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

How Much Debugging Knowledge Do CS Teachers Need

Mark Guzdial's blog is number one on my “must read” blog list. If you are a computer science educator it should be on your list as well. Mark had another particularly interesting post recently.

Dr. Tamara Nelson-Fromm defends her dissertation: What Debugging Looks like in Alternative Endpoints | Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take

In it, Mark talks about some of the work by his student, Tamara Nelson-Fromm. interesting stuff and I hope to read her papers when they come out next year. One question from Mark’s post really hit me:

“[W]hat does a K-12 teacher need to know about debugging?”

A partial answer given is “maybe it’s enough to just have checklists.” of things to check. Now “maybe” is a big word. I wonder how far it goes? That is to say, how often is a checklist enough? What happens when it isn’t enough?

I’m reminded of Kernighan's Law:

Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

Students write code that is as clever as they know how. If a teacher is more experienced and more knowledgeable than their students they maybe able to handle any problems the students have. The word “maybe” comes to play again. Over the years I have had a number of teachers approach me with a student program they could not debug. I’ve had to get help myself from time to time. Debugging is hard.

[As an aside, I love debugging code. It may be more fun for me than writing original code. I may also be weird.]

Experience helps of course. I have debugged student code without looking at the code. Lots of teachers have done the same. We do see a lot of students making the same errors year after year. Students are good at coming up with unique bugs though. They’re clever that way. (See Kernighan's Law) That’s where checklists are likely to come up short.

Why is this a problem? After all, students do, generally, fix the problem. Sometimes on their own and sometimes with help. For different definitions of “fix the problem” of course. There are always workarounds. That is especially true of the type of projects assigned to beginners.

My concerns start frustration levels. The cognitive load of learning to program is high already. Spending a lot of time on a bug can be very frustrating and that can be a turnoff for students. A demotivator. Worse, if the teacher can’t solve the problem what chance does the student have? Maybe programming is too hard!

Circling back to the teacher, if they don’t have a good plan for debugging than they are not likely to be able to teach students how to debug. Sure they can share checklists and that’s not a bad thing. Like most things, students will learn more by watching a teacher model debugging than from reading about it.

Now when we are teaching, most of us try to avoid making mistakes or creating code with bugs. Generally, we practice demos multiple times to make sure we can demo the code error free. Yay us, looking like we are amazing. The occasional error, planned or otherwise, is a teaching opportunity that should be welcomed however!

Circling back to the question asked earlier, how much should a k-12 CS teacher know about debugging? It’s hard to come up with a definitive answer. Probably more than is covered in most professional development though. Arguably, it should start with technical knowledge a good bit beyond staying a chapter ahead of the students. So more than a lot of teachers who have been voluntold to teach computer science have.

They should also have some solid experience reading code. Now a few years of teaching will give you some good experience reading code. It will give one a lot of experience seeing errors as well. That’s not much help for a beginner teacher though.

I’m not sure what the answer is and finding time in the already far to limited time for training that new teachers have now is a struggle as well. I am uncomfortable with the idea that “it’s enough to just have checklists.” though.

CS Education Researchers On Regrets

Pay Yongpradit recently posted (LinkedIn post) about asking a number of computer science education leaders and researchers “about their biggest regret in their respective research areas.” The answers were interesting to say the least. I think they are important as well.

Natalie Rusk -  Research Scientist and OctoStudio Team Lead at MIT Media Lab

That education has focused on Scratch as a tool, where students “learn Scratch” rather than the ideas/mindsets it was designed to develop, and for only a short time (e.g., a 3-week module), rather than as an experience that can be revisited constantly and grow with students.

It does seem like Scratch is often used as a sort of quick introduction to programming. It's big with An Hour of Code and that is fine as far as it goes but Scratch, and similar block based programming tools, can be so much more. It could be incorporated into other subjects, used as way to help students think and explore.

Sue Sentance - Research Professor, University of Cambridge

That the UK didn't fund scaled, organized teacher PD when they rolled out their national computing program in 2014. They had a bottom-up approach with their network of master teachers, but it wasn't enough to train teachers at the scale and quality they needed. Also that the UK hasn't emphasized the importance of CS Ed research when introducing CS in schools, especially for the youngest kids.

