Who Is Driving Changes to Computer Science Education

There are a lot of Changes happening at code dot org The Slashdot article linked there lists several of them. While the changes include a number of people changes including President Cameron Wilson stepping aside, Chief Academic Officer Pat Yongpradit leaving to join Microsoft, and some staff layoffs the change in direction, to AI, may be the most concerning. From Hour of Code to Hour of AI? Some interesting comments follow that post.

The questions top of my mind are "who is driving the direction of CS education" and "is CS education moving in the right direction?" A lot of people believe that industry is pushing CS education in the direction of being vocational. The new focus on Artificial Intelligence often feels like a vocational direction.

My involvement with computer science education predates code.org and even CSTA so I have seen a lot of changes. In my first teaching days computer science teachers were pretty isolated. There was SIGCSE which accepted K12 teachers though welcomed sometimes felt like aspirational rather than actual. ACM, of which SIGCSE was and is still a part, was doing some support for CS education. Cameron Wilson was a huge part of that and worked policy.

CSTA was developed by some wonderful people in and around ACM. This started the real movement towards expanding K12 CS education. CSTA helped train and organize teachers to push for more more CS education. Code,org came a bit later and brought something new to the effort.

Code.org brought money and industrial production values. From the first set of videos that went viral to some very good curriculum resources as well as connections to industry and political leaders. Getting policymakers to push for CS education stepped up.

We’ve come a long way.

Coming back to my earlier questions. Is industry driving the directions that CS education is moving? A lot of people think they are. Industry has money and it has funded a lot of the work by code.org and CSTA. The modern Golden Rule is that the people with the gold make the rules after all.

Industry has some motivation here. I spent a few years working at Microsoft myself where my job was to promote the use of Microsoft tools for teaching. I didn’t get much in the direction of what to teach. I always felt that teachers should decide what to teach and I just wanted to help teachers find ways to use tools to teach those concepts. Teaching computer science as vocation was always there though. Senior mangers often told me that industry needed more people to know CS because there were jobs that needed to be filled.

CS as vocation has always been a selling point for CS education of course. It’s what helped sell school boards and other elected officials. Among teachers that was usually a secondary motivation. For a lot of teachers, including me over time, CS education became more about understanding how the world works. We don;t teach physics because we want to make more physicist. We teach it so that students understand the world around them.

People who are not working for tech companies often have to use computers and make decisions about computing. From spreadsheets to databases to internet searches. And now AI. People in all walks of life use computers. Understanding computer science can make those people more efficient. Computers are an important part of our world.

It seems like all the big tech companies are betting huge sums of money on AI. There is a lot of pressure to move the direction of CS education into AI. Is the industry push vocational in intent? Is is all about helping these companies to make money? CSTA and code.org are both pushing AI these days. Is this because of industry (gold making the rules?) or would it be happening independently?

That leads to the second question – are we moving in the right direction? I think that question may be different for K12 and for university. Personally, I still think CS education in K12 should be about understanding and not vocational. Someone else can address higher education but K12 should be about preparation for life and not for vocation at least in comprehensive schools.

So is AI the right direction? I think it is indisputable that AI is important to learn. Students should learn prompting and they should learn what AI can and cannot do, They should also learn how to think about what AI should not do. They need to know something about how AI works and that is core computer science.

I think that computer science, in the old analogy, is the dog and AI is the tail. The tail should not wag the dog. Making AI the focus at the expense of basic  computer science would be a huge mistake. We do have to teach the basics that make AI possible. Students need to understand where AI comes from and where it might go. Understanding code is an essential part of that understanding.  There is always going to be more to CS than just AI. We didn’t stop teaching arithmetic when calculators were invented. We should not assume that AI code writers mean we don’t have to stop teaching basic computer science.

CS in K12 should not be just vocational. Is industry driving CS education? I fear they may be. Are we moving in the wrong direction? Maybe. If so, it will be up to educators to provide some course correction. 

CS Teacher Improvement Through Observation

I remember the first time I was observed by a principal. Brilliant man with two masters degrees and ABD PhD. He told me that he didn't understand much of what I was teaching but the students seemed to be getting it and the class ran smoothly. Not much in there to help me improve.

I believe that teaching CS is different from teaching most subjects. But each subject probably has its own nuances. That's why I think that teachers need specific training in teaching their particular subject. I know that there are MS degree programs in teaching reading and, I think, math. Probably more than those as well

There is limited training in how to teach CS though. There are some degree and certificate programs in teaching CS. As states increasingly require certification to teach computer science there will be more I am sure. Most CS teachers have to figure it out on their own though.

I think we have a lot to learn about how to teach CS well. There are a few people doing research in CS education. A lot of it gets disseminated at SIGCSE which can be hard for K-12 CS teachers to attend. That is both because of cost and because it happens during the school year. A lot of teachers have very limited options for missing school days. If nothing else it is a lot of work to create good sub plans!

Many teachers are resistant to sessions that are research based. That is often because they have had too many professional development sessions that year after year replace the previous research based methods without giving any one method a fair chance. Or worse, having failed.

