constantly looking at different ways of teaching web design

I decided some time ago that it is important to introduce programming concepts in this course. Students really have no clue where programming is used on the websites that they view on a daily basis. They just click away without understanding what that button control does. In my Web Design class, they will learn programming concepts in addition to learning how to build web pages and websites.

Here is an outline of what I teach:
HTML
DreamWeaver
Flash
DotNetNuke

I use the online lessons from Maricopa Community College to teach HTML. I don't have my students do all of the lessons, but they do learn the basics of creating a 3-page site and having text, graphics, and links on the page.

Next, my students learn how to use Dreamweaver from Adobe Software. I use a book called Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Revealed written by Sherry Bishop. The book has students create several different websites so that they learn how much easier it is to use software to create a website than html.

Learning Flash has also been fun and challenging for my students. Why? Partly because students need to think and Flash requires them to learn about objects, layers, and animation. It is not just point and click! I use a curriculum called Web Game from a company called I Support Learning.

Here is a description of the curriculum:

Students are immediately attracted to and engaged by web games featured on websites. The fast-growing segment of e-commerce and website creation is making this skill valuable and necessary to compete in a global economy. As competition increases and budgets shrink, companies are seeking new and innovative ways to attract and retain customers. From art, design, branding, and the skills necessary to bring it all together, your students will be leading the charge on the latest marketing phenomenon - web video games. These skills are in high demand and offer students immediate access to entrepreneurship opportunities.

To make the curriculum easy to implement, all the necessary knowledge and skills of programming and creating web video games are delivered through totally interactive software. Through text, pictures, animations, and digital videos, students are led through the exciting world of web game design. Due to the highly interactive and self-directed nature of our curriculum, students are allowed to find their own pace. Regardless of the learner's motivation or learning style, students will find a new level of success with our curriculum.

This curriculum was designed to support state assessments by addressing national math, language, science, art, and technology standards.

What attracted me to this curriculum was this:

Skills for Life
Good life skills are made relevant through situations that have students examine their actions. Through interactions with their boss, co-workers, and customers, students learn what it takes to be successful in the real world. They discover the long-term benefits of making choices that allow them to take pride in what they do.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Employers want people who solve problems. Our projects lead students through analyzing, brainstorming, and creating solutions using the design process.

Students work for a Web Design Company as an intern and are given a task of creating a game in Flash to advertise a new soda pop called Carbonade. Their job is to create a Flash game that can be used on the company website.

Throughout the lessons, students learn how to take instructions from a boss and how to create this game using the actionscript that Flash has as a feature. Students also learn basic programming concepts such as a variables, if statements, and loops.

This link will show you an example of the games that my students have created. http://www.lhps.org/scarbeau/flashstudent/

Once they have mastered Flash, my students learn DotNetNuke. I have been much involved with this product as a speaker, webcast leader, curriculum developer, trainer. I am also the author of the new DotNetNuke 5 published by Wrox Publisher.

DotNetNuke Is Free and
Versatile - DotNetNuke is an open source web application framework ideal for creating, deploying and managing interactive web, intranet and extranet sites.
User-Friendly - DotNetNuke is designed to make it easy for administrators, content editors, developers, and designers to manage all aspects of their web assets. Wizards, content-sensitive help, and a well-researched user interface provide a superior user experience.
Powerful - DotNetNuke can support multiple websites from a single application installation. In dividing administrative options between host level and individual site level, DotNetNuke allows administrators to manage an unlimited number of websites - each with its own unique appearance and content.
Feature-Rich - DotNetNuke comes loaded with a set of built-in features that provide exceptional functionality. Site hosting, web design, content management, security, and membership options are all easily managed and customized through simple, browser-based tools.
Supported - DotNetNuke is managed and supported by DotNetNuke Corporation, a legal entity which provides production Service Level Agreements as well as other professional services for the platform. DotNetNuke is also supported by its Core Team of volunteer developers and a dedicated international community. Through user groups, online forums, resource portals and a network of companies who specialize in DNN, help is always close at hand.
Easily Installed - DotNetNuke can be up-and-running within minutes. Developers can simply download the software, and follow the simple installation instructions. In addition, many web hosting companies offer integrated installation of the DotNetNuke application with their hosting plans, providing a simple mechanism for end users to experience the power of the platform.

The curriculum has students create two portals for CompSci High. The first portal is for the school and they created a portal that includes pages for Faculty, Admissions, Academics etc. They learn how to place modules on the pages and learn how to create their own modules using Visual Web Developer and Visual Basic.NET from Microsoft and SQL Server Express. They also learn how to change the graphics in DotNetNuke which is called skinning. The second portal is a student portal for information about athletics, student government, class information and clubs.

The skills that I teach are real world skills. Needless to say, my students are always busy learning in their Web Design class.

I hope you take advantage of this curriculum and teach your students a little about programming in your Web Design class. Good luck!

Resources:
HTML: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/tut0.html
Dreamweaver: http://www.adobe.com
I Support Learning: http://www.isupportlearning.com/noflash/Web.html
DotNetNuke: http://www.dotnetnuke.com
Free DotNetNuke curriculum: https://www.academicresourcecenter.net/curriculum/pfv.aspx?ID=7205

Brian Scarbeau
CSTA Board Member

Posted by cstephenson at 02:51 PM | Comments (8)

October 06, 2008

The Psychology of Learning: How to Organize Your Teaching

CSTA is a professional organization and so we wear many hats for our membership. Here in our blog we give you updates about the state of the organization, its outreach, and the resources that we put together for you. In addition we like to believe that we also help you become better teachers. I have blogged before about the Doing What Works website maintained by the US Department of Education. They recently added a new resources called How To Organize Your Teaching which I believe can be useful to teachers both new and old.

As a new teacher, feeling a little overwhelmed at times I would imagine, this resource can help you find research based practices for meaningful instruction. Presenting the information to students in such a way that it makes use of their prior knowledge, creating advanced organizers, and many other strategies that can help you with both the day to day planning of your lessons, and also the long term unit planning in your courses. This is especially helpful for computer science teachers as we are often the only teacher in our area within our school and therefore have to do this type of long term planning on our own quite often.

As an experienced teacher I never underestimate the value of looking either at something new or reminding myself of something I learned in a methods class a long time ago. Sometimes with more experience I am better able to understand and integrate a teaching method that seemed abstract or useless for my subject when I first saw it as a novice. I also find that there is ever more research on learning and memory that becomes useful to me in my instructional strategies.

What essential teaching strategy can you experienced teachers share with our membership? If you are a new teacher, what would you like help with? Post a comment here!

Leigh Ann Sudol
CSTA Volunteer

Posted by cstephenson at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2008

Getting Moms and Dads Involved

I am excited by the explosive growth in our Georgia Tech computing workshops for Girl Scouts.

We started working with the Girl Scouts in 2005. I had been interested in using LEGO robots to introduce computing to kids but was worried about research that showed that in mixed gender groups boys often took over. One year at SIGCSE I saw a poster about the LEGO robots and asked the presenter if she had this problem. She said, "No, we are at an all girls school."

I contacted the local Girl Scout Council and they already had LEGO robots and laptops but nobody knew what to do with them. I suggested that I bring female undergraduate computing majors to help with Robot workshops and we started with volunteers.

In 2005-2006 we did three weekends where Dads go camping with their daughters and we had them program pre-built LEGO robots. We also offered two 4-hour workshops where the girls could build and program the robots. We also trained camp counselors to offer the robots at one Girl Scout camp that summer. About 190 girls got an introduction to computing from these activities in 2005-2006.

In 2006-2007 we again did three weekends with the Dads and girls. We offered three 4-hour robot workshops and our first workshop on Alice. We trained camp counselors to do the robots at one Girl Scout camp that summer and also lent the Girl Scouts PicoCricket kits and they used these at another Girl Scout camp. About 372 girls got an introduction to computing from these activities in 2006-2007.

In 2007-2008 we received an NSF Broadening Participation in Computing grant which meant that we could pay students to help at our computing workshops. We did four weekends with Dads and their daughters with LEGO robots, three weekends with Moms and their daughters with PicoCrickets, and ten 4-hour workshops in total using LEGO robots, PicoCrickets, Scratch, and Alice.

We also targeted Hispanic Girl Scouts. We went to a local Elementary school for three weeks in a row and introduced the students to computing using PicoCrickets and LEGO robots. We also bused in Hispanic Girl Scouts for one of our 4-hour workshops at Georgia Tech. Again the Girl Scouts offered LEGO robots at one summer camp and PicoCrickets at another. About 1595 girls got an introduction to computing from these activities in 2007-2008.

