Too Little Time and Too Many People

Four years ago I was at a two day informal gathering of teachers. As much as I really enjoy conferences like CSTA, SIGCSE, ISTE and others there was some real magic about an informal gathering of about 12-14 teachers who cross age groups (individually and who they teach) and curriculum subjects. It was awesome. I really want to do it again.

Teachers don’t get enough time to share ideas informally. We have conferences and there are opportunities there but they are often one way conversations. We have sit and get sessions. We have panels where a chosen few share ideas in answer to pre-planned questions. None of this is bad but sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. Unconferences are different and usually a lot more interactive than traditional conferences and I like them as well.

Perhaps the problem for me is a bit of FOMO – fear of missing out. There are too many interesting things going on. Too many side conversations No one can take it all in.

A lot of people like to talk about the hallway track at conferences. These are the conversations that talk place in hallways, spaces outside of conference rooms, at bars or restaurants, or just about any place not in a formal session. They take place because attendees often have little real life contact outside of conferences and yet share similar issue, problems, or other interests. The gathering I attended four years ago was basically a two day hallway track.

The problem with hallway tracks are conferences is size. By that I mean that some conversations would be better if there were more people involved and some would be better if fewer people were involved. Take conversations at dinner for example. You can get a dozen people or twenty people all at one table. Realistically you can talk to the people on either side of you and two or three across the table from you. So there are multiple conversations that start, run their course, and then reform. Now these conversations can be great and I love them. But FOMO rears its ugly head – what is that conversation going on at the other end of the table and should I be in that one? Silly perhaps. But I suspect I am not the only one who feels this way.

There is probably an optimum size that lets everyone talk, everyone listen, and makes everyone feel involved. The setting and seating arrangement probably has an impact. Chairs or tables around a circle allows to a lot more people involved than a long single table or small groups standing around. Someone has probably done some research on this.

Perhaps book clubs can be a model? In any case, I think teachers could really benefit from small in number but longer in time chances to share ideas. We can learn a lot from each other.

Links to the blog posts I wrote about that gathering a few years ago:

• https://blog.acthompson.net/2015/07/charleston-teach-meet-day-one.html
• https://blog.acthompson.net/2015/07/charleston-teach-meet-day-two.html 

Big Complicated Programming Projects

Ria Galanos has a wonderful blog about her experiences moving from the classroom to a life as a professional software developer. It’s been a long time since I developed software for a living and her posts are bringing a lot of memories back. A recent post (Putting It All Together) talks about understanding a large code base. This is something professionals have to do often. They very seldom write code from scratch. usually they work enhancing, correcting, modifying, or otherwise working with large existing code bases. Understanding these complex  Ria talks about the Advanced Placement Computer Science A course which used to have a case study, a larger piece of code that students had to learn, understand, and modify. She wonders if bring that back might be a good idea to better prepare students for industry.

There are some interesting comments from experienced educators on that post. Mike Zamansky posted a follow up post (Big Code And Case Studies) where he talks in favor of large projects at the right time and that AP CS A might not be the right place for the type of case study required.  or at least not a specific and mandated case study that everyone uses.

We’re not trying to turn out professional software developers in high school. That is important to remember. There is a lot of value in learning how to understand large code bases though. I think there is value in it even for someone not planning on becoming a professional software developer.

So much of how we teach beginners lacks context. We focus on little bits is a sort of isolation. The projects we assign are simple and small. In some regards they have to be. The problem is that without real context understanding how things fit together is limited.

I’ve tried a number of things to give students involved in larger projects. I have given students larger, more complicated projects written by others. There are any number of professionally developed “samples” that are more complicated than the average beginner will write alone. I’ve also tried having students work in teams with different modules assigned to different students in the team. I’ve seen mixed results with both.

The trouble with large samples is that there is limited time to understand the code by the time students have enough base knowledge in a single semester course. Similarly in a one semester course there are limits to how complex a project student or group of students can build before time runs out.  APCSA is usually taught as a year long course and would seem to lend itself to either of these ideas, and the case study was a larger code base, there are still a lot of concepts required by the curriculum that can place time limits with some student bodies. This is especially the case when APCS A is a first course.