It would be nice is teachers had more opportunity to observe experience CS teachers teach. (Both Mark Guzdial and Mike Zamansky have blogged about that recently – blog post links below) BTW if you ever get a chance to hear Mark Guzdial present I recommend that you do. Especially if the topic is how to teach.

In an ideal world, CS teachers would get to observe teachers in the building where they teach. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that many K-12 CS teachers are the only CS teacher in the building, that is often not possible.

CS conferences are a mixed bag. Yes, there are some great presenters. Many of them do try to model good teaching practice. There are not a lot of talks on how to teach though. I gave one at CSTA Online six years ago. (How is it that long ago?) It was well received but we could use a lot more that talk about and modeled how to teach CS.

I think we could use more talk sessions on the conference “hallway track” that informal, unscheduled time when teachers find themselves sharing ideas with like minded people.

At the heart of the issue is that teachers have to be about constant improvement. There is a difference between five years of experience and one year of experience five times.

Anyway, please read the posts linked below. Smarter people than me.

• Learning to teach better by observation: What I did on my sabbatical – Mark Guzdial

• Improving Instruction - College and K12 – Mike Zamansky

CSTA Ends Free Membership

I suppose it was inevitable. In the beginning, CSTA only had a free membership. The organization was originally funded by outside sponsors. An NSF grant covered membership for the first six years. This was probably never really sustainable. After a few years, the CSTA Board, I was a board member at the time, started talking about paid memberships. Going totally paid, as most professional membership organizations seem to be, seemed like a big jump. Eventually, two tiers were developed. A free membership and a paid membership that had additional benefits. CSTA+ was born.

It was something of a struggle to define benefits to make a paid membership seem worthwhile but the differentiation grew over time. For many CSTA members, including myself, the fact that a paid membership was a positive financial support for the organization was really enough.

Things change over time and CSTA recently announced that the Plus was going away and there would only be paid CSTA membership. The benefits of a free membership, like the category itself, are going away. Joining a local chapter will require a paid membership. Participation in most chapter events will be limited to paid members. Local chapters can still hold events open to non (paid) members but there will not be support from the national organization for them.

Like many members, I am disappointed in the change. I am sure it makes some financial sense for the organization but it feels like they (I almost said “we”) are abandoning a lot of now former members. This is especially true of the many teachers who don’t self identify as computer science teachers. Many see themselves are math teachers or science teachers or elementary school teachers or , well, you get the picture, rather than computer science teachers. Many of these teachers are already paying members of organizations they identify more strongly with. Will they spend more money to join CSTA? Often, I fear, not.

Unlike many companies and some universities, K-12 schools don’t often pay for professional memberships. Some programs, like Amazon Future Engineers, will offer scholarships with some attendant hoops and commitments. Some teachers will get memberships through CSTA Conference registration which many districts will pay for in part. A lot of teachers will question the value. Sure it’s “only” $50 but we have a lot of underpaid teachers who are already spending out of pocket to support their classrooms.

We’ll see where CSTA membership is a year from now. Personally, I’m retired and I’m making a lot of decisions about my discretionary spending. I just renewed my ACM membership – paid. I don’t know if I will do so next year. I love the magazines and I download a lot of SIGCSE papers to read. They are not as relevant to me as a retired teacher but I love keeping up. For now at least.

I have loved being a CSTA member since the very beginning. It feels like my tribe. It has always been a highly inclusive organization. I’m still a CSTA+ member, or just member now, until this summer I believe. I will decide then about continuing or not.

Online Programming Environments are Poor Preparation

Got your attention didn’t I? More and more teachers are using online coding environments to teach computer science. I used one myself to teach Advanced Placement Computer Scie3nce Principles. I’m not sure I did the right thing. Let me explain.

Recently I attended a panel talk at the CSTA New England conference on what high school teachers could do to better prepare students for university level computer science. Yes, I know that not all of our students will take CS in university but a great many of them will. So what did university people suggest?

As with most things, it’s complicated. Apparently, university professors are finding that students do not know how to do some simple things like deal with file directories or install software or use installed IDEs. Phones and apps are responsible for a lot of this. Students do not know where there work is stored or how to move files to a download location.  Some universities have actually added class modules to help here. Yes, remedial computer usage! Do your students need that?

They are also struggling with the tools that university professors expect them to use. Like installed IDEs. In university, students are expected to use IDEs like Eclipse, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code or others. They are also expected to know where the files are being placed. They do not learn any of that with online IDEs.

Now I understand that for teachers working with incompetent IT departments, of which there seem to be far to many, are limited to online IDEs. It seems like IT departments are often the biggest obstacle to teaching computer science. But teachers need to fight back more. Teachers who can use installed IDEs should do so.

Online IDEs really do to much. Or perhaps I should say that they hide to much from students.  I am not advocating going back to the punch card days, fun as that might be, but we need students to get closer to what universities and industry are doing if preparation for later CS is our goal. And it should be a goal.

Installed IDEs do a lot for students. That’s true. They also force students to do a lot for themselves. That’s good. It helps them later on.

CSTA New England Conference 2024–Exhibit Hall

Today I was able to attend the 2024 CSTA New England conference. There were 14 exhibits at the conference and I spent some time with several of them. One of the images below shows the list of conference sponsors. It was great to see so much support for CS education.