For 2008-2009 we are planning on doing the Dad and Me and Mom and Me programs and have fifteen 4-hour workshops scheduled! One of the cool things is that originally we had 12-20 girls at a computing workshop and now we get 60 at a time with a waiting list. Only about 25-30% of the girls have been to more than one computing workshop so we are still reaching new girls. Our Girl Scout Council of Greater Atlanta, Inc. has about 40,000 girls in it so we still have many more girls that we hope to reach.

We do a pre and post attitude survey and are finding that we can change the girls' attitudes towards computing in just these 4-hour workshops. We are getting the most statistically significant changes in attitudes with our PicoCricket workshops. We also get some statistically significant changes in attitudes with Scratch and Alice. We are currently not getting any statistical significant changes in attitudes with the LEGO robots.

I particularly like the events with the Dads and Moms and their daughters as research shows that one way to get girls interested in computing is to get their parents to support it. At these events we hand out career brochures from the Computer Science Teachers Association ("Consider Your Future in Computing"), ACM ("Computing Careers and Degrees") and the new "Talking Points" from NCWIT. It is fun to see the Dads' faces as they talk to the female undergraduate students and find out that they are majoring in Computer Science or Computation Media at Georgia Tech. You can tell that this surprises the Dads!

For more information see:

http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/201

for pictures from our Girl Scout workshops and our pre and post attitude surveys. See

http://csta.acm.org/Careers/sub/ClassroomCareersResources.html

for the CSTA career brochures we hand out. See

http://www.ncwit.org/resources.res.outreach.talking2.html

for the Talking Points from NCWIT.

Barb Ericson
Director, CS Outreach
College of Computing
Georgia Tech

Posted by cstephenson at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2008

Getting To Know the Freshman Students

Classes started at the University of South Carolina this morning, and I taught my first class at 9:30. Last year I taught our first-term (CS1) course because I felt it was (long past) time for me to get to know the freshman students, to try to understand why they were here in our classes, and perhaps to understand why there weren't more of them here in our classes. This year I promoted myself to teaching the second term course, and I spent a fair part of the summer getting ready to teach this, my 12th new course since 2001. It was a little scary last year teaching freshmen, knowing that they hadn't been born the last item I had taught freshmen. This year I see a lot of familiar faces from last year. Since I am teaching the only main section of our CS2 course, I know that these students are either happy to see me or else just gritting their teeth and hoping to get beyond me for next
term.

Teaching these first two courses has given me a chance to see first hand what we do in the intro courses and to think about whether we are doing it right. I have long had some misgivings about the object oriented ideology; not that I am not willing to teach objects, but that I think students at this level need to see first and foremost that computer programs can be used to do useful things. Since students are naturally going to be making mistakes, the metaphysics of *why* we use objects will probably come to them after they make some necessary educational mistakes.

On Monday I will speak to our incoming class in our "freshman seminar" course. We created a one-credit course to try to get students introduced to the larger world of computing to which they will be exposed after they master some of the technical basics. If I thought I could get away with it, I would teach this using science fiction; by the time these students get to be my age in about 2050, they will be living in a very different world. It can't hurt for them to anticipate now what is to come by then, and the opening half-dozen pages of Charles Stross's *Accelerando* are only just barely fiction.

Duncan A. Buell
CSTA Board Member

Posted by cstephenson at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2008

Where Did All the Years Go?

Today I enter my third decade in the teaching profession.

The first day of school is always an exciting one for the students, parents, and yes, for the teachers too. Our school has seven days of pre-planning before the students arrive. We have various tasks to do, including updating our curriculum maps, getting the computers ready, writing lesson plans and lots of meetings. Too many meetings!

Today, I'm ready to teach!

There have been many changes at our school. We had a 750 seat theatre built last year that has now opened up. There is also a new black box theatre for students and a new fitness center with state of the art equipment. My computer room was also carpeted over the summer and the sound of computers humming is very quiet.

The students seem eager to be back at school hooking up with old friends and anxious to make new friends as well.

This semester, I teach three sections of Web Design, one section of Honors Programming I, and one section of AP Computer Science. I'm using Moodle again this year and I am trying to get new teachers to use it as well. It is going to be very convenient to use because I built the course syllabus with links and files last year and now I just use it as needed.

This year marks the first year that my oldest daughter will be teaching kindergarten classes in Alexandria, VA. She went back to school recently at George Macon University to study elementary teaching because she got the teaching bug. She'll make a good teacher. I like to think that it runs in the family.

Brian Scarbeau
CSTA Board of Directors

Posted by cstephenson at 12:45 PM | Comments (1)

August 13, 2008

Setting the Tone for the School Year

For most of my teaching career I was on a 12 month contract because I was also the technology coordinator. That meant I was in the school building most of the summer. So for me the first day of school meant one thing - students! Being in a school that is empty of students can be a depressing time. The building is too quiet. The interactions are all with adults. Now there is nothing wrong with adults and I was always fortunate to work with talented, committed and interesting faculty and administration people. But there is nothing like interaction with students. When students show up for that first school day the energy is palpable. It is rejuvenating. It is exciting. For me there is nothing quite like it.

As a teacher the first day of school is a chance to set a tone for the year. I don't just mean the laying out of rules (though that is especially important in lab-based classes) and outlining the curriculum for the year but establishing a feeling of collaboration - a goal of learning together. I get excited about what I am teaching and I want to share that excitement. I see each new school year as ripe with opportunity for teacher as well as students to learn new things, to do interesting things, and to create new partnerships for learning. That is the tone I always tried to set for the school year. I'm not sure I always succeeded but that was always the goal.

This year I don't have classrooms of my own. I will likely not even be in a school on their first day. I'm on a number of advisory boards for computer programming/computer science programs at high schools near me and the meeting invitations are already coming in. So I know I will get some first day of school reports very soon but it is not like being there. I am seriously thinking about dropping in on some teachers I know just for the experience. We'll see about that. But over all I have a personal goal to visit more classrooms this year. If I can help out in a classroom that is great. Speaking to students is a very grounding experience and one I really believe helps the speaker as much as the listeners.

My wife and son are both teachers and are deep in the throes of preparing for the start of their school year. While they are enjoying the last of their summer vacations they are not facing the start of school with dread but with anticipation. I have to say that I am excited about and anticipating the new school year as well. A lot of teachers I work with made plans to learn new things over the summer and I look forward to hearing (and helping where I can) how those new things work when introduced to the classroom and students. The preparation is nearly complete. The planting is about to start. What sort of growth will the school year bring?

Alfred Thompson
Academic Relations Manage, Microsoft Corporation

Posted by cstephenson at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2008

Dreaming of a New School Year

It is hard to believe that it is already time to turn our minds to the new school year.

For some, there is almost enough time left to do all of the projects we promised to do around the house. For others, it is a mad dash to get everything ready for the students. This is especially true for those hardy souls who have been working all summer to set up new servers and labs or get the old equipment ready to take one more year of student "love".

Where ever you are along this spectrum, it is likely that you are meeting the new school with both joy and trepidation and that you have dreams of your own that will come into fruition or die as this year moves through its paces.

The new school year can always be a fresh start, a new beginning, a chance for us to grow together with our students.

So tell us. What do do you wish this year to be for you and your students?

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2008

Finding CS Teachers

I had an interesting email conversation with Carrie Toth from Insight Schools about the difficulties of finding computer science teachers, a challenge we share for different reasons.

CSTA membership has grown very quickly, from 0 members in 2005 to over 5300 members today but we know that there are still many teachers we would like to reach and we simply cannot find them. We can use market data companies (and we do) but we know they are only touching the surface of our community as well.

The situation is made worse by the fact that CSTA is often called upon for research and the one question we just cannot answer with any certainty is “How many CS teachers are there in U.S. high schools anyway?”.

For people like Carrie, the situation is just as frustrating. She has a number of computer science teaching jobs available and no way to advertise and fill them.

There are a number of reasons this problem exists. I think one of the primary difficulties is that, because there is no certification for computer science teachers in many states, no one keeps track of them at the state level or nationally. And until someone does, they remain invisible to the system as a whole.

Setting up some kind of careers board may seem like a potential solution but there are several issues (cost, liability, and verification just to mention a few) that make it prohibitive for associations to get into the job posting business. We have thought about it, but there is just no evidence that it would be of sufficient value to the majority of our members to make it worthwhile.

In the short term, the best we can say is, if you are a certified teacher looking for an online computer science teaching position with a virtual school, you can complete the Insight Schools application at:

https://edzapp.com/applicant/loginprivate.aspx?origincode=22748

or contact Carrie at

teachers@insightschools.net

And if you are not yet a CSTA member, contact me at:

cstephenson@csta.acm.org

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director, CSTA

Posted by cstephenson at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2008

Staff Development: 25 Tools for Education

While Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day is not purely about computer science education, I feel very strongly that good educational practices span disciplines and so it is one of the RSS feeds that Google reader automatically retrieves for me daily.