Professional Development for computer science educators and for educators who use computer science but don't always see themselves as CS educators is woefully inadequate. A week or three is not enough time. Worse still is that most PD is skill based rather than pedagogic. Most PD is "here is a neat tool and now we are going to teach you how to use it." That's different from "here is how to teach using this tool." It's even more different, and less than, "here is how we use this tool to teach this concept." That later is what teachers really need. We are also not seeing enough research in how to teach computer science. Teachers are often reluctant to incorporate the learning from that research as well. A lot of what is sold as research based has had a short shelf live over the years.

That doesn't encourage teachers as they have seen too many "research based" ideas last a year or two and then be replaced with something new. I think that sometimes these new ideas come from people with something to sell rather than from people who have done reproducible research. That's a problem and a reason that we need rigorous research with reproducible results. That requires funding.

Tim Bell - Professor at University of Canterbury

That CS Unplugged has been viewed as a replacement for programming, not as an entree, to the extent that in some places, CS Unplugged has been used as an excuse for not investing in devices and comprehensive programming education.

I love CS Unplugged activities and when I use them I use them to lead into programming. I think that a lot of people use them as a filler for times when they don’t have equipment to use with students. That’s a shame. I think some of this is because there isn’t any real PD in how to use these tools as integrated into introducing programming concepts. PD and education research play into all of this.

I think the messages from all three of these wonderful people tie together and show the need for research into pedagogy and education for teachers. Education into how to teach concepts!

Three Keys To Being A Great Teacher

For the last 20 years or so I have been able to meet some truly great teachers. Some I visited in their schools. Some I met at conferences. Some I have become good friends with. I have concluded that there are three things that make good teachers into great teachers.

One: Relationships with students. Great teachers truly care about their students as people. They build relationships with students. They may not be close to all of them but they try to build relationships with as many as they can. They listen to students. It’s not about the struggles the student is having with the subject, thought that is important. They hear about the students struggles with life, with other subjects, and with what happens today. They respect students as people. Students feel that the teacher likes them because the teacher does like them. That is what lets them build a relationship.

Two: They are enthusiastic about the subject or subjects they teach. This can be difficult in elementary school where teachers have to teach a lot of different subjects.  Great teachers can fake it to some extent because they are passionate about enough of what they are teaching to know what that feels like. Passion is contagious. It also means that one wants to share that passion as well as the specific knowledge they are trying to share.  Students who have a relationship with a teacher will naturally want to learn what is being taught so enthusiastically.

Three: Innovation. A superintendent of schools once told me that there is a difference between a teacher with one year of experience 20 times and a teacher with 20 years of experience. The great teachers I have met are constantly innovating They may start with a canned curriculum, though rarely, but if they do they make it their own. They add, subtract, and move things around. More often though, they make their own curriculum. Oh, sure, they abide by necessary standards but they teach their own way. They are rarely satisfied. You’ll find a great teacher modifying their presentation, their project, anything, before teaching that material again. They often make up their own courses and adapt them to meet the needs of the students in front of them. And the times in which they live.

They also borrow from other great teachers. They are not afraid to find ideas from others and fit them into how and where they teach. These are the teachers you find at conferences. They are presenting but they are also there learning. If they present at a conference or PD session they welcome feedback and new ideas. They are talking to others in the “hallway track”, sharing meals and activities outside the conference. They are always listening and learning.

Bonus: The great teachers share their knowledge with others. They will share their curriculum. They will present at conferences. They share not for ego but because there is something about being a teacher that just makes one want to help everyone become better. Better about teaching. Better at knowing things.

Seek out the great teachers. Become a great teacher.  Make the world a better place. Make that part of your New Year’s Resolution.

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.

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 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 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!

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!

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.

The Computer Science Professional Development Problem

Mike Zamansky is stirring up trouble again. OK not really his intent I’m sure but people can get defensive. I have to say that I agree in principle with most of his post at Why PD doesn't work for CS

Mike lists four different types of PDs.

