Monthly Archives: December 2013

Computer Science in Schools

AP Computer Science, Computer Science, Education reform, Teaching

Computer Science in Schools

by Richard White

2013-12-26

Happy Holidays everybody!

The holidays are no time to get any rest. Oh, no, there’s too much going on–parties, holiday shopping, out-of-town visitors–to actually get any down time. No, to actually get a chance to relax, you have to resort to more drastic measures… like getting sick.

That’s my genius plan, and it’s working just great.

While I’m sitting around waiting for my body’s defense mechanisms to do their thing, I’ll just include a quick year-end pointer here to one of Audrey Watters’s year-end Trend posts, this one on Computer Science in schools:

Despite the proliferation of these learn-to-code efforts, computer science is still not taught in the vast majority of K–12 schools, making home, college, after-school programs, and/or libraries places where students are more likely to be first exposed to the field.

There are many barriers to expanding CS education, least of which is that the curriculum is already pretty damn full. If we add more computer science, do we cut something else out? Or is CS simply another elective? To address this particular issue, the state of Washington did pass a bill this year that makes CS classes count as a math or science requirement towards high school graduation. Should computer science – specifically computer science – be required to graduate? In a Google Hangout in February, President Obama said that that “made sense.” In the UK, computing became part of the national curriculum.

She has a bit more to say on the subject, but her thoughts echo many of my own. Does everyone really need to “Learn to Code”? How important is Computer Science in the midst of an already bulging academic curriculum? How can educators and the tech industry best reach out inclusively to students on behalf of an industry that is not only famously non-inclusive, but downright hostile to some demographics?

It’s a problem that merits discussion at all levels, and there are certainly institutional responses that might be pursued. As I expand my role as a computer science educator I may even become involved in some of those—that’s certainly my intention.

In the meantime, I consider myself on the ground doing the front-line work without which nothing else matters. “For this assignment, students, we’re going to…”

“Oh, cool…!”

If you’re not doing something cool with your computer science, well… what’s the point, really? ;)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everybody. See you in the New Year!

Hour of Code

Computer Science, Education reform, Teaching

HOUR OF CODE

by Richard White

2013-12-14

You may have heard about the Hour of Code this past week, a 5-day educational technology event sponsored by Code.org that is meant to inspire future generations of computer scientists and computational thinkers: by spending just an hour working on a computer science related project—playing with a coding simulation, building a game, solving an algorithmic puzzle—students of any age level will have a better understanding of the topic of computer science, and perhaps be inspired to study it further, either in school or on their own. As a computer science teacher it had popped up onto my radar a few months ago, and it sounded like an intriguing idea so I proposed the idea to our school directors, who were immediately excited about the possibilities.

Fast forward two months, lots of meetings, some curriculum development, and a website, and I’m happy to report that Hour of Code was a rousing success at Poly. We decided early on to target fifth and seventh grades at the school, and I decided early on to create a curriculum—part coding, part computational thinking discussion—that would work with our students. It certainly helps that we had an entire Apple iMac computer lab that I was free to install a user-friendly text editor on.

As I write this, we’ve finished working with the two classes of fifth graders, who thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We talked, we coded, and they walked away with an official and personalized Code.org Certificate of Completion as well as a printout of their code and corresponding Python turtle-graphics art. (Little Marco enjoyed the experience so much that he was quite put out when the lab had to be vacated before he’d put the finishing touches on his masterpiece. I learned later that the first thing he did when he got home from school that day was to plop down in front of the computer and finish his program.)

hour_of_code

Crucial to the success of the day was the support of a large number of people, including our division Ed Tech coordinators, our Director of IT, the teachers who gave us class time to work with their students, and three of my own Upper School students who came down to assist the younger students. We had teacher visitors from other schools in attendance as well, including a professor from Caltech’s Center for Advanced Computing Research. (I don’t think he was scouting our fifth graders for prospective students, but you never know…)

The participation of all these people was vital: advancing technology use in schools is not just about getting new hardware. As a gentle reminder of this fact, our seventh grade sessions—tentatively scheduled for this week—had to be postponed due to some scheduling conflicts. All is well, though, and we’ll be running a more sophisticated Hour of Code session—one that delves into recursion—with our seventh graders at the end of January.

For futher information about Poly’s Hour of Code, including code examples, the presentation slides, or a zipped file containing both, see Polytechnic Hour of Code.