Jane recently blogged about a professional development program that she created, centered around her top 25 e-learning tools. I highly recommend going to the site and working through the activities for any of the tools you are unfamiliar with. Some of them, like Firefox, are things you probably already use, but Jane highlights some of the extra functionality of the browser as well as some useful extensions.

The tools are divided into categories including: Keep Yourself Up to Date, Manage Your Own Productivity, Set Up a Blog, Website and/or Wiki, Share Content with Others, Build Content and Share it with Others, Bring People Together, and Develop and Manage Courses.

To start a little discussion here please tell us what your favorite e-learning tool is (whether or not Jane agrees)? I use many of the things on her list and I think Google Reader has drastically improved my ability to find new and useful things as well as be aware of what is going on today in education. I used to have to go to 20-25 web pages first thing in the morning to see what the latest headlines were, who posted something new on blogs I read, and forget about trying to find new research as its published. Now with Google Reader, I go to one place and get EVERYTHING. It is separated by the feed (where it came from) so I can pick and choose what I want to read when I have time. It truly has changed the way I interact with the Internet on a daily basis.

No matter how small or how large leave a comment and share your favorite e-learning tool here.

Leigh Ann Sudol
CSTA Communications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 02:40 PM | Comments (6)

March 25, 2008

Podcasts on GridWorld and Cyber Security

Over 1000 computer science educators gathered in Portland Oregon for the 2008 ACM SIGCSE conference. The 39th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education provided a wide selection of technical sessions and opportunities for teachers to network and to learn. The topics ranged from innovative strategies for increasing classroom diversity to hands-on techniques with applications and curriculum.

I love the excitement of SIGCSE, especially the opportunities to catch up with friends and the discovery of new and innovative teaching strategies. I managed to catch up with some of the presenters and participants who I thought you wouldd value hearing from.

Please listen in on the following CSTA Snipits podcasts.

A GridWorld Quickstart with Ann Shen
Medium: MP3
Listening Time: 9 min.
Interview Location: ACM SIGCSE 2008 Portland, Oregon
Interview Date: March 2008

Ann Shen, The Bishop Strachan School:
Case studies expose students to large programs, enabling them to understand the importance of design and good programming style while encouraging teamwork and active learning. The AP GridWorld case study provides a graphical environment in which students can experiment with different types of objects and observe how programming changes will affect the behavior of those objects. It is significant that the test results show a smaller score difference between males and females on the case study questions than non-case study questions. In our visit, Ann describes this learning tool, compares and contrasts it to the previous AP case study, and gives teachers suggestions for using it in their computer science classroom.

CyberCivics with Jeanna Matthews and James Owens
Medium: MP3
Listening Time: 8.5 min.
Interview Location: ACM SIGCSE 2008 Portland, Oregon
Interview Date: March 2008

Jeanna Matthews and James Owens, Clarkson University
CyberCivics was developed as a novel computer science outreach program, designed to introduce diverse groups of talented high school students to hands-on activities that reflect the myriad ways in which computing technologies directly impact their everyday lives. The cyberCivics program integrates hands-on computing experiences with the study of contemporary social and political issues. One such curriculum, focused on electronic voting and was used with a high school AP Government course. Jeanna Matthews and James Owens describe the philosophy behind this approach and give suggestions of how to implement in the classroom. They are pleased with how it reaches a larger, more diverse and more academically prepared group of students. The materials are available at:

www.clarkson.edu/projects/cybercivics.

Listen to these and many more Snipits podcasts at:

http://csta.acm.org/Resources/sub/Podcasts.html

Pat Phillips
Editor, CSTA Voice

Posted by cstephenson at 02:13 PM | Comments (1)

March 05, 2008

The Pros and Cons of Using Gaming to Teach CS

I have just returned from the Game Development in Computer Science Education (GDCSE) conference. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the 10 Electronic Arts Scholars. The conference was sponsored by Microsoft and Electronic Arts in cooperation with ACM and SIGCSE. It was an intense conference and I did learn some interesting things.

* The game industry is now larger than the music industry. It became larger than the movie industry about 4 years ago.
* Making a game can cost 30 million dollars and many years of development.
* There are many different types of games from 2D arcade-style games, to role playing games, to first person shooters, to web-based games, to movement games (like the Wii), to serious games that try to help people change their behavior.
* Game developers need to know about networking, artificial intelligence, machine learning, physics, parallel programming, and more. Games also need artistic and creative people who can create compelling and fun experiences.
* I was glad to see more women and minorities than I had expected, but still the majority of the attendees were white males.

Some of the ways people are using games in CS education:

* as a few assignments in introductory computing courses. Kelvin Sung
* as a context for early computing courses or AI courses. Wanda Dann, Alice Project, Douglas Blank
* as a platform for learning computing concepts by having the students play games Tiffany Barnes
* as a course on game design for non-majors to try to draw them into computing Dianna Xu, Jim Whitehead
* as a degree program centered on games Michael Zyda and DigiPen
* using the flight simulator 3D world as the basis to improve global STEM education David Gibson

Overall, many of the talks were about fairly new initiatives with little evaluation. Many of the talks expect to offer more results in the following year. Some of the results that I found interesting were:

* Students didn't like doing just the hard back-end of a game Kelvin Sung. They want to be creative and not just program. Kevin Bierre
* Some students were discouraged because creating games is much harder, time consuming, and more tedious than they thought. Women are much less likely to want to make first person shooter games than men. Dianna Xu
* Some students are highly motivated by the context and come early and have to be thrown out to make room for the next class. This context appeals more to men (80%) than to women (20%). Jim Whitehead

In summary, it seems that games can serve as a context for some computing courses. Games courses and degree programs can attract more students to computing courses. But, one concern is that women are not as attracted to this context as men. There was a call for the creation of a game platform that was easier to use for computing education purposes.

For more information on this conference see https://www.msadgd08.net/Main.aspx.

Barb Ericson
CSTA Board Member

Posted by cstephenson at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2008

Computing Life

Medical shows and Crime Scene investigations have sparked students imaginations. They imagine themselves as criminologists solving crimes and doctors saving lives, both rewarding and important careers with an expectation of job satisfaction.

Computer scientists often get to work in similar fields. In fact, much of the high tech equipment used by both doctors and criminologists was developed with the help of a computer scientist.

In my time here at Carnegie Mellon University as a visiting lecturer I have had the opportunity to see computer scientists work on robotic surgeons A Miniature Mobile Robot for Precise and Stable Access to the Beating Heart), and using human computation in order to help computers make more books available to more people through the Internet Archive recaptcha.

I recently came across a website called Computing Life published by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. This publication focuses on highlighting the ways in which scientists use computers to increase our understanding of the human body, medicine and a variety of other topics. Take a look! Go and talk to you science teacher about a collaborative project – what can you help your school's students model?

If you have any great resources, or any collaborative projects you have done along these lines, comment here and share!

Leigh Sudol
CSTA Communications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 07:38 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2008

Clarifying the Dewar and Schonberg Article

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the article by Dewar and Schonberg

http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/CrossTalk/2008/01/0801DewarSchonberg.html

claiming that:

"It is our view that Computer Science (CS) education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods. We consider that the general adoption of Java as a first programming language is in part responsible for this decline."

In http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3722876 Dewar clarifies that it isn't Java that he blames so much as the "use of the Java's graphical libraries lets students cobble together code without understanding the underlying source code."

The only evidence of these claims is that they see a decrease in performance in their systems and architecture classes. They also have trouble recruiting qualified applicants who have the right foundational skills for their Ada programming company that develops mission critical software.

The biggest flaw in the article is the lack of evidence supporting the claims. How many people fail the systems and architecture classes now compared to when C++ or C was used as the introduction language? Is this a problem just at their schools or nationwide? If the introductory courses switched to Java and the follow on courses never changed to introduce concepts no longer covered in the introduction course (like pointers) then of course more people will fail. It is likely that using C or C++ in the intro course just caused more people to fail and quit after the first course instead of later. Perhaps the systems and architecture courses are being taught poorly. At Georgia Tech we found that student performance improved in low-level systems types courses when we used the context of programming for a game boy. Students today don't find low-level systems programming as interesting as they did 20 years ago, when computers weren't capable of much.

I am not surprised that they have trouble finding people who know Ada. It certainly peaked many years ago in terms of popularity. I also don't find it compelling that they want people to have more low level skills since the biggest growth is in jobs that have higher level skills (like software engineers).

One of the reasons Java is a popular language in industry is because you don't have to build everything from scratch. Good software engineers need to know how to reuse existing classes and how to design classes that can be reused. Why should students have to build their own graphics primitives instead of using the Java graphics classes? What learning do they miss out on by not doing this?