• Teachers sharing practices
• conferences and meetings that teachers choose to attend
• PD run by content providers, that is, people selling something
• PD required by schools and districts

It’s as good a break down as any though the fourth kind can really include any of the first three. So I will zero in on those for now. Full disclosure: I have given all three of those types of PD in my time. This includes working for a content provider, Microsoft in this case, that was more or less selling something even though the stuff I was presenting to teachers was free.

I think that these types of PD can be great things for improving a teacher’s knowledge and skills. None of them are really good for starting from scratch.

Teachers sharing practices is a wonderful thing. At least if the audience has a solid base to start. We see a lot of it in social media. Not as much on blogs as I would like but still some valuable stuff is shared on Facebook and even Twitter. I have learned a lot from teachers sharing practices. I hope I have helped some teachers as well. Short bursts of knowledge is not a foundation to start a CS teaching career on though.

Conferences are wonderful. The sessions are short, typically 45 minutes to an hour and a half. They are great for sharing and for helping teachers to build on existing knowledge or to lead them in new directions for further exploration. But one should not expect a new to CS teacher to attend a conference (or two) and expect them to be a trained teacher.

PD run by content providers are typically longer form. Usually a week, sometimes two. These can be awesome especially if they are given to educators who have prior experience For example, a teacher who has taught simple web page building attending a session of a more advanced toolset for a more advanced course. Or a teacher who is learning a new programming language who can relate it to previous knowledge. These sorts of PD can be a mixed bad of course. Some focus totally on the tool and not much of pedagogy. Others are concept focused as much a tool focused. Regardless, these can be very valuable especially when the content provider is a non-profit with goals beyond selling product.

We’re getting to an interesting point in the development of CS for All. We’re rapidly outgrowing the availability of strong technical CS educators. Qualified CS teachers are hard to find. We’re not doing students any favor by putting untrained or antiquatedly trained teachers in the classroom. Colleges and universities have been complaining about having to reteach students who were poorly taught in high school for years. Do we really want to see more of that? I think not.

We really need more long term training for CS teachers. We’re starting to see some programs and more universities are developing CS education research programs and working with schools of education. That really needs to ramp up. States have to start requiring more training for CS teachers AND put some money into making it happen.

My Day Four at #CSTA2022

It’s a short day today but with plenty to learn. Last night was a great party at the Museum of Science and Technology. I left early (age?) but I know that a lot of people stayed late and partied hardy. There may be some tired faces in sessions this morning. It was a great community building event so well worth it.

First session for me was “You CAN Teach Cyber Security with CYBER.ORG’s Cyber Learning Standards. CYBER.ORG is probably the premier Cybersecurity learning/teaching resources. CYBER.ORG is funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. We heard about a lot of their programs. It seems like they have something for almost everyone. I would start there for Cybersecurity resources for teaching.CYBER.ORG funded a large group of educators to write a set of Computer Science Learning Standards.

I had several good options for the last time slot but Nifty Assignments is a must see for me. The version at SIGCSE is always standing room only but apparently it is not as well known at CSTA yet. Baker Franke does a great job of putting this session together. For reference, CSTA Nifty Assignments are archived at CSTA Nifty Assignments SIGCSE Nifty Assignments are archived at Nifty Assignments. I was paying to much attention to take much in the way of notes but the archive should be updated soon. One of them can be played at Mind Reader - App Lab - Code.org The archive is updated and I can’t wait to try some of these when I get home.

That’s a wrap for me. I skipped the closing keynote to get to the airport early. I feel a little guilty but I’m also tired and my brain is kind of full. Some more general thoughts tomorrow.

My Day Two at #CSTA2022

Day two started off great as I connected with several people from my home CSTA Chapter –CSTA New Hampshire. The CS community in New Hampshire is growing and the CSTA Chapter has been a part of that. I’m planning on getting more involved in chapter stuff  in the future.

My first session of the day was about teaching ethics when teaching artificial intelligence. Jeremy Keeshin (a last minute replacement as I understand it) from CodeHS was the presenter.  Seems like some good small group discussions took place. Maybe I was tired but I didn’t get into it very well. My fault. Wasted opportunity. I did get a copy of Jeremy’s book “Read Write Code” which I look forward to reading.