GradeThan was one of the firsts booths I visited. They have an online development environment that incorporates Visual Studio Code. I was impressed with the demo I saw. It's worth a look if you are looking for an online IDE. Especially if you are limited to Chrome books. It's not free BTW.

imagi was another interesting exhibit. Also not free but they have these cute imagi charms (pictured below) that I think a lot of younger students will like. They have curriculum of course.

Lego Education was there showing their curriculum and device options. I have to say that LEGO Education seems to be very interested in supporting CS education. And selling product as well of course but they show up!

Pickcode is another online IDE based product. PickCode was originally developed by a CS teacher.  There is a limited free version for individuals but for full teacher/class support there is a cost. Also web based BTW.

Sphero was there with two booths. They have some very cool robots. One or two I have thought about buying for my own use or for teaching my grandson.

KinderLabs was there showing of Kibo which is screen-free coding for PK through grade 5. Programming is done with actual physical blocks.

The Lifelong Kindergarten from MIT was also there with a display. They were highlighting octostudio Something for FREE! It is a coding app that runs on phones. It lets one

“Create interactive animations and games on your phone. Shake, jump, and tilt to interact with your projects. Share with family and friends.”

I didn't get a picture but Kira Learning was there showing their “AI-powered” teaching solutions.

Well, that’s a snapshot of what I saw. I hope it gives you some things to look into. And maybe an incentive to attend next year’s conference. Rhode Island next year.

Questions Keeping Me Awake Tonight

It’s about 2:45 AM as I start this post. Why am I writing at this hour? Well, it’s because some things are keeping my mind from shutting down and maybe by writing them out I can get back to sleep. Basically there are a bunch of questions about teaching computer science that have no good answers. Certainly none that everyone can agree on.

Let’s start with “what should CS teachers know (in CS concepts)?” The answer really depends on a second question – what should students know about CS when they finish K-12?

The answers to that second question range from more than we could possibly teach in the time available to eh, not much. How one looks at that question depends on what is the goal of teaching CS in K-12?

I think most agree that we're not trying to make everyone a CS professional or even a CS major. Can we? What then in the goal?

We, as a community, have some projects going on to provide some guidance but I wonder if we’re going about it correctly. Now the CS Standards from CSTA, ISTE, and others are being revised again. We have the CS Framework that came out several years ago.  Attempts are being made to bring input in from wide swaths of the CS teacher community. I wonder if we’re ready for it.

Now, Alfred, the Framework came out in 2016, we’ve been doing this standards stuff for close to ten years. And discussing it for far longer. What do you mean are we ready for it? Just that. We don’t have answers to the important questions. Yes, the Framework and standards are an attempt to answer the question of what should K-12 students know and when. I’m just not convinced that they are the right answers.

They are popular answers. And they may be close to the right answers. Maybe the best we can do right now. I’m just not convinced that they are the end all and be all that many want them to be.

We’re just not talking enough.They want be 150 or even 200 people involved (in theory) but most of the conversations are happening in private meetings with reports being presented and put open to comments. That’s probably all that is practical but that doesn’t mean it is enough.

There are too many teachers still who don’t even know these documents and their writing processes even exist. There  are too many teachers who are not members of CSTA or who are but who don’t pay much attention because they are to busy being to hard at work trying the teach and have some work/life balance. We’re getting standards written by the activists – the people who know a lot and who often know more than the average CS teacher. Many of them have specific goals in mind before starting the process of writing standards. Oh, really we all have goals in mind before starting. That’s why we volunteer.

So we get highly motivated people. Great. We start with an end goal in mind. Maybe great. And who ever is in charge of selecting the prime movers selects people with their shared vision. What? Tell me  it isn’t so! Can’t do that. It’s human nature. It’s even done with the best intentions.

Yes, I know there are “public feedback periods, several in-person feedback sessions, virtual focus groups, and strategic interviews” going on. Not impressed. Public feedback is easily ignored and the rest involve hand selected individuals. How many of those selected were known or expected to be dissidents? Without strong push back and resistance weak ideas can prevail.

I don’t have good answers to any of this. If I did I would be writing them up and not laying awake in bed stressing over stuff like this. What I would like to see is a lot more conversation in a lot more places. I see some on Facebook but not nearly enough. Blogging is just about dead. Many of my favorite bloggers are retired and not blogging. Or blogging a lot less (like me). Comments just don’t happen like they used to. Maybe CSTA chapters could have discussion sessions although disseminating the various points widely is difficult, if even possible.

As I said earlier, maybe we’re doing the best we can. I just wonder if it is enough.

Post CSTA 2024 Thoughts

The 2024 CSTA conference was the best one ever for me. It was wonderful to catchup with old friends and to talk to many people I had never met before. CSTA is about community for me so an in-person conference is the dream for me. The sessions were also good and I learned a lot. The Thursday keynote was outstanding and I hope it was recorded. It was that good.

Thursday I would have said that this year’s conference would be remembered as the first big Artificial Intelligence conference. For many of us, we will remember it as the conference we had trouble getting home from. CrowdStrike is now a “dirty word” for us. I am writing this from a hotel room in Las Vegas two days after the conference ended. Hopefully I will get home tomorrow.