When I first took a 3D graphics course we had to develop the algorithm for drawing a line. As students we found this a boring and tedious task since even at that time all the graphics packages had algorithms for drawing a line. I very much doubt that this is required in current 3D graphics courses. Yet, the field of 3D graphics has made huge advances since then. In part we made advances in fields by not reinventing everything.

Dewar in particular claims that the introductory curriculum has been "dumbed down" to make it more fun and appealing. Again, what evidence does he give for this claim? He says that students are not learning formal methods for proving program correctness, but my understanding is that this field which was popular in the 80s has not had much success. He also claims that students don't have enough knowledge of floating point computation. Again, what proof does he give for the need for this? Students certainly need to be aware of the problems with floating point computation, but very few will go on to do mission critical low-level work.

Our research on learning computing in a context whether it be Media Computation, Matlab, or robotics has shown that it does improve student success and retention. We also have the evidence to back this up, not just at Georgia Tech, but at several other universities and colleges. Just because you make something fun or interesting doesn't mean you have "dumbed it down" or that students aren't learning what they need to in order to be successful in a career in computing.

Barb Ericson
CSTA Teacher Educaiton Representative

Posted by cstephenson at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2007

Proclaim Computer Science Day

Did you know that you can have your city's Mayor proclaim a day to celebrate computer science education?

This is exactly what CSTA Board member Brian Scarbeau did! And the city of Orlando, FL Mayor Buddy Dyer proudly proclaimed December 7th as Computer Science Education Celebration Day.

Brian picked December 7th in honor of the birthday of Grace Murray Hopper, in this way celebrating both the contribution of computer science education to the modern world and the contribution of women to computer science.

According to Brian, it is very easy to have a day proclaimed. You simply go to:

sws.lhps.org/computerscienceed

and scroll down to Download a Proclamation link and print that out and send it to your Mayor at least two months before the event to give them time to sign it and send it back to you.

Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2007

Google's Open Source Contest

Like many savvy IT companies, Google has realized that when it comes to interesting students in computing, college is just too late. For this reason, Google has announced the Highly Open Participation Contest to help introduce secondary school and high school students to open source software development.

For the past three years college students have participated in Google Summer of Code (http://code.google.com/soc/) which has introduced hundreds of college students to open source software. The Google Highly Open Participation Contest, however, will be the first contest from Google's open source team exclusively for secondary school and high school students.

Students can now visit http://code.google.com/opensource to write code and documentation, prepare training materials, conduct user-experience research, and win prizes. Ten grand-prize winners will get the chance to visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, Ca.

Google will work with ten open source organizations (Apache Software Foundation, Drupal, GNOME, Joomla!, MoinMoin, Mono, Moodle, Plone, Python Software Foundation, and SilverStripe CMS) for this pilot effort, each of which will provide a list of tasks to be completed by the student participants. Tasks typically fall into the following categories: code, documentation, research, outreach, quality assurance, training, translation, and user interface.

The contest is open to students aged 13 and older who have not yet begun university studies. Contestants will be able to claim tasks until 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time on January 22, 2008. The grand-prize winners will be announced on February 11.

For more information, visit http://code.google.com

Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 11:15 AM | Comments (4)

November 14, 2007

Department of Education Resources

It is amazing what you can find when you troll the Internet for information on US Department of Education resources. Did you know that the US DOE keeps something called Federal Resources for Educational Excellence? Within that site there are links to useful content for teachers of all subjects (including computing).

The list of computing resources can be found here I recommend the Computing link and also the Cyberethics link for elementary and middle school teachers.

If you are a computing teacher in your district share this page with all of your teachers (no matter what the subject) for the resources that are available to them. You can also talk with your science teachers about collaborating on a project that is highlighted by some of the science and technology links available from the computing page.

Enjoy!

Leigh Ann Sudol
CSTA Communications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2007

IES Practice Guide for Encouraging Girls in Math and Science

This past September the National Center for Education Research released a practice guide with five recommended strategies for encouraging girls in Math and Science. The report is research-based and includes a number of interesting facts from recent educational researchers as well as recommended strategies that can be easily applied in classrooms.

The practice guide states that "To encourage girls in math and science, we need to begin first with their beliefs about their abilities in these areas, second with sparking and maintaining greater interest in these topics, and finally with building associated skills." (pg. 8) The recommendations put forward by the practice guide are:

• Teach students that academic abilities are expandable and improvable. This addresses the belief that some students have that knowledge is fixed at birth (the idea that a student does well more because of "smarts" than due to hard work).
• Provide prescriptive, informational feedback. Feedback that focuses on positive work ethic, good application of strategies, and problem solving techniques vs. just stating that students did a "good job" decreases their belief that knowledge is fixed and also encourages them to have better self-efficacy with regards to the subject.
• Expose girls and young women to female role models who have succeeded in math and science.
• Create a classroom environment that sparks initial curiosity and fosters long term interest in math and science. Using project based learning and activities that allow students to frame problems within their own interests can help them understand how math and science (as well as computing skills) can have broad applications.
• Provide spatial skills training. Research suggests that students do not always have the knowledge about what spatial strategies are available to them in order to solve a problem. In computer science we often draw diagrams to represent concepts or ideas. Making the methods behind the construction of the diagrams and the reasons for the diagrams explicit can help students make better choices about problem solving strategies.

One of the most interesting recommendations to me, and probably the easiest to implement in the classroom is the idea of prescriptive, informational feedback. "Experimental work suggests that feedback given in the form of praise focused on global intelligence (e.g., 'you are smart') may have a negative impact on future learning behavior in comparison to praise about effort (e.g., 'you must have worked hard')."

I cannot count the number of times I have just said to students, "you are smart enough to do this" or "see, that was easy" rather than acknowledging the effort and work that they put into the project. Comments such as "I believe you can do this, you work hard enough" and "that wasn't too much work" (as opposed to easy) are now going to become part of my classroom praise for students.

If you get the chance I would highly recommend reading the practice guide. It is written for classroom teachers and does an excellent job of making recommendations you can use in your classes today. Even if you don't get the chance to read the guide, please share with us what you believe to be the most interesting idea from above or even something you might do in your classroom that aligns with the IES suggestions.

Leigh Ann Sudol
CSTA Communications Committee Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 01:54 PM | Comments (1)

October 25, 2007

Using Technology to Teach Computing

We all know that teaching computing involves instructional activities on the countless and varied aspects of technology. But how do you use technology to teach computing?

I know teachers who record all of their programming technique demonstrations so that students can revisit them as many times as they want. There are teachers who would be lost without the ability to communicate online with students and parents about assignments and class activities through any number of tools. Wikis and forums add depth and inclusion to classroom discussions when all students feel free to participate. The opportunities for teaching computing, or any course for that matter, with technology are endless.

We'd like to hear about and share with CSTA members your experiences in teaching computing with an effective technology tool or strategy. Please share your success stories here.

Pat Phillips
Editor, CSTA Voice

Posted by cstephenson at 01:54 PM | Comments (3)

October 05, 2007

What School Counselors Need to Know About CS

On September 12, 2007 Dr. Debra Richardson, Dean of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, addressed the University of California High School Counselors and provided the following very valuable information about why computer science is so important.

I want to talk to you this morning about the importance of computer science and information technology education for the next generation.

As you're all aware, everyone's life and work are touched by technology. Technological advances impact all disciplines, which requires interdisciplinary collaboration in research imperatives as well as in education. Interdisciplinary education is a real need for students venturing out into today's global industries.

I'm going to repeat a somewhat controversial quote, but it's something that is echoing the halls of higher education today: Computing and information "is the liberal arts education of the 21st century - the skill that can be universally applied across domains to help solve the toughest scientific, economic and social problems. Nurturing and energizing the next generation of liberal arts specialists will bring about new dreams and new discoveries."

It was Dan Reed, Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute who I first heard say this, and it's just so true. Today's college graduates simply can't call themselves properly educated for the 21st century if they don't have appropriate fluency in computing and information technology.

The Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences prides itself on delivering an interdisciplinary education focused on computing and information technology and how it affects the other disciplines. Our research emphasizes how technological advances improve quality of life and foster economic competitiveness, and this extends to the curriculum we deliver. Today's global industry has become more dependent on students having a multi-disciplinary skill set, and all of our majors target that mix.

Undergraduate work in CS/IT prepares students for a broad range of careers (such as business consulting, software development, systems analysis and administration, and even teaching) and also to attend professional or graduate school.

Now some of you may be saying, "I can't send my students to computer science, there are no jobs." Yet, contrary to the off-shoring hype, the job market in CS/IT is seeing an upward trend. The design and innovation jobs remain here in the U.S. and that's what we train our students for. In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor projects that five of the ten fastest growing occupations for college graduates are in the CS/IT sector with over 2 million new jobs in the this sector expected by 2014.