Next up for me was a session on preparing the future developers of the metaverse.  The presenters were from Carnegie Mellon. First I have heard of XR as a generic term to include Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Modified Reality. We had some really interesting discussion of using virtual worlds in school. One school had a virtual birthday party in Minecraft. Minecraft has moved from pure play to an educational platform.

Students are picking different virtual worlds to play in as they age.It occurs to me that younger kids are building things in games like Minecraft and Roblox but older students, especially boys, and moving to games like Call of Duty which are more destructive. Something to think about.

My number one to look more into is Arena XR – An Augmented Reality Edge Network Architecture.

I really enjoyed this session and had some good interactions and learning with my tablemates. Slides for this session are at CSTA2022 NoStudentLeftBehind.pdf - Google Drive

Lunch break and more time in the exhibit hall. I got a close look at the Jacdac devices for use with a Micro:Bit. I may splurge and buy a starter kit. Note that I posted a brief look at Microsoft and other big companies exhibits at Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft at #CSTA2022

First afternoon session was about writing for Hello World magazine. I was proctor and arrived before it started but after most people entered the room. Watching the clock is important as it is so easy to get distracted with so much going on. Anyway, the slides for this talk are available at CSTA_Writing Workshop Presentation.pptx - Google Slides  A lot of good stuff here. I hope this gets more teachers to write for the magazine.

Next up was a session on cryptography with an exercise in creating a Pringles can Enigma machine. We started the session with an brief introduction to Cyber.org and with an introduction to the Pigpen Cipher. (Note that this is one of the ciphers covered in my (PDF) free Tiny Book of Simple Cryptography)  We had some fun creating our mini Enigma machines and working though how they work. We only used one rotor but I brought home some sheets to make a larger one with a larger can when I get home.

Overall, a pretty good day. Some very good sessions, some good conversations at the exhibit hall, and many amazing face to face conversations with friends. I am exceedingly glad to be here this year.

Day One #CSTA2022

Well it was day one for me. I know that some people got in yesterday or earlier either because they were taking a workshop today or were part of the Chapter Leadership program. For me, today was about getting settled, meeting with old friend (and making some new ones), and the exhibit hall. Wow! has the exhibit hall grown. The conference as well. Apparently there are about 1700 attendees registered. I remember thinking 300 was big some years ago. Looks like about half the attendees are first timers as well. That is amazing and wonderful

My trip was good. I checked in for my flight with an app. I paid for the El (Chicago’s mass transit trains) with an app, and checked into my hotel with an app. Travel seems to be all about the apps these days.

The exhibit hall was open soon after I arrived at my hotel so I went right in after registration. Proof of vaccination is required to attend and wearing masks is required as well. I’m good with that. I hear a lot of people got COVID at ISTE and these measures make me feel safer. It seemed to work at SIGCSE!

I met many old friends while in the exhibit hall and walking around the conference. Catching up was great. We also talked about CS issues of course. So great to have people who share ideas. I couple of people I have not met in person before but who I know from social media visited with me as well. It is so good to put faces with names and be able to get to know each other. If you are at CSTA and are a blog reader or Twitter follower I would love to chat with you.

I walked through the exhibit hall several times to get a feel for what themes there are. I’ll be blogging for about that as the conference goes on but I’ll share a few first thoughts here now. Physical computing is big in the exhibit hall. Lots of robots but also many other programable gadgets. Cyber security was represented by several exhibitors as well. We really need to teach more of that in the US so I was glad to see thing. Several artificial intelligence programs were being highlighted in the exhibit hall. I want to dig into that more this conference.

Lots of curriculum providers are exhibiting which is not surprise. They’ve all be exhibiting at CSTA for several years. The companies with hardware all have curriculum as well. It’s not like the old days when people dumped some hardware and said “here. Figure out something interesting to do with this.” Progress I think.

Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have booths as well. There is a set of swings in the Google booth (Pictures tomorrow) I’ll write about their programs as well when its not 11PM my body time after getting up at 6AM and travelling all day.