I guess  we all have another story to tell about bad software and the need for testing.

But back to the conference. The venue was great. We had lots of sessions but getting from onto the next was easy. The exhibit hall was large and roomy. The exhibitors were friendly and seemed happy to be there with us.

Las Vegas had plusses and minuses. Hotel rates were pretty good for the most part. Food was expensive though and options without going in the heat were limited. Did I mention the heat? For a New Englander like myself who looks forward to winter 110 degrees is hot. I would have preferred an airport with more direct flights.

The conference committee  did  a  good job selecting session (if I do say so as a member of the committee) and there were many good options every day. As expected, AI was a focus of many of they. I wonder how many of them will be as valuable in two years. What I mean is that we still don't really understand the impact of the uses of AI. Not just in CS education but in the wide wide world.

There are still more questions about AI without good answers.

CSTA Day Four

Last day of the conference and I woke up to news of a global network outage that was causing delays in thousands of flights. Including my trip home. Oh well. I wonder if I will need this fan that was in the conference bag at the airport. I hear it is crowded.

I still jumped into the conference though.

My first session was AP Computer Science A: Using Data Files for Authentic Problem Solving. I've been using files in class for a while but not in Java or an AP course. This session was really APCS A teachers who haven't been using data files in class before. So not what I was looking for but I think it was probably super valuable for the target audience. The room was pretty full so I suspect that the addition to the exam requiring file usage is going to make some work for a lot of teachers.

Nest up was Visual Programming Graphics and GUI for Beginning Students. I was surprised by the light attendance. The talk was about an open source package called GUI4Sher. The system was designed based on Visual Basic but for Python. It was also designed to make things easier for students to create graphic, which can be hard in Visual Basic. I don’t think it is really Visual Basic like but it is interesting. I have downloaded it and I do intend to play with it some when I get home. If you are teaching Python it may be worth a look. But it is pretty simplistic.

Last up for the conference is, After the Classroom: Reflecting on the K-12 CS Experience. The reflections of a pair of students was interesting. I think we all appreciated the credit they gave to their teachers.

Honestly, with all the travel mess, I largely stayed to the end to find out where the next two conferences will be located.

2025 – Cleveland OH

2026 – Atlanta, GA

CSTA Day Three

Before I start on my day three report, I want to suggest people look at Mike Zamansky’s Day Two report on his blog. We attended mostly different sessions and he takes really good notes.

My first session of the day - Keep Calm and AI On. I’m proctoring this session. There are a bunch of other good sessions at the same time. Heavy FOMO sigh. This one is by classroom teachers.Another packed session on AI. This one started with a discussion of ethical concerns. Privacy being high among them.Next up was about how teachers were using AI. Image generation being one. Canva has some AI functionality now. Evaluation writing was used with mixed results. A lot depends on how people think about evaluation writing. Advice from participants included the need to teach about AI to prepare people for the good and the bad that AI can do. So much of what I am hearing at the conference is the need to ethical training as important when talking about AI.

Change of pace with my next session being Get Hands-on with CS and Content: Support Integration with a Physical Computing Toolkit Integration and physical computing are two of my favorite topics. The Physical Computing toolkit is available here. There is a lot there too!The session slide deck is available here There were a number of references to The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy.which I highly recommend BTW. A particularly good took for integrating ideas is their Instructional Resource Library This can help you find resources to meet your goal and potential physical objects.

After lunch, Teaching (With) GIT  Surprise! Most of the related resources for this talk at on GitHub - bit.ly/twg-2024 As the idea of Markdown was being presented I was thinking I need a Markdown tutorial. And one was chard at Markdown Tutorial At this point I feel like I have some good resources to dig deeper into Git and GitHub.

I confess that I skipped a session. Maybe my brain was full. I was tired. I did spend some of that time working on my snapshot post about the exhibit hall which I will probably post later tonight.

I did not skip CS Education in the Age of AI though. with people like Mehran Sahami from Stanford and Maggie Johnson from Google I would not miss it. It lived up to my expectations. I hope it was recorded. I would love to listen to it again.

There was a lot to take in. A couple of takeaways for me. One is that AI has the potential to allow our students to do more. More complicated projects. More innovative projects. Also, there was a reminder that these AIs, including the ones that generate code,are not perfect. In fact, one study at Stanford showed that students using AI generated code with more security holes than students who didn't use AI. Worse still, the students who did  use AI were more confident that their code was good.

We’re going to need people who can read, test, and debug code so some time to come. It's much to soon to stop teaching coding.

I’ll sign off on this post with something I said a couple of years ago:

Teaching computer science is no more about creating more software developers than teaching English is about creating more novelists.

CSTA 2024 Exhibit Hall

The exhibit hall was impressive this year. I believe three are something like 80 exhibitors. Below is a snapshot of s few of them that caught my eye. The usual suspects are here of course. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. You'd think Apple would be here if you'd never been to an educational technology conference. They are not here. I am surprised that Code.Org doesn't have a booth. Though of course you will see their team showing up in many sessions.

Items for physical computing are everywhere. I highlight a few here. One textbook company has a small booth. I wonder that that means. Thoughts?

I think I counted four universities promoting graduate programs for CS teachers. That gets a post of its own soon.

