My Day Three at #CSTA2022

I got an early (for me ) start this morning. I attended a briefing session for session proctors (after missing yesterday’s) so that was good. A hot up of tea and some review of the schedule and I was good to go.

First session for me, Developing Cyber Sleuths (link to slides here) Cyber security is a rapidly growing area of need and of course creation. The latter not as fast as the former. One of the key early topics was related to the people side of security – policies and training for people. Hacking people is a key security flaw. New to me term, Purple Team. Combining Red Teams who try to break security and Blue Teams who try to stop hackers. Several interesting resources were shared. You can find them in the slides or course but I like Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as a place to start. This sessions wasn’t quite what I was expecting but I feel like the links I got were worth my time.

After a couple of great hallway track conversations it was time for Creating All Year with APCS Principles. There were a couple of interesting sessions in this time slot so distance was a tie breaker. Of course, the create task is a special part of the APCS P exam (30% of the grade). This session was packed!

Jill Westerlund has her students create a video of their program running at the beginning of the school year.Videos must be in AP submission format and include what the create task requires. What a great idea for getting a jump on what they will need to the exam later! Snipping tools are introduced and required early as well. Require at least one mock task before they have to do the real thing. And grade it based on what they need for the exam. View it as formative assessment. Its about feedback to make sure they know how to do the real task. Be sure the mock task is not something they could turn in as a real CPT. Jill suggests requiring the official create task before your spring break. 

Bonus link: Jen Manly on Three Keys to a 40 Hour CS Teacher Work Week Jen is amazing. I love her short videos. I’ll bet this was a great session.

I spent lunch break and most of the first session period in the exhibit hall talking to people and catching up with some friends. Following people in social media is nothing like catching up in person. Another post on the exhibit hall is in the works. I took pictures.

My afternoon session was “Fun, Formative Feedback, and Assessments to Improve Learning” Slides are here. One of the first topics was Parsons Problems – one of my favorite tools. Apparently,  there is a Free, open-source graphical Parsons problem creator tool: https://codio.github.io/parsons-puzzle-ui/dist/ Next they talked about rubrics as tools to help and advise students. Next up was peer programming Here is a link to a CSTA Presentation - Pair Programming. Next up was some Autograding tools (links in their presentation)I encourage you to look at their slides for more information and resource links.