Today was everything I wanted my first day at in-person CSTA. Still more friends to meet and make and lots more to learn.

Getting Ready for #CSTA2022

The CSTA Annua Conference is only days away. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s my first plane ride since CSTA in Phoenix in 2019. That’s a long time for me. Or was.  The online conferences have been excellent but there is nothing like seeing people in person. Attending SIGCSE this past winter really brought that home to me.

I’ve taken a couple of quick looks at the schedule but I still have to finalize (as much as possible) what sessions I want to attend. I am not doing any workshops this year so I don’t get in until the 14th. But the rest of the conference should be full for me. If not regular sessions, I am hoping for some great conversations in the “Hallway Track.”

Packing is something I will probably not do until the day before I leave but I’m making decisions about what to bring. I got a new phone for example. Battery life on my last on was horrible and my new one will go all day. I’ll bring a laptop as well. I like to take notes for my blog posts and also to Tweet live. Since I am not presenting one should be enough. I tend to bring a backup if I am presenting. I’m loading some books onto my Kindle for reading on the planes. I have charging cables ready for all three of course. And an extension cord with USB plugs as well as standard sockets. Don’t leave home without one!

In previous years I packed extra cables for just about anything I could think of because you never know what someone will need. I’m going light this year. My backpack just got to heavy. Plus I want room for swag. I do plan to come with badge ribbons (Troublemaker and “I follow AlfredTwo”) if I can find them. Probably some business cards. I recommend these if you have them BTW.

I’m looking forward to the exhibit hall as well. I already know some booths that are “must see” for me. I am told that Microsoft will be there with some of their new Jacdac kits and I want to check them out. I am hoping that there will be some booths on cybersecurity (CYBER.ORG is a sponsor so they will probably have a booth). I’m always up for robots and I expect to see some of those as well.

If you’re there I hope you’ll find me and say “hello.” If not, follow the #CSTA2022 hash tag on Twitter and visit my blog for updates along the way.

So are you ready? What are you excited about?

Welcome New Computer Science Teachers

Spring is an interesting time on social media. I help moderate a couple of CS teacher groups on Facebook and let me tell you, membership is booming! Why? Well, several reasons. For one thing a lot of teachers have been voluntold that they are going to teach computer science in the fall.Some have never taught CS before. Others have some CS background but are being asked to teach a more advanced course. In general, a lot of teachers are looking for help getting ready.

Hopefully, all CS teachers join the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). There are both free and paid levels of membership. I am a paid member (AKA CSTA+) It’s worth it for the extra benefits. You’ll want to join and get active in a local CSTA chapter as well.

A book I highly recommend for anyone teaching computer science is Computer Science in K-12: An A-to-Z Handbook on Teaching Programming I can’t tell you how much I learned from this book.

Instructors are many Advanced Placement Summer Institutes are pointing teachers to Facebook groups. Two favorites for AP CS teachers are:

• AP Computer Science Principles Teachers
• AP Computer Science A Teachers

They're both outstanding resources for teachers of those courses.

Many people also join Computer Science Educators which is a wide ranging group for CS teachers.

Cyber Security is getting huge in schools (which is a good thing) and there is a great Facebook group for that. Cybersecurity Educators

If game development is your thing there is the Unity Teach Community group.

If you’re teaching an advanced placement course, hopefully, someone has pointed you to AP Summer Institutes. Really valuable for first time AP teachers.

There are also some curriculum providers that offer training and resources. A few of them are:

• code.org – they offer several levels of courses including pre-AP courses as well as AP courses.
• CMU CS Academy – curriculum, resources, and (I think) training
• CodeHS – Curriculum and resources
• CYBER.ORG – Cyber security resources, training, and curriculum
• Project Lead The Way – curriculum, training
• Bootstrap – CS with math, physics, or Data Science

I’ll finish off with a couple of blog suggestions

• Mark Guzdial – He’s currently doing research on teaching other subjects using computer science and what he calls “Teaspoon Languages” but he has a lot to say about how to teach CS.
• Mike Zamansky – Mike is building a program to teach CS teachers at Hunter College in NYC. Mike shares a lot of good advice and ideas about teaching.
• Garth Flint – Garth teaches at a small private Catholic school where he wears a lot of hats. He has some interesting takes on things and shares a lot of good ideas.