• 
  Amazon is here with a nice booth. They are promoting their Future Engineers program. There seem to be a lot of teachers here who are involved with that program.
• Google is talking about a number of programs they have. Code Next, CS First, and Gemini for Education

I'm not so impressed with the Microsoft booth. One expects more from one of the most valuable companies in the world. They have some good programs like MakeCode, Makecode Arcade (see the cool arcade machine they have to demo it?).

New is VS Code for Education which is a web based IDE and learning platform for Python and also web development. The TEALS program is sharing the booth as well.

• BirdBrain is here again. I think they have been at the conference for ever. Their Finch and other robots show up everywhere.
• Carnegie Mellon University is here taking about CMU CS Academy. One of the few university exhibits not promoting graduate courses for CS teachers.
• The Hidden Genius Project is trying to get young Black men into computing. This booth doesn’t seem to be getting enough attention but I feel like it should not be ignored. We can’t ignore young Black men.
• Koi’s Clan is one of two projects for very young students that I found interesting. I liked the little Kai Bot that is programmed with little graphic cards. Looks like fun and educational.
• Robotical has Marty the Robot who can be programmed with a graphical (without words) language for very young programmers. Why wait for kids to learn to read? My grandson loved robots long before he was reading.
• Lego Education had a large booth. A long time exhibitor they have some interesting stuff.

CSTA Day Two

Day two starts with sessions for ALL attendees. I started proctoring a session called Classroom To Career – CS Curriculum With a Purpose. This was a session presented by Oracle Academy.  Oracle presents these teaching resources and training for free. Always a popular price point for teachers. The curriculum is built for teachers and teachers can pick and choose which parts of it they want to use. It can lead to professional certifications. I can see this as a help for career/technical schools.

A word about proctoring. Proctors have two main jobs. Job one is to make sure that people scan their badge’s QR code on an iPad. This is to make sure CSTA can give them professional development credit for attending the session. Job two is to give speakers a five minute warning so the session doesn’t run late.

Getting people to check in is harder than you may think. Some rooms have more than one door and people come in through all of them. And the iPad is at only one of them.

Hallway track between sessions. One of the wonderful things about in-person conferences is the opportunity to have face to face conversations with people you interact with online all year. I can’t count the number of friends I have made through CSTA.

After the break, Guidance on Education in An Age of AI. Everyone is talking about it. No one really knows what it means but some people have looked into it and thought more about it than I have. So learn from the best available. Slides available at bit.ly/cstafuturecs

“When it comes to AI education, we do not have the luxury of burying our heads in the sand. CS teachers have the opportunity and responsibility to lead students in understanding the societal and ethical implications of AI:

the good and the bad,  the benefits and harms, the possibilities and realities.” Charity Freeman CSTA Board Chair

This could have been a workshop. I recommend getting the slide deck. There area lot of good links in it. Overall, I have a lot to think about.

After lunch, another session on AI for me, Empowering Students with AI Literacy: Integration Artificial Intelligence into Computing Education. This session is PACKED. This session was presented by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. One take away - It is important to teach about AI so that they can critically evaluate the tools they use. We also need to have diversity to protect us from bias based results. The website for Experience AI is at Experience AI (experience-ai.org). There is also a course for teachers to learn about teaching AI at  Raspberry Pi Foundation: Teach Teens Computing: Understanding AI for Educators 

OK, I am AIed out for now. So much to look at and think about later.

I decided to take a break  from sessions and take a serious trip through the exhibit hall. Lots of booth pictures to come but not until I can organize them. Among the booths were I spent some real time was with Robolink. Inside the cage to the left are a couple of small quadcopter drones. The drones can be programmed in either Blockly or Python.

I’ve looked at their booth several times over the years but never sat down to program a drone myself until today. It went far better than I expected. It really felt like an educational experience as I tried my program and iterated my code. Honestly, I’d like one myself. I can see classroom use though. They have classroom sets, curriculum, and professional development.

Next up, today’s keynote with Dr. Gholdy Muhammad “Cultivating Genius and Joy in Education through Culturally and Historically Responsive Pedagogies” A good talk. Very high energy which I appreciate at the end of the day. My big takeaway was the need for joy in school. There seems to be so little joy most of the time in schools. I may have to pick up her latest book Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum and Instruction

CSTA Day One

Day one for me was the chapter leadership summit. I got talked into the New Hampshire chapter treasurer role. The first thing I did was to connect with the other NH chapter leaders and catch up a bit. I also got to talk to some leaders from other chapters. A great opportunity to met new people and see what other chapters are doing. The Maine chapter has some nice polo shirts that I hope we can do in NH. I am not a t-shirt person.

One of the interesting talks during the leadership general session was about the Computer Science for English Learners (CSforEL) program. English learners face some obvious challenges. It’s greet that there is a program to help teachers deal with those obstacles. There are a number of sessions on the topic at the conference.  This is a federally funded project that is working with several states but is hoping to expand to more state..

Next up for me was a session on chapter financials. Boring but important.

After lunch, thank you Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a change of plans for me. I was asked to proctor a workshop because someone was not available who was signed up. Free workshop for Alfred!