I’m starting to think that high schools need a sort of CS capstone course to follow up after AP CS or other foundational courses. Not ever student will have schedule room but I think that a lot of students who really fall in love with CS will find a way. Some schools will (or at least could) build at sequence that would include such a course. This course would allow students either individually or in a small group spend a whole semester (a year maybe) developing one large project. I think this could be a chance for students to work on learning a new (to them especially) technology.

Question Technology

One of the interesting t-shirts I saw at CSTA 2019 last week said “Question Technology.” That might seem to be a strange slogan at a computer science education conference but it really shouldn’t be.

Security of information, privacy, and the ethical use of technology was a constant topic as CSTA. From the Tuesday keynote by Natasha Singer from the New York Times to multiple sessions on cyber security to hallway conversations these were regular issues to discuss and to talk about how to teach. I don’t think there is any disagreement that we need to talk about these issues with our students.

We need a generation that asks “should me as often as can we” do things with technology.

It’s Really About the Teacher

CSTA 2019 gave me a lot to think about. Today I was thinking about what was impressive and I thought about the Tuesday lunch panel. Microsoft brought a panel of high school students to talk about how computer science education was changing their lives.

None of these students talked much about the programming languages they learned or really any of the technology. No talk of robots, or other gimmicks. What they talked most about was their teachers.

They talked about teachers who got to know them as people. Teachers who encouraged them to try new things. Teachers who supported them when they ran into obstacles. Teachers who valued them as people.

New programming languages are cool. Gadgets can help us make things more interesting. When you get right down to it though the key factor is student success is largely dependent in the teacher. I don’t know who said it but it is true – they may not remember what you said but they will remember how you made them feel.

What do Companies Get Out of Supporting CS Education

After the announcement of a millions dollar grant by Google to CSTA and the new “Code with Google” program I was asked “what does a company get out of this sort of thing?” The answer can be complex.

In many cases, including this one from Google, there is no obvious monetary benefit to the company. In fact the closest thing to a balance sheet benefit is probably goodwill. Now goodwill can be very important to a company. Given the current political scrutiny on companies like Google (and Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon) one would be excused if they saw that as a motivation.
I’m not so naïve as to thing that goodwill doesn’t play into decisions like this one but I doubt it is the whole story.

Companies like Google. Amazon, Microsoft, and others live in an environment that includes many other companies. These huge companies will always attract top technical people but for many companies there is a real shortage of technology people for them to hire. These foundational companies need the companies who build on top of their foundations to also be able to hire technical people. Supporting CS education helps support that environment.

And it is not just tech companies who need these people. All companies need people who at least understand technology. So in many real ways one could call support for CS education enlightened self-interest.

Do companies want students to use their products? Of course and so you will see things like Swift Playgrounds which runs on Apple products and develops apps for Apple products. Or AWS Educate which uses AWS and will probably result in future paying customers for AWS. Again, there is some relationship building that companies hope will lead to future business but the concepts are far from limited to those specific products. There are no guaranties here but they are clearly more about building the company's environment than the specific companies.

Other products though don’t have as clear an path to profit though. Take MakeCode and Makecode arcade developed by Microsoft. These products don’t lead directly into revenue generating hardware or software sales. What they do is develop more people with a knowledge of programming and computer science. That helps the environment.

As I see it, companies are interested in building the CS environment, building goodwill, and possibly getting some business in the future. The degree and priority of those motivations vary by company and even time.

For me as an educator, my concern is about the concepts tools teach, how they motivate or not my students, and generally how they prepare my students for the future. Concerns about privacy and security are of course also concerns. If a company helps me do my job and prepare my students better I see that as a win. If companies get a benefit as well I hope that will encourage them to help more.

Random Thoughts on #CSTA2019

I’m pretty sure I have been to every CSTA conference going back to when it was the CS & IT conference and there was no CSTA organization. This year’s was by far the biggest and maybe even the best. But it does feel big. Not ISTE big or even SIGCSE big but big for a conference of CS teachers.

That’s great is many ways. I think there were up to 9 concurrent sessions in each time slot on Tuesday and Wednesday. I remember when there were two. On the plus side you are pretty certain to find a session you are interested in. On the down side you are also likely to find two or three you are interested in at the same time. It’s a fact of life.

It’s not so big that I can’t find most of my friends there but it is something I have to be more deliberate about. And of course on the plus there are many new friends to make. ISTE is too large and there are many people who I know were there but we just didn’t connect. How big does a conference have to be before it loses the closeness that I value so much about CSTA? I don’t know. I do hope the conference committee thinks about that though.