I’ve only scratched the surface here of course. But they’re a good start with places to ask for more help. Welcome to teaching computer science!

[Edit] if you are interested in using some physical devices in your course check out Teaching Computer Science–Moving atoms not pixels

SIGCSE 2022 Day 3

Saturday at SIGCSE was a short day but there was still plenty to learn. Shaundra Daily. Her talk, based on her own history, was about how their are barriers making it hard for women, especially women of color and women who are also mothers, and who generally don’t fit a specific mold. This fit in with other conversations I had this conference about getting students to start CS at the university level don’t have the support they need once they get there. Filling the pipeline is not enough if the exit is blocked.

After the keynote I grabbed a quick bite to eat and ran into Mike Zamansky. Mike has a great blog post about the things he plans to write longer posts about. SIGCSE2022 - Things I plan to blog about We spent a lot of time discussing those topics. We agree on much and disagree (in a friendly way) on some. Look for future posts from both of us on these topics. Mike Zamansky blog

My first paper session was CSF2: Formative Feedback in Autograding. I'm of mixed feelings about autograders but more on that another time. This particular tool moves away from the binary pass/fail of autograders to provide feedback and hints. The tool also helps educators see where students are getting stuck. I want to look into this one some more.BTW, hinting is hard.

After the morning break, Nifty Assignments. I just could not resist as I love new assignments. This year’s assignments as well as previous year’s assignments are available at Nifty Assignments (stanford.edu) So I’m taking the easy way out and not saying much more about them.

For lunch time, SIGCSE set up a K-12 meetup lunch time in a conference room. I really enjoyed chatting with other K-12 people. Next year I hope they can come up with a way for us to connect earlier though. The k-12 ribbons were nice but ribbons get visually lost at times.

SIGCSE 2022 Day 2

The morning keynote was by Barbara Ericson. She talked about a lot of her early work including some of her online books CSAwesome and her work with the free online CS textbooks at Runestone Academy. I need to look at these some more https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/index She also talked a lot about Parsons Problems - a subject I am really interested in. One project is Sisters Rise Up which provides mentorship for women taking AP courses. She’s got a lot going now as well. She is an inspiration.

First Paper Session:Trends in CS Teacher Professional Development: A Report from the CSTA PD Committee. A lot of CS teachers are experienced teachers but not experienced in CS. Teachers want PD but it can be hard to find. The PD committee is evaluating and accrediting CS Ed professional development. You can see their efforts at the CSTA web site

Next up was Detecting Struggling Students from Interactive eBooks Data: A Case Study Using CSAwesome This talk was by Barbara Ericson and was about data from ebooks on Runestone and CSAwesome. Barb was able to collect a lot of data.  Students don’t watch videos to completion a lot which doesn’t surprise me that much. A lot of information in this talk. I recommend reading the actual paper. (Available for free for a limited time) I really need to look at these ebooks and see if they are something I can/want to try and create myself.

Last of my morning papers was Who Belongs in Computer Science? This study looked at middle school students to see what their perception was of computer scientists and how that impacted their feeling of belonging. In brief, boys and girls had the same perceptions but girls didn’t see themselves in what they perceived as being a computer scientist.

I took advantage of the “hallway track” to talk to Aman Yadav (author of the paper above) about the importance of CS teachers talking about race and computing. We need students to understand how bias works its way, usually unintentionally, into software. Both white and non-white students need to know about this. We clearly need a diversity of involvement in computing if we are going to have a chance as software that is fair to all.

After lunch, a GitHub Supporter Session: Scale your classroom with GitHub Classroom and Codespaces. A tough decision as there was also a panel I was interested in attending. I was curious about GitHub though so … The features of GitHub classroom including connections to LMSs, automated assignment distributing, auto grading and more seem pretty exciting. I also like the idea that students will create GitHub repositories that can act as a portfolio. The demo was great. I have set up a GitHub Classroom but I need to play around and try some things before I feel like I can use it. I think I need to create a “student account” as well. We’ll see how much time I can put to it.