The workshop was called “CS Teaching That “Makes Sense”: Instructional Routines for the Classroom” Better yet, a pedagogy session. I wish I could do justice to it in a blog post. I hope I can find resources to share. Sorry. For now, there is a website being developed at Sensemaking CS Nothing really there yet but it is coming. Update: Slides posted at https://bit.ly/MakesSenseCS

The opening keynote was by Conor Peterson from Meow Wolf. Now I am always skeptical of keynotes by industry people but this one was inspiring. Meow Wolf is a company that mixes art and technology to create immersive experiences. One of the key messages he left us with is that computing is a creative endeavor . We need to teach it that way. I totally agree. Computing can be about “Personal Agency, Joy, and Fulfillment.” I feel like an opening  keynote should inspire and energize – this one did. At least it did for me.

Welcome reception now. I guess I’ll see if I can get some food.

Oh, I started taking pictures in the exhibit hall today. I’ll have a post just about that in the near future. Something like 80 exhibitors. A far cry for the 10 we were expecting 11 years ago.

CSTA At 20 Looking Back #CSTA2024

CTSA turns twenty and as I write this I am about ready to fly out to Las Vegas for the annual CSTA conference. I’m in the mood to look back a bit. After the conference I think I’ll try looking forward.

The creation of CSTA was a pretty exciting event. The community of CS teachers was pretty small but we knew there were a lot more of us around. And that we’d need still more. CSTA was a means of building a community of CS educators who would support each other and who would work to expand our numbers.

It seemed like we knew everyone in those early  days. That is to say that those of us active on social medio, largely the AP CS email list but a few blogs, knew each other.  CSTA started growing pretty quickly thought. Conferences went from under 100 people to over 300. And it kept on growing.

CSTA went through some growing pains along the way.Our founding executive director who had done so much for the organization left. Well, left CSTA but not advocating for CS education and supporting teachers. Our first attempt at a new executive director had some mixed results. ACM jumped in and helped get the organization in better financial shape. Our current executive director has taken fund raising and organization to a level that supports a huge conference and a lot of year round activities. We’re lucky to have him.

The growth of chapters has been, in my opinion, one of the truly important factors in the growth and effectiveness of the organization. In the beginning, CSTA was, in effect, a single national chapter. This was great for staging a national conference but we as an organization needed more. Local chapters provide local professional development through meetings and through local/regional conferences. The CSTA New England conference is larger than the national conferences were in the early day. That’s just one example.

Chapters have also been active in advocating for more CS education at the state and local level. National leaders can’t be everywhere and in many cases having a local person lobby or speak at hearings can be even more effective. Chapter leadership training has given many people the tools to be effective spokespeople.

As I look back, the growth of CSTA has exceeded my early expectations. But not my hopes. Today, CSTA is a major organization with great leadership, a professional staff, and a world wide membership. It’s an organization all of its members can be proud to belong to.

Advice To First Timers at #ISTE24 or #CSTA2024

Summer conference season is coming up. ISTE starts this weekend (without me) and CSTA (with me) is in July. Over the years I have been to scores of conferences and I have learned a few things. I thought I might share some of them.

Comfortable shoes. If you are a teacher this should be a no brainer. You'll be on your feet a lot.

Plan your day in advance but leave sessions early if they don't match your needs or expectations. I like to select a prime session for each time slot and have one or more backups.

Do the exhibit hall in stages. I like to make a fast pass and make note of exhibits I want to spend more time at. I then go back to them. At ISTE making it all the way through the exhibit hall at one go is usually too much. Don’t stress it. You have a couple of days.

Don't carry more than you actually need. (I'm bad at this.) Bags can get very heavy with swag and literature.

Take pictures! Take pictures of web addresses for future reference. Take pictures of cool gadgets as well. It may save you space and weight in your bag if you photograph enough information to look a company up on the web later.

Meet new people! It is tempting to hang with people you know and that’s great. But sit at tables with people you don’t know and talk to them. Talk to to people attending sessions you are attending. Sharing ideas and questions is learning.

If you get into a great conversation between sessions it may be worth skipping the next session if you are learning and making a new friend.

Make notes every day. I tend to take notes in rough form in my blogging app and neaten it up every night. Use a note taking method that works for you but take notes every day. Conferences like these (ISTE, SIGCSE, TCEA, FETC, CSTA) are like taking learning in from a fire hose. Notes will help you later.

What am I missing?

Oh, and I hope to see some of you at CSTA!

Looking Forward to Computer Science Education in 2024

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!” --Niels Bohr

My track record at looking forward in CS education is a mixed bag. I kept expecting a big jump in internet of things courses and those never developed. Sad really. I think it would be a good idea. I keep predicting growth in cybersecurity courses and the past year seem to show a lot of growth there.

Cyber security is getting a lot of press so I see more of these courses in 2023. I hope they are real in-depth courses and not just how to stay safe online. Teacher interested in this should follow the Cybersecurity Educators group on Facebook.

I predict that Artificial Intelligence will be a big deal in CS education in 2024. OK, that’s easy. How will it play out? Well, that is a different question. Certainly teachers are going to be concerned about AI tools helping student cheat. Some, the better teachers, will find ways to use AI tools. For example, having students evaluate the generated code. Does it cover all the conditions? How can prompts be better for better results? It the generated code any good? What does “good code” even mean?