The CS/IT discipline appreciates, seeks out and is made stronger by diversity - diversity of experiences and perspectives, and in gender and ethnicity.

As counselors, you are in a unique position to encourage young people to explore their interests and talents for CS/IT study. Send us your high-achieving students, with or without previous exposure to the field, who are driven by analytical challenges, are creative and design-oriented, and enjoy working with others on team-based problem-solving.

As counselors, you are able to help identify curriculum needs and changes at your high schools that will help increase your students' exposure to and strengthen their skill set with CS and IT concepts.

As counselors, you belong to an important collective of UC partners who are helping tomorrow's educators, doctors, business professionals, leaders and informed citizens to find the path, setting and method that best fit their interests, aptitudes, educational and career goals.

Debra Richardson

Posted by cstephenson at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2007

Is Summer Almost Over Already?

The end of summer always sneaks up on us too quickly. It seems that one minute we are enjoying quality times with our family and friends without having to worry about the pile of papers waiting on the dining room table to be graded before going to bed, and the next minute, a certain office supply store starts running a commercial with a man dancing in the isles to Christmas music while his children sadly pick out school supplies.

One of my favorite parts about the summer is meeting new teachers at conferences and workshops and learning something new. I would like to take a moment and share with you some great resources I learned about this summer, and I hope after reading this post you will do the same and perhaps add a comment here (no need to register, sign up or otherwise open yourself to spam – just click comment below – I swear its easy!).

To begin with, CSTA just launched a new resource called the Source web repository. The Source is a searchable database of lessons, activities, and other useful materials for the computing teacher. (yes computing – thats right! Level 1 of the curriculum standards is nicely aligned with the NETS standards so even elementary and middle school computing teachers should be able to find information as more lessons get added!) We are adding new resources daily so check back with this blog to find highlights of new activities from time to time. You can reach the Source web repository either directly at http://csta.villanova.edu or through the link on the left hand side of the main CSTA web page.

Google has also made the Computer Science Unplugged materials available free for download at http://www.google.com/educators/activities.html. I strongly suggest that you check out the main google for educators site as there are a lot of interesting things there for classrooms of all types and ages.

Well, I hope that you found my links useful, now how about one of your own? It could be your personal web page if you have some nifty lessons, it could be a site you visit often for information, or it could just be an activity or an idea that you use in your classrooms that you think others might find useful. Don't be shy! And thanks in advance for your contributions.

Leigh Ann Sudol
CSTA Publications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 12:59 PM | Comments (7)

July 15, 2007

Great Resource for AP Computer Science Teachers

Debbie Carter who teaches AP Computer Science at Lancaster Country Day School in Lancaster, PA has put together an excellent resource book for AP Computer Science Teachers. You can get the book at AP Central. I've worked with Debbie as a member of the now defunct Microsoft Faculty Advisory Board and presently as a Board Member for the Computer Science Teachers Association.

The book contains information that will help both a beginner teacher and veteran teachers as well. It has five chapters and the first chapter reviews the history of AP Computer Science along with a course description and review of key concepts and skills that must be covered during the school year with our students.

One thing that I liked from the start is that Debbie went out to the AP Computer Science community of teachers and asked them for input on different topics covered in the book. I recognized familiar names that I've met in the past at workshops in the book.

Chapter 2 was advice for AP Computer Science Teachers. What is hard for many of us teaching the course is that we are the only teacher in our school teaching the course and it does get lonely when we run into a problem and may need some help. The advice given was very good and I've been pretty good at figuring out what I need to teach in the curriculum but what has been tough in the 11 years that I've taught the course are the many changes that have been made to the curriculum. I started teaching PASCAL to my students and then C++ and now JAVA. I've adapted to these changes and my students have benefited by their successes at learning the material and passing the AP exam with a good score.

Chapter 3 is about course organization. Several sample syllabi are listed for teachers to use in their course. The only problem is that the case study that we need to teach our students has changed and the syllabi don't reflect that change but any teacher can include that into the syllabus.

Chapter 4 discusses the exam and the format. A teacher really needs to know how students are graded on this exam because it may be different from how they grade their own exams. Exam preparation is the key to student successes and there are many exam review books teachers can use with their students to prepare.

The last chapter has many resources for teachers to use. There are many things teachers can do to help teach the class and one I would strongly recommend is professional development.
There are two appendices at the back of the book that reviews the new case study and have supplemental documents.

If you are a new teacher, I would suggest getting help early in your teaching so you don't get too frustrated. There are many of us to help!
Good luck!

Brian Scarbeau
CSTA Board of Directors

Posted by cstephenson at 12:35 PM | Comments (5)

July 12, 2007

Keeping Up with Websites

One of the common problems that teachers indicate is a lack of time during the day to keep up with various different web sites and news feeds in order to deal with the constant flow of information. Wouldn't it be easier if it could all come to one place?

RSS or Real Simple Syndication is a way for you to read various different web sites all in one place. Most email clients and web browsers now support this technology. But even then you are bombarded with information if you sign up for a lot of feeds, and have to open up a separate part of your web browser or email client in order to read the news. If you already use RSS I would strongly encourage you to include the CSTA blog as one of your RSS feeds (see the link over to the right). If you are not an RSS user you can have blog posts delivered to your email through a service called RSSfwd. This service does not require you to register or sign up, simply enter the URL of the site you wish to subscribe to and your email address. You will then recieve an email any time a new blog post is updated.

Although you still need to come to the CSTA blog website in order to post comments, using an RSS feeder or a service that will send you the RSS in your email can help cut down on the number of places you need to visit in order to gather information for your classroom. Please come and comment on issues that matter to you. For this post if you have any other RSS feeds that you read often and find useful as a CS teacher please let us know and post a comment!

Leigh Ann Sudol
Communications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 12:17 PM | Comments (1)

July 02, 2007

Our Graying Population

Yesterday I attended the Computer Science & Information Technology Symposium that was held at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. For the past several years, I've been a speaker at this event and this was the second time that I've attended as a registrant.

I always look forward to this event because it gives me a chance to see some old friends and to meet new friends as well. In addition, it helps me learn new ways to teach computer science education. I attended sessions on robotics, the Grid World Case Study, programming with Alice, and on XNA. The Computer Science Teachers Association sponsored the event along with the support of Microsoft Corporation.

One quick observation that I made as I looked around the ballroom at the keynote sessions was that there are no young computer science teachers in the group that attended. In fact, the youngest that I saw in the crowd were Microsoft employees.

I've talked to several computer science teachers in past years who have retired and have told me that their school could not hire another teacher to replace them and that they don't teach computer science at that school anymore. How sad for all those students who have the desire to learn about computer science education.

Much has been advertised about the lack of IT workers in the workforce and I was thinking yesterday about the future if there are no qualified computer science educators to teach our students in private and public schools.

Sure, there are industry professionals who have made the leap from industry to the classroom successfully but there are many that don't too. I was talking to Linda Hayes who I've worked with on the Board of Directors at the Florida Computer Science Teachers Association and she told me that Kennesaw State University in Georgia where she now works has a program to help new computer science teachers who have worked in industry. According to Alfred Thompson who works in Academic Relations for Microsoft Corporation, Kennesaw has the only program that does this. I asked Alfred if there are any colleges/universities that are training college students on how to be a computer science teacher and he wasn't aware of any.

Teaching computer science to students is very rewarding. I've been doing it for over 20 years. I left teaching after receiving my advanced degree to work in industry and I went back to teaching after a couple of years of working as Director of Education for a trade association and as a Systems Manager for a large CPA firm. High school students are a great deal of fun to be around I guess.

As a newly elected Board Member to the Computer Science Teachers Association I will do my part in trying to promote professionals to go into teaching. As a professional, try to even mentor a high school student as a start. Contact your local high school to see what you can do to promote computer science education.

Some day, you might experience the fun that I have working with teenagers.

Brian Scarbeau
CSTA 9-12 Teacher Representative

Posted by cstephenson at 01:50 PM | Comments (2)

April 27, 2007

New information on Salaries

Note:
We do not usually run entire articles, but this one, from the University of North Carolina student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel was so informative and well written, we decided to break with tradition.
Our thanks to Tar Hell Asistant Unviersity Editor Whitney Kisling.

Computer science, business grads snag highest average salaries
By: Meghan E. Woods, Staff Writer
Posted: 4/26/07

If money talks, then computer science and business majors at UNC are listening loud and clear.

According to the annual First Destination Survey released by University Career Services, May 2006 graduates with a degree in computer science had the highest annual mean salary at $60,000. Graduates with a degree in business administration were next on the list with an average salary of $47,534.

"We didn't really see anything eye-popping about the numbers," said Tim Stiles, associate director of UCS. "The numbers are pretty true when you look at the national averages. People coming out with business, engineering and computer science degrees usually have high salaries."