Volunteering was a good thing. I worked the registration desk. It was nice to see and meet people I know and didn’t know. The registration system seemed to work very well. The CSTA staff handled glitches and issues quickly and professionally. That seems to be developing fast enough to handle the size of the conference.

Sessions were all very good. Not everyone was everything I was hoping for but that is to be expected. The quality of the presenters was really high though. I think that the speaker quality is higher at CSTA than ISTE on average.

Comparing ISTE and CSTA is interesting if not exactly fair. CSTA has a specific focus – CS education and CS is one of many topics for ISTE. A number of companies were exhibiting at both and I would love to know how the two conferences compare for them. A couple of companies that were at ISTE were not at CSTA. I was surprised that Unity was at ISTE. I really was. A big booth as well. I suspect they could have reached more CS educators at CSTA for a lot less money. But maybe I don’t understand their goals.

Speaking of the exhibit hall, there was close to 60 exhibits this year. I think we had 6 the first year we had exhibits which wasn’t that long ago. I do feel they add to the value of the conference. Much of the materials being offered were free as well. Obviously not hardware but much of the curriculum and other teaching resources. Lots of it looks like it has been used successfully in a lot of classrooms. By contrast, much of what I saw at ISTE was both more expensive and with less of a track record.

Microsoft and Google both had significant presences at CSTA. They’ve both, though their charitable arms, donated a lot of money to CSTA in the last year plus as well.  Money indicates support but I feel like a physical presence speaks a lot of commitment and seriousness of interest as well. Amazon was there showing a couple of programs including there AWS Educate program and some of their other STEM efforts. Facebook had a small presence as well. It was low key and not at all about selling Facebook to people. The heavy hitters in technology seem to realize the importance of CS education and CS educators. No sign of Apple though. Sigh.

Next year is a day longer than this year. CSTA and CS & IT used to be one day. Then two. Five next year? I have no doubt at all that they can fill it with enough quality content. I do wonder about the expense of attending though. Airfare and conference fees don’t jump that fast for an extra day but hotel rooms can be a big expense.  I’ll wait to see what the schedule looks like and what the hotel costs are before I make my plans for next year. I do plan to go. The question is for how long. I suspect a lot of people will be doing those calculations.

Google and other companies have been helping with scholarships and I hope that continues. It’s especially important for first time attendees. I hope school districts see the value and step up for teachers as well. Arkansas had over 30 people at CSTA and I believe the state kicked in a lot of the money for that. With more and more states mandating more CS education will they also step up with professional development money? I hope so.

My big take away though is that CSTA is the conference K-12 CS teachers should attend if they can only attend one conference. Hope to see many of my readers at CSTA 2020 next July.

CSTA 2019 Day 3

So I missed the opening keynote which I am sure was amazing but I spent the time catching up with a good friend who I see too rarely. Time well spend. Leigh Ann Delyser from CS for All sometimes talks about the CS community as her grown up summer camp friends. I have to agree. The face to face time with friends at a conference makes the communication between in real life meetings much better.

My first session of the day was a panel about advancing equity and diversity. It really focused a lot on curriculum and how to teach to ALL students. Not a limited focus on girls or under represented minorities but a realization that diversity requires welcoming environments for ALL students. There was also some good discussion about creating projects that are open and inclusive for students of different abilities and backgrounds. This is just one time when curriculum in general and finding the right projects for the classroom. I need to think about writing up more on that topic.

My last session before lunch was a series of three mini sessions. The first was on Engage CS Edu. This is a curated site with projects of various types and concepts for CS educators. It is “Foster diversity in your introductory computer science courses with quality content and engaging pedagogy” This looks very helpful as I am always looking for engaging projects that work with diverse students.
The second mini-session was on How to effectively Manage a CS class and was mostly about how CodeHS helps this teacher manage his courses. If I were looking for a new curriculum I would take a serious look at CodeHS. CodeHS has both free and paid levels.

The third mini-session was Building a Cyber Center for Excellence. They seem to have a very impressive cyber security center at Grand Canyon University. I don’t think a lot of it is reproducible in a high school but some of it it. The speaker has a free guide containing High School Cybersecurity Education Websites and Resources which  I did download and a not free ($3.99) ebook called “Beginner’s Guide to Developing a High School Cybersecurity Program” so I can learn more.