There will also be a growing movement  to teach about AI. How does it work? What are it’s limitations? What are the ethical and social impacts of AI? So much the teach and learn for students and for teachers. We’re only getting started.

Another easy prediction – Python will continue to grow in use.AI libraries will drive some of that for sure. A lot of teachers seem to prefer it to Java though so there is that. Will it replace Java for APCS A? I doubt it. IT will be interesting to see how the JavaScript/Python balance develops in AP CS Principles though. Keep an eye on it.

Unfortunately, I predict continued growth in the number of unprepared CS teachers. I wrote about this in my looking back post and I have no expectation of improvement anytime soon. Looking Back on Computer Science Education 2023

One big thing I wonder about is DEI in CS education. Will the politics and demonization of DEI impact how CS it taught? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are pretty important if we’re going to really make progress in computer science. Having a white and Asian mal monoculture has not, in my opinion, led to a good CS ecosystem. We need diverse thought in CS. I may have another post just on that subject.

At the same time, we need to be careful in PD and conferences that we don’t only talk about DEI. I’m not seeing a lot of disagreement on the idea that we need to have diversity in the industry and our classrooms. Teaching equitable is also a no brainer. And inclusion? We’ve pretty much agreed on the need for that in education. Do teachers need to be beaten over the head to see the need? Not the ones I know. At some point too much preaching to the choir is going to result in a backlash that we can ill afford. Let’s not assume that teachers don’t understand the problems. Let’s focus on solutions.

I’m really looking forward to the annual CSTA conference this summer. It’s going to be greet. This summer we will hear what teachers have learned over the last year or two. Being in-person means a lot more interaction.  I may have to make a mid-year post about the 20224/2025 school year after the conference.

So what to you see happening in CS Education in 2024?

Last Call for CSTA Conference Proposals

The CSTA Call for Proposals is coming to an end October 30, 2023 11:59 PM PT.

Presentations are what makes the CSTA Conference is what makes CSTA the best conference for K-12 Computer Science educators.  It’s also a wonderful; audience for CS educators to present their good ideas. If you have a good idea that you have been using successfully in your classes you should think seriously about presenting to CSTA.

So think about what you have had success with and think about submitting a proposal. But act fast!

Reimagining CS Pathways: High School and Beyond

This looks like a great opportunity to make a difference in CS education.

We are seeking community involvement in a new project called Reimagining CS Pathways: High School and Beyond, led by CSTA, CSEdResearch.org, ACM, Code.org, College Board, CSforAll, and the ECEP Alliance. Please consider applying to join us. We particularly need diverse voices from post-secondary as well as industry representation.

This project will convene representatives from K-12 ed, higher ed, and industry three times across this school year to develop community definitions of (1) what CS content is essential for all high school graduates and (2) pathways for continued CS learning. We aim to:

• Make recommendations for revisions to CSTA K-12 Standards and AP CS courses

• Clarify alignment of and develop model pathways for CS courses, including content that fulfills a high school graduation requirement, introductory post-secondary CS courses, and AP CS courses

We have a limited number of spaces for participants in a series of in-person convenings (Nov. 13-14, 2023, Jan. 25-26, 2024, and Mar. 19-20, 2024) and a series of virtual focus groups (offered at multiple days/times). Additionally, we welcome reviewers to asynchronously provide feedback on reports.

Please apply to join us. We expect the application will take 5-10 minutes. Our priority deadline is Sept. 15. The steering committee will select participants to create a balanced group, and CSTA will follow up with more details for those selected near the end of September.

Please note that there is no compensation for participation, though CSTA will cover travel expenses to the three convenings. This project is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2311746. For questions or more information, contact Bryan Twarek at bt@csteachers.org.

Thank you!

Bryan Twarek, CSTA, PI

Monica McGill, Co-PI

Thoughts on CSTA Conferences Past and Present

I am attending the 2023 CSTA Conference online. I’m not writing blog posts about it the way I normally do. Lots of reasons for that but I will post some learnings from it later. I am downloading lots of presentation slides as notetaking.

But I wanted to take a few minutes to ramble about what has been going through my mind as I watch. One question I get a lot is: Why are your as a retired person still attending CSTA conferences and events. It’s a fair question. It's not as if I have a classroom in the fall to apply what I learn.

The truth is that the computer science education community has been a big part of my life for a long time It started online in listservs even before I was blogging and a while before there was a CSTA. It’s a part of my life that has spanned jobs – teaching and otherwise. I’d like to think I still have things to contribute. And personal value to gain. The conference bag on the right, from the CS & IT symposium in 2005, was not my first conference BTW. But I found it today and thought I’d add it.

The community started small. By the second or third conference it seemed like everyone knew everyone. That was good in some ways but for CS to grow the teacher community had to grow. Now I go to conferences and there are many people I don’t know. And others from the  past have retired and chosen not to be active anymore. I don’t blame them BTW. We all make the choices for how to spend our time and energy.