The survey is an accumulation of responses from 532 May graduates about their employment status, salary, and post-graduation activities.

The average annual salary for all graduates was $38,038, which Stiles said was good considering how the economy has been in recent years.

"I think we saw an improvement with the 2006 class," Stiles said. "We're coming out of that trough where we got stuck after 9/11 for a while. We're seeing major college employers coming back and more jobs."

The survey has been conducted for the past 21 years, Stiles said. UCS collects data on post-graduation plans from students in June, September, November and December of their senior year.

Postcards are sent to students' parents to see if there has been a change in the students' contact information. UCS also collects data from employers, particularly employers who recruit on campus.

In the surveys, seniors are asked about their employment status, salary, further education, job satisfaction and location.

Stiles said the survey's findings are usually consistent.

"When you look at the percentage of students who are employed, it's usually in the 60 to 65 percent range, and this year it was 64.4," he said. "The percent satisfied is usually in the 80 to 90 range, and that was pretty true for this year. People are getting jobs and taking jobs that they want."

More than 140 business administration graduates participated in the survey, compared to only four computer science majors. Although few computer science majors participated in the study, Stiles said they still have higher average salaries.

"Just looking at the national survey, there were 128 computer science majors and their average salary was $52,177," he said. "You just have to look at the number of comp-sci majors graduating; it's not that huge."

The salaries of computer science majors might be high, but Jan Prins, chairman of the computer science department, said he has not seen a big change in the number of computer science majors.

"It's going up a little bit," he said. "But money is not our main selling point. We instill in our students that computing is part of every aspect of modern life."

Prins said the high salaries of computer science graduates at UNC is partly attributable to the way the curriculum is designed.

"Our particular major has high entry and high exit requirements," he said. "So in general, we graduate strong students."

Posted by cstephenson at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2007

You Mean CS Isn't Always About Building a Better Algorithm?

One of the things I try to do for my students is to give them a chance to play with some of the really cool research that is going on in computer science. While algorithms are an important part of what's happening, many computer scientists are focusing more on the integration of their discoveries into larger applications, as well as those applications themselves.

Today I went to a lecture given by Takeo Igarashi. Igarashi is a recipient of both Carnegie Mellon University's Katayanagi prize and the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher award for his contributions to computer graphics. His ideas are based in not making more complex graphics, but the interaction with the human during a "rough sketching" process.

I highly recommend checking out his website and playing with the tools that are available.

I also recommend that you look for things like this for your students to. While it is true that students have to learn the basics first (the need to understand simple things like decision and looping structures and basic principals of object oriented programming and design) it doesn't hurt to show them some of the problems that "real" computer scientists are working on.

Not how to search for a name in a phone book. Foundations are exceedingly important, and we need to learn how to mix the batter before we can bake and eat the cake, but don't you prefer the cookbooks that show you a picture of the finished cake?

Carnegie Mellon posts videos of these lectures on line and they can be found through links off the main

Leigh Ann Sudol
Communications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2007

Working Together or Falling Apart

Sometimes, it really is true that a crisis can bring out the best in both people and institutions and our current enrollment crisis in computer science is prompting a new spirit of cooperation between university and high school computer science educators.

A good example can be seen at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (a CSTA Instutitonal member) where the commitment to revitalizing the connection between K-12 and universities goes right to the top.

In a recent web posting , Anthony Skjellum, Chair of the Computer and Information Science Department declared his department's intention of helping to revitalize computer science education in the state's 480 high schools.

Skjellum also makes it very clear that his reasons for doing so go beyond the desire to simply increase enrollment.

"Why? Because the national trend away from Computer Science education at the pre-college level and the substantial decrease in Computer Science undergraduates in the USA since 2000 are bad for the US economy, competitiveness, and future. Computer Science is a vital career path for students in America, and Alabamians stand to gain hugely from first class education in our field."

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is not the only university reaching out to high schools. I personally know of terrific programs at Indiana University, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Illinois, and Colorado School of Mines. And I am sure there are more out there (let us know if you have a program teachers in your area should know about).

All of these outreach efforts are important because the issues that need to be addressed are complex and require the attention and commitment of all levels of the education system. This really is a time where we either work together or all fall apart.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2007

Robin Raskin's Blog Posting On K-12 CS

The release this week of the American Innovation Proclamation is raising interesting questions about our current education system and whether it provides the kinds of knowledge and skills students need to drive innovation in the digital age.

This week I had the opportunity to talk to Robin Raskin of Yahoo Tech about the link between supporting computer science in K-12 education and addressing the critical drop in the computer science pipeline.

Today, Robin posted a thoughtful piece about this issue on her blog.

I strongly encourage you to check it out and to participate in this important discussion.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 12:24 PM | Comments (1)

March 14, 2007

Taking Advantage of the Chance to Ask Bill

I received a great email this morning from Brian Scarbeau, a computer science teacher at Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando Florida, telling me about his recent encounter with Microsoft head Bill Gates.

Brian is a great person, a wonderful volunteer, and a tireless advocate for K-12 computer science education. He has presented sessions at our annual Computer Science and Information Technology Symposia, helped on CSTA projects, and even convinced the City of Orlando to officially proclaim December 8th (Grace Murray Hopper's birthday) as as Computer Science Education Celebration Day. He is also currently running for the CSTA Board of Directors.

This week Brian attended the Microsoft VIP Summit, which included a presentation by Bill Gates, followed by a question and answer session. Brian took advantage of this opportunity to talk to Gates about the importance of Microsoft's support for a number of key computer science education projects and elicited Gate's promise to look into some funding cuts that Brian believed appeared to indicate Microsoft's dwindling support for K-12 computer science education.

This encounter is a perfect example of how teachers can be great advocates. Not everyone has the chance to talk to a Bill Gates, but we all can talk to parents, principals, school administrators, and our state and federal representatives about the importance of supporting K-12 computer science education.

What we do is important. Computer science is the heartbeat of innovation, it is that science of science, and it is the career of the future. We need to take advantage of every opportunity to let people know.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2007

CS Student Podcasts Great Classroom Tool

Women university students studying computer science are now making the most of their media savvy to provide information and resources to other students interested in computing, and providing a cool new resource for computer science teachers.

Students at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania have created a series of computer science podcasts on topics such as genetic algorithms, zip code encoding, encryption, searching and sorting in MySpace, and my personal favorite, malware.

The podcasts are all part of the "Where is the Software" series, feature student-delivered mini-tutorials on interesting computer science concepts and run from about seven to fifteen minutes.

The production team of Sara Joseph, Charmagne McKinney, Logan Kennedy, Elizabeth Jones, Natasha Gunasekara and Tina Bledsoe who are part of the WiCS (Women in Computer Science) group at their university, originally envisioned the podcasts as a way to reach out to local high school girls to help them see computer science as both interesting and challenging.

These podcasts, however, also make great mini-tutorials that you can use in the classroom to highlight concepts that you may be covering in class or to give students a better idea of the breadth of the computing disciplines.

You can access the podcasts at:

http://whereisthesoftware.podshow.com

The students say that they are planning to produce a new podcast every month.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 07:29 PM | Comments (1)

February 09, 2007

Girl Scout Outreach for CS

When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be a Boy Scout because
they got to go camping and build stuff. We got to make "campfires"
out of celery sticks and marshmallows. That's why I'm so excited to
see this article in the Daily Texan about efforts by
the Girl Scouts to interest and inform girls about science and
technology through hands-on experiences.

Computer science isn't offered at so many schools that I think
popular non-school entities picking up the slack can only help. If we
want our population to understand our discipline and be able to make
informed decisions about things like funding (never mind filling jobs
in the many awesome careers out there) they need as many
opportunities as possible to learn how fun and interesting it is and
what it is about. The Girl Scouts also have a fun website at GirlsGoTech.org.

I'm sure the Texas Girl Scouts aren't the only ones with a program
like The EDGE. One of our local troops has had our librarian in to
talk about internet safety. I'm excited to see computer scientists
reaching out to kids. I wonder what else is out there?

Michelle Hutton
CSTA Vice President

Posted by cstephenson at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2006

When the Worst of Times is the Best of Times

At the risk of looking a little too hard for that silver lining in the big black cloud, I am beginning to think that some very good things might come out of the current bust in computer science education.

If you have been living on another planet for a while, you might not be aware that there is a crisis in computer science enrollment in university and college computer science courses across the country. Current research indicates that enrollment in postsecondary courses has dropped by 40% with some suggesting that the drop in applications to these programs may be down by as much as 60%.

These figures are worrying for a number of reasons. Prestigious programs that have traditionally attracted far more applicants than they can accept, now have a smaller body of well-qualified students from which to choose. Many middle-sized computer science programs have had to reduce the number of students they admit (fewer students in each class, but also fewer courses, and less revenue for the department). And at some small colleges, computer science is at risk of disappearing all together. Of course, these are just the short-term problems.