Next up was a Microsoft Supporter Session: Core developer tools for your computer science classroom because I wanted to  see what Microsoft was promoting for educators to use for teaching CS. That was once my job.

They started with talking about VS Code and VS Code Coding packs are a tool to make it easy for students to set up a development environment. They are available to set up VS Code for Java, Python, and .NET. The packs for .NET and Java are available for both Windows and MacOS.

Next up was Development Containers and VSCode.dev which is a web past development environment so no installation is needed. This combination makes it easy to ensure that all students have the same development environment. This looks pretty cool for bring your own devices schools. There was a lot presented in a short period of time. I need to dig into some of these things on my own.

Over all a great day for me. I have some things to look through tonight.

SIGCSE 2022 Day 1

SIGCSE 2022 is my first in-person conference in over 2.5 years. It’s my first SIGCSE in a lot longer than that. It looks to be a great conference . There are 1518 people registered in total with 780 attending in person. I HAD to come in person. Honestly, I missed people and a lot of people I know in CS Education and CS Ed research are here. There is a lot to learn here as well.

The opening keynote was Barbara Liskov. This was a fascinating talk that covered a lot of the history of her work. She started publishing and researching what became object oriented programming while I was in the early stages of my career. Several papers she studied and referenced were published the year I got my undergraduate degree. I remember clearly many of the issues she discussed and problems she was looking to solve back then. I hope we can get access to her talk and show it to students.

My first session of the day was a panel discussion of should AP CS A switch to Python from Java. Needless to say, the room was full. The stick with Java people had two main issues. One was the work involved in changing – new resources, teaching aids, test questions, and the like. The second was that while there is a slight edge in universities using Python over Java for CS1, Java and C++ are FAR more widely used in CS2 courses. The current course results in students who do very well in CS2 and that is important.

The argument for Python is multiple. One is that it opens the door wider for using APIs for making more interesting projects. Another is that there is less syntactic “cruft” in Python which reduces cognitive load. A third is that Python is increasingly used in disciplines that are not computer science. For example the Physics and Chemistry departments are Stanford want their students to take a Python based CS1 course. FWIW, the school I retired from added Python in part because the Physics teachers encouraged it. I am finding the arguments for Python more convincing than I expected.

After lunch, It Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time (COVID-19 Edition). The session opened with examples from the past: see if you can hack the department mail server; open book exams without a time limit; exponential time examples are actually cubic. Victoria Hong shared a study she did where she asked one section to write questions for the final exam. The cohort that wrote questions did worse on the final than the cohort that didn’t write questions. The opposite of what was expected. Ellen Spertus talked about a course without deadlines. This set off a lot of discussion about deadlines and the different ways to allow or not extensions. Some have tokens that students can use for an extension. I hope this was recorded because I can’t do the discussion justice here.

Next up for me was another panel: Advancing Opportunities for CS Teachers: How To Best Support Professional Development for Experienced Teachers in K-12 CS Education This session was hybrid which means that most of the panel was remote and not physically at the conference. More on that later perhaps.

Most professional development for CS teachers is focused on new and early career CS educators. We have a good number of experienced teachers (10+ years of teaching CS) and their needs and backgrounds tend to be different from new  CS teachers. A lot of the initial presentations was stating the problem.

Don’t tell anyone but I jumped out early and dropped in on a Special Session: K-12 Computing Education and Education Research Resources. Colleen Lewis talked about Computer Science Teaching Tips (csteachingtips.org) and a Teaching Practices Game. This can help teach about microaggressions. Briana Morrison introduced Engage CSEDU: www.engage-csedu.org which has a searchable database of CS Ed resources. Davina Pruitt-Mentle introduced NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION (NICE) which has a lot of resources for teaching and learning about cybersecurity. More information can be found at Cyberseek.

Got some dinner skipping the Birds of a Feather but I’ll go back for the reception. Overall, a very good day for me. Learned some things and connected with a bunch of great people. More tomorrow I expect. If you are reading this and at SIGCSE please look me up and say “hello.”