The growth has been good. Many on the current CSTA board have been members for only a few short years. They bring energy and ideas and innovation that is necessary for the future of the organization. They still listen to us old timers though. I am on the conference committee for next summer’s CSTA conference. I am excited about that work. So many new things in our field. So many new and diverse voices that we need to hear from.

Speaking of next year, the call for proposals for the 2024 CSTA conference is now open. I encourage anyone with interesting ideas to submit a proposal. The CSTA audience is the best and most responsive audience ever. It’s going to be in-person next year. Start hitting your school/district up for funding to attend. It can be life and career changing.

Looking Back and Looking Forward in CS Education 2023

Traditionally I write a year end look back on thee previous yest in CS education. (Last year at Looking Back on Computer Science Education in 2021) Honestly, that post would largely work for 2022 as well. I attended SIGCSE, CSTA, and the New England Regional CSTA conference. They were all great. There was good learning at all of them. But new stuff? Not a whole lot. A few new tools. Some new robots. Some new AI and cyber security curriculum. But really not a whole lot.

I think we’re in for some disruption in 2023 though. Tools like ChatGPT and GitHub CoPilot are probably only the first of tools that are going to shake things up in teaching programming. Are we even going to still teach programming in computer science? If not, what will computer science courses look like? If we are still teaching programming how will we do it? What will it be all about?

We’re still going to see a need for teaching about cybersecurity for sure. Artificial Intelligence is also going to be more important. We’re seriously going to have to think about how we teach about it. We have to include not just how it works but how it should be used. Ethics in computer science has never been more important.

The discussion about ChatGPT and what it means for education in general and CS education in particular is going to be ongoing. We have to reink how and what we teach. It’s going to be an interesting year. Have you been thinking about it? What are your thoughts so far?

Note: I highly recommend Mike Zamansky's blog post at Kicking off 2023

CSTA New England Regional Conference #cstaNE2022

This year’s CSTA New England regional conference is at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) school of Education. It’s a great venue. There are around 150 people here. I can remember when CSTA national conferences were smaller than that. It just shows the growth in CSTA and the growing strength of CSTA chapters over the last several years.

I am running into a number of people I know and meeting some new people as well. That is what makes in-person conferences so extra special.

The energy level is high here with teachers from all over New England and New York. The opening keynote was by Dr. Cheryl Swanier who talked about “Changing the Face of Technology for Social Good.” Tech has a woman problem – we don’t have enough of them. As part of her talk, Dr. Swanier showed this video Girls in Tech for Web Summit - Ruthe Farmer – YouTube We’ve been taking about this problem for a while but we really need to take our actions up a notch. The case is pretty clear.  Dr. Swanier also talked about explicitly teach problem solving. Much as we’d like to think that teaching programming does that, the truth is that it has to be taught explicitly.

My first regular session was “Teaching with Minecraft: Education Edition.” You’d think I would know all about this but honestly I have trouble grokking it. My grandson has seen it and thinks its cool so I figured I should learn more about it. Minecraft Education requires a license. That may limit what I can do initially. However, it looks like there are a lot of resources for teachers including lesson plans, the ability to share worlds, create NPCs (non player characters), and portfolios. There are Code Builder options for blocks, Python, or JavaScript with MakeCode.There is a demo that can be used with “An Hour of Code” and I will play with that. I was pretty impressed with what I saw today.

There were 10 or 12 exhibits at the event. One that really interested me was the Kibo robot from Robot Kits For Kids | KIBO | Kinder Lab Robotics.

These robots are programmed with blocks. Not virtual blocks! Physical blocks that cane be connected together. Once the program blocks are together the bar codes on the blocks are scanned into the robot which will execute the program This looks pretty interesting.

After lunch, we had a panel of CS/STEM leaders from the New England departments of Education reporting on what progress the states have made in the last few years. The tl;dr of it is that there are been a lot of progress. But the efforts could really use more money. States have created certification programs, made progress in getting states to require schools to offer CS courses. We’ve still got a long way to go. We could use more money for teacher PD. We could require CS courses for graduation. Although in several states CS courses can count for graduation credits in various ways.

Next up for me, Kathy Kleiman, Founder of the ENIAC Programmers Project, who told the story of the women behind the ENIAC. A story I have heard before but Dr. Kleinman tells it really well. I loved that she talked about the history of these women after the war. A lot of information at ENIAC PROGRAMMERS PROJECT

Next up for me, Gencyber Teacher Academy @ the Univ of New Haven: Incorporating Cybersecurity Concepts into 9th-12th High School STEM Curriculum.

This program includes a week long summer "camp" and follow up virtual sessions. Last year the program just included 25 teachers from Connecticut but applicants from other states are welcome to apply for next summer.  Anyway, it comes with a stipend and some good free stuff. And a lot of good learning,

Last regular session of the day for me, Bring Computation to Life with the micro:bit. I love the Micro:Bit and always like to learn about how teachers are using them in their classrooms. I linked to the presentation above and on slide 7 you can find the mini project that opened the session with links to the code used. It uses the ability of the Micro:Bit to send and receive messages. You will find a lot of useful links on that slide deck including in the speaker notes.

The closing plenary involved a lot of recognition of CS teacher award winners. and door prizes!

Next year the conference will be on October 20, 2023 at the University of Connecticut Storrs. Should be a good one.