In this increasingly technology-based and globalized economy, long-term failure to produce enough qualified workers is a sure path to the economic backwaters. Few realize that computer science is not just the backbone of technological innovation. It is the engine that keeps every single industry up and running. Try to imagine the drug companies, the hospitals, the banks, the insurance companies, even education, without skilled computing professionals.

So why on earth is this a good thing? These same dropping enrollments are engendering discussions that are long overdue. In the light of diminishing student interest in computer science, computer science educators have finally begun focusing on our failure to teach computer science in a way that engages all students.

In a recent issue of the ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Inroads (Vol. 38. No. 4), Lisa Kaczmarczyk muses that the very ubiquity of computing may be the greatest problem facing computing education. "Computing studies do not appear cutting edge to the majority of students and the public - not in a way that appeals to their passions."

Computing education she argues, needs to be reenergized. "The world of possibilities beyond the external, beyond the metal box and blinking screen, is what we need to instill in the public and in our students. It has to happen in every class that we teach, so that our students become entranced with the potential of computing."

Kaczmarczyk then poses three important questions for educators.
* What course do you teach?
* Can you make it truly interdisciplinary? (No exceptions, no excuses, no hall pass.)
* How are you exciting your students to become more passionate about computing?

These are core questions and it is very exciting to find that more and more educators are raising them, in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities.

Dropping enrollments are providing a powerful and long-overdue incentive for reenvisioning computer science education.

At CSTA, we have just released a second edition of the ACM Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science with a new foreword that explores how a number of different educators are creating new instructional practices to make our discipline more relevant and engaging to today's students.

What are you doing in your school?

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 04:03 PM | Comments (1)

October 16, 2006

CS Prepares Students for Workplace Success

CSTA member Greg Lampard from Cherrie Hills Christian School sent me a copy of the recent report published by the Conference Board and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills entitled Are they Really Ready to Work: Employers’ Perspectives on Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce.

The report focuses on the skills considered important for success in the workplace. The good news is that all of the employers surveyed agreed that Information Technology Application Skills (with an emphasis on using the correct tools for problem-solving) were very important. The bad news is that high school graduates received only an "adequate" rating on three very important skills: Information Technology Application, Diversity, and Teamwork/Collaboration.

I find this very interesting for two reasons. The first is the extent to which studying computer science in high school supports the acquisition of these three key skills. At its foundation, the study of computer science is the study of problem solving and the selection of appropriate technological tools to solve real-world problems. The second is that computer science educators in K-12 are increasingly using project-based learning to ensure that students learn to plan appropriately, work cooperatively, communicate effectively, and manage time wisely, thus improving the likelihood that their students will be better prepared for today's work world.

What I find especially disturbing, however, is that if current trends continue, it will take very little time for this barely acceptable "adequate" rating to slip to "inadequate". The sad reality is that computer science is increasingly under pressure in K-12 and very much in danger of disappearing altogether.

As far as we can tell, this is happening for four reasons.

1. Schools are increasing the number of mandatory courses that students must take, and because computer science is an elective course, students simply cannot fit it into their schedules.
2. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary (the Bureau of Labor Statistics), students and their parents believe that there are no opportunities for jobs in computing.
3. Schools attempting to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation are pulling computer science teachers out of the computing classrooms so that they can teach remedial math and either replacing them with inexperienced teachers or not replacing them at all.
4. There are far too many misguided school officials who have no idea what computer science is, and so mistakenly assume that it lacks the rigor of current math or science courses.

CSTA is working on all of these issues. We are producing policy and briefing documents for school administrators and policy makers. We are developing new sources of careers information and making them available to teachers, school counselors, and students. And we are working with industry folks to help them understand that if students are to graduate with the skills that will make them ready for the workforce, they have to have the opportunity to acquire these skills as part of their K-12 education.

If the authors and organizations behind this report are serious about improving students' preparedness to meet the needs of this globalized 21st Century economy, they need to begin convincing schools that canceling classes in the one discipline that can guarantee that students will acquire these skills is a very bad business indeed.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 04:03 PM | Comments (2)

September 20, 2006

Including Guidance Counselors In the Mix

It seems that colleges and universities are starting to address the problem of declining enrollments in computer science by reaching beyond the traditional pool of high school computing teachers.

I recently received a flyer from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken NJ announcing an event they call "Tomorrow's Information Technology Leaders". This workshop is geared towards educators in the NY/NJ metropolitan area (although eastern Pennsylvania is also close enough to attend). The day contains a keynote by the CIO of IBM Research (talking about industry's needs) with breakout sessions geared specifically towards CS teachers and guidance counselors. Yes, that's right, guidance counselors. I was so excited to see that part of the program was for them that I ran right to the copy machine and then to the guidance department in order to recruit at least one of our counselors to come with me to the event.

Guidance counselors are incredibly important partners in the challenge of informing students about the opportunities that computing provides and its relation to other key academic disciplines and careers. High School students are surrounded by so many pressures and are pulled in so many directions that sometimes it is difficult for them to see appreciate how truly universal computer science is and the breadth of opportunities it provides. Informed guidance counselors can help attract students to our courses simply by including CS in their discussions with students.

If you are in the area, I would strongly recommend that you check out www.stevens.edu/undergrad/it for details of the Steven's event and consider registering. Even better, convince one or two of your guidance counselors this day would benefit them as well. If you need to, you can entice them with the idea of a free lunch.

Leigh Ann Sudol
Publications Chair

Posted by cstephenson at 03:51 PM | Comments (1)

July 14, 2006

Computer Science & Information Technology Symposium

There was something about this year's Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium that made it feel really special but I cannot seem to put my finger on exactly what that was.

We have been doing the Symposium now for six years. Each year a dedicated group of fabulous volunteers gets together, and with help from our project manager, spends a whole year putting together a full day of professional development specifically designed for K-12 computer science and information technology teachers in conjunction with a national educational technology conference and each year, the Programming Planning Committee strives to outdo the results of the previous year.

There were definitely some changes this year though. First, the committee decided to provide more opportunities to allow teachers to choose the sessions that would best meet their needs. The number of breakout sessions was increased from three to four and an extra session was added to each breakout timeslot so that teachers had more choices per breakout. We also added a new two-part hands-on sessions on programming in .Net and another on wikis. The other important thing about the sessions this year is that the increased number of slots allowed us to create a better balance between CS and IT offerings.

Because presentations at CSIT are invitation only, the quality tends to be high, but several people have told us that this year they were outstanding. Ellen Spertus (sexiest geek alive) started the day off with a thoughtful and engaging presentation on the future of computer science education. Kevin Schofield (VP of Microsoft Research) gave us a wide-ranging and inspiring look at how computing is changing the world in key areas such as AIDS research. Jane Margolis also talked about her latest research focusing on encouraging more young women and minority students to study computing.

Another great thing about this year's symposium is that this time we had a whole team from Microsoft in attendance, giving presentations, attending sessions, and just talking to teachers about what teachers and students want and need.

If you did not get a chance to be there, you can still benefit from the Symposium by downloading the presentations available on the CSIT2006 website. Just go to the agenda and click on the session title (there are still a few late submissions to be added).

The even better news is that you can start making your plans to attend next year! Microsoft has already generously agreed to sponsor us for another Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium next year in Atlanta in conjunction with NECC! We hope to see you there.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 07:33 PM | Comments (2)

June 16, 2006

Equity Shmekwity

Sometimes I really wonder what people are thinking.

Last week I was having a great time going through the data from the CSTA Member Satisfaction Survey when I saw a comment that rocked me back on my heels. It said "NO MORE "EQUITY" ARTICLES!!! Its time to move on and focus on important issues."

I was astounded. This was clearly someone who cares passionately about computer science education, someone who understands that it is important. Why would she or he not care that young women and minority students are rejecting our discipline en mass. Why would it not matter to this person, just in terms of his or her own job security, that a huge portion of the population believes there is no place in this discipline for them?

I am not going to repeat all of the statistics here. We all know that fewer women and non-Asian minority students write the computer science AP exam than write any other science AP. We all know that women are still highly underrepresented in computer science departments and in industry. And we all know that the gap between the numbers of skilled IT workers we are producing, and the number we need is continuing to grow to an extent that major industry players are starting to worry about this very publicly.

So what is it that has this person all riled up? Is it that she or he really thinks that equity doesn't matter? Is it because he or she believes that computing is, and should always be, a boy's game? Or is it that this person has just reached what I call "misery overload" (that state when you just cannot stand to hear about a problem anymore because you don't believe that you can do anything about it)?

Believe it or not, this last possibility bothers me the most. As educators, we are incredibly powerful in terms of our influence over students. The day you stop believing in your ability and responsibility to engage and enlighten all students, regardless of their race or gender, is the day you should shut down the computer and walk out of the classroom. That is how I feel.

But what do you think? Should CSTA be doing equity work (it is certainly not the only thing we do, but we think it is important) or do you really not care?

I am puzzled and would very much like to know how you see this issue.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 06:23 PM | Comments (2)

April 24, 2006

Looking Beyond the Sciences

The current focus on national competitiveness issues has done much to raise the level of discussion about the ways in which computing expertise is driving innovation in the new combinatorial sciences. Very little, however, is said about how computing can continue to drive new discoveries in the humanities.

In his recent speech about national competitiveness, President Bush pointed to supercomputing and nanotechnology as examples of computing-related innovations that are contributing to advancements across the sciences.

Genetic engineering and biomedical engineering clearly stand as primary examples of the important contribution that computing is making to innovations in science. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any major new scientific or medical breakthrough that did not involve the critical use of computing technology at some phase of the development and testing of new processes, compounds, medications, or equipment.

In a recent article in the Communications of the ACM (April 2006, Vol. 49(4)), however, Argamon and Olsen point to the potential for computing to revolutionize the humanities. In specific, they refer to the ways in which computer scientists can provide critical knowledge that will allow the new generation of knowledge browsers to make more effective use of digital libraries. Computer scientists, they argue, can work with humanities scholars to develop new query interfaces that would represent, not just words, but meanings in context.

Other areas of social research are also being enriched by computing. One of the big topics at the first annual Qualitative Inquiry Conference, for example, was how computer software can be used to support the collection, organization, and analysis of data in qualitative research. These researchers, who are often on the cutting edge of social research, are embracing the tools that will help them discover patterns that provide answers about the most complex issues of our lives, communities, and societies.

To often, when asked about why students should study computing, I find myself drifting into answers about opportunities to make important contributions in the sciences, but Argamon and Oslen have given me an important reminder about the importance of recognizing the potential role of computing across the full spectrum of human existence.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2006

Working With Reporters

I have spent the last three days talking to reporters from the business and educational press about the new resources we created with IBM and it has been a really interesting experience!

Just to give you a little background, we began this project last Spring with funding from the IBM Foundation. IBM is very concerned about the dropping enrollment in computer science and when they asked CSTA what teachers needed most, we told them: "Good, classroom-relevant teaching and learning resources designed by people who have actually taught in K-12." And so IBM not only gave us funding to create three new resources, they contributed three people for our team of six curriculum specialists.

The team met for four very intensive days this past August, where they reviewed an extensive collection of existing resources, chose three they wanted to create, and designed and developed them. After an intensive team critique of each resource (which led to a number of revisions) the resources were pilot tested in actual classrooms. More enhancements were then made based on teacher and student feedback.

As part of the roll-out for these resources, I have spoken to many reporters in the last three days, and I have learned three really intriguing things from them.

1. The crisis in computer science is finally becoming big news. Both the trade reporters and the education reporters know that there is a connection between K-12 computer science education and the high tech industry, and between the health of the high tech industries and national economic survival in the new global economy.
2. Reporters are really surprised to hear that people think there are no jobs in computer science.
3. Reporters are pretty sophisticated people and they understand the difference between doing something because it is the right thing to do and doing something to sell a specific piece of hardware or software to schools. What really interested them about this project was that nothing we created was tied to an IBM technology. It was about supporting K-12 computer science education, not pushing product.

So here's to reporters who write stories about the importance of K-12 computer science education.

Here's to IBM, for caring, for getting it, for helping us do something good and useful for teachers, and for being a great corporate partner!

And here's to our new resources:

Project-Based Learning Module
This learning module provides teachers with an overview of Project-Based Learning (PBL) and is intended for use as a professional development resource. It includes two Powerpoint presentations, each offering a slightly different approach to the topic, and several additional documents and resources that include reflections, sample worksheets and templates, and links to additional readings and project samples.

Web Site Design Learning Module
This learning module introduces students to the principles of web site design and includes a series of four lesson plans and student activities handouts. It is intended for students with a level 1 or 2 basic understanding of the Web.

OO Design Using Pong Learning Module
This learning module features an object-oriented implementation of the classic video game, Pong. Students will design and implement Pong using object-oriented programming concepts. This resource is intended for use by beginning Java programmers, but includes suggestions for enhanced learning for more experienced students. Teachers should have experience working with an object-oriented Java program using multiple classes, such as College Board’s Advanced Placement Marine Biology Case Study.

You can now download each or all of them directly from the Recommended Resources section the CSTA website or from the IBM Academic Initiative website.

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2006

Support Your Local Teachers

Since our keynote address at SIGCSE in Houston last month, Chris and I have had an influx of people -- both at the K-12 and at the post-secondary level -- contact us to find out how they can best help CSTA and its mission to strengthen K-12 computer science education.

As we pointed out in our talk, one of the biggest problems facing K-12 computer science teachers is that they are typically a "department of one" in their schools. They have no community of colleagues with whom to share ideas. They feel that they are the lone voice for computer science in not only their schools, but often in their districts as well.

If you are a college or university educator, here's one way you can help out your colleagues in K-12. Get in touch with the computer science teachers at your local schools. Invite them to an evening get-together where they can meet their fellow teachers in computer science.

When planning a local meeting, here are some ideas to help get you started:

1) Keep the meeting short. K-12 teachers are extremely busy people. After they go home, they'll probably spend an hour or two grading papers or preparing for the next day's classes. Use their time wisely. A good meeting will last about an hour, ninety minutes maximum.

2) Have some sort of presentation. This doesn't need to be long (thirty minutes tops) or even extremely formal (but it should be prepared in advance rather than off-the-cuff). For example, you might share a nifty assignment or an interesting teaching technique, tour the university computer science research lab, or demo some captivating samples of student work. As your meetings progress over the year, get everyone involved and let the ideas flow from *within* your community!

3) Allow time for everyone to get to know each other. While you should spend a couple of minutes on formal introductions, the vast majority of this time should allow for people to network and just chat. It's also good to have some of this informal time at both the beginning and end of the meeting (the time at the beginning accommodates those late arrivers who get stuck in traffic; the time at the end allows for discussion of the presentation).

4) Provide food! Not only is it a good attendance motivator and helps to relax people, but it also provides dinner for those busy, busy teachers (see #1 above).

Let us know how CSTA can help you facilitate this process. Strengthening our interactions as a community of computer science educators will not only benefit all of us individually, but will improve computer science education as a whole.

Finally, write and share your stories! Your successes will inspire others.

Robb Cutler
Chair, CSTA

P.S. And if you're a K-12 teacher reading this, contact a computer science professor at your local college or university. Tell them about this article and ask them to help!

Posted by cstephenson at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2006

Cisco Supports Program to Provide IT Careers Information

On Thursday, February 2nd, Junior Achievement and the U.S. Department of Education will kick off National Job Shadow Day 2006 and Cisco is planning a major effort to provide important information about the wide variety of opportunities available in the IT industry.

Cisco Systems is hosting a series of Groundhog Job Shadow Day events across the United States to help young people learn about career opportunities in IT and more than 3,000 students will participate in actvities hosted on Cisco and Cisco Networking Academy campuses.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy is expected to add 1.5 million computer and information related jobs by 2012, while the country will have only half that many qualified graduates. The growing demand for IT staffing has prompted industry leaders to take proactive measures to ensure a talent pool of IT proficient candidates who are ready to contribute to the global economy.

Cisco kicks off its Job Shadow Day on February 2, in five key sites across the country. Participating cities include Chicago, Atlanta, San Jose, and Raleigh. This is Cisco's fifth year participating in Groundhog Job Shadow Day. The company's goal this year is to host students at more than 100 sites across the United States colleges and high schools participating in the Networking Academy program.

If you would like more information about this program, contact Mike Kelly at michael@nadelphelan.com or call (831) 440-2403.

Posted by cstephenson at 06:36 PM | Comments (2)

January 24, 2006

CS Underwater

Yesterday's GW Hatchet, an independent student newspaper serving The George Washington University community in downtown Washington, D.C. carried an interesting article about the link between the university's Computer Science Department and the U.S. Olympic swim team.

Author Leah Carliner describes an application developed by Professor James Hahn, Chair of the Computer Science Department and graduate students Samir Roy and Jean Honorio that captures a swimmer's movement underwater in three dimensions. This application allows swimmers and their coaches to observe every motion made underwater in order to improve strokes.

While it is not long on technical details, this article provides a nice link between computer science research and practical applications in the real world that might be of interest to students.

Making the connection between impending Olympic fever and computer science may be a good way to demonstrate that there is more to computer science than videogames.

Check out Carliner's article and let us know what you think!

Chris Stephenson
Executive Director

Posted by cstephenson at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)