Overall, a very good conference for me. I learned a lot and I have ideas for the new school year.

Oh and next year’s CSTA Conference will be July 11-15 in Arlington Virginia.

CSTA 2019 Day 2

I’m always skeptical about celebrity keynotes at education conferences so my expectations for Natasha Singer from the New York Times.were not high. I was pleasantly surprised though. She gave me a lot to think about when teaching things like ethics, accountability, and privacy. Things like what the saved wi-fi networks our computers save and share to how companies track individuals and more. A good keynote should give attendees things to think about and things to act on and this one did that for me. So great start to the day.

There were any number of sessions I would have liked to have attended and I think information about them (videos maybe and hopefully others blogging) will show up. For now I am writing something about the sessions I am attending.

My first session of the day was “Soaring through the Cloud” by AWS Educate. If nothing else people are getting a good look at the vocabulary of the cloud. Vocabulary is something I see as key. I was impressed that AWS wants schools they partner with share their curriculum and programs with other schools. Diversity is important to them. The AWS Educate program includes free cloud accounts, online training, and badging for successes. There is a ton of content there. I could see a special course around this.

Also AWS has been very responsive to teacher and school worries about student privacy and security.  Very important!

I didn’t have to move for my second session of the day – Using GitHub as a Content Management System. Another packed house. This was a good walk through of GitHub for me. As a total beginner it was pretty helpful..I still have a lot of playing around to do but it does seem really usable.
Lunch had a set of trivial games that we surprisingly fun followed by a panel run by Microsoft. The panel was of high school students who were talking about the influence of taking computer science courses on their lives. The students were from schools supported by volunteer TEALS instructors.  These students were from schools in low economic areas that would probably not have CS without the work of TEALS volunteers – industry professionals giving their time to teach students. It was an inspiring session. Oh and the food was pretty good too.

Afternoon took me to a session on Machine Learning. Teachers talked about teaching machine learning both as a concept and at a technical level. There are a couple of neural network “playgrounds” including the tensor flow website from Google that I want to use to introduce the ideas to students. There is a link to resources (http://bit.ly/ML-HS-Resources ) that I plan to explore.

Last session of the day for me was Nifty Assignments. We could have used a bigger room. This session was worth getting there early for.The new CSTA Nifty Assignments page has all of the references to the sessions. Five interesting projects with something for everyone. from K-5, to 6 – 8 to 9-12. I’m inspired to have my students do more graphics by the digital coloring book projects and have some great ideas about using letter frequency counts. Oh and last year’s nifty assignments (which I missed) are also linked there. This is only going to be a better and better resource as time goes on.

For me the day finished with dinner with David Renton who taught college is Scotland for years and who now teaches high school in the US. Great conversation about teaching and differences and similarities in education in two different countries. You really can meet the best people at CSTA.

CSTA 2019–Day 1

As planned I spent most of the morning helping at registration. And talking to a lot of people as they came in. After lunch the exhibit hall opened and I was in there early. A few highlights:

A virtual reality version of Alice is coming in the fall. I had a demo wearing an Oculus headset riding through an Alice world. Very awesome. Virtual Reality and Alice – Wow!

I signed up for GitHub for educators. GitHub classroom looks like a good way to send starter projects to students. I have a lot of exploring to do but there is online training for teachers so I’ll start there.

I had a demo of CodeSpace from FiriaLabs for teaching Python. They have a robot that looks pretty cool as well. Still not sure robots are my think but their connection to Micro:bit looks pretty nice as well.

Code Jumper is a program developed by Microsoft for blind and visually impaired students. It involves physical devices that are a coding language. Think block languages where the blocks are actual physical blocks The teacher who showed it to me tells me that she has used these devices (not available yet but she is in a pilot) with ADHD students  They get very engaged.  I can really see this useful in a lot of situations. Availability is some time in the fall. I have no idea of pricing.

The welcome reception was top notch.  I ate my fill and have no need to a later dinner. Better still was the opportunity to talk to even more people.

BTW, in my last post I mentioned Google’s new Code With Google program. It’s a good collection of resources for teaching computer science. Check it out at https://edu.google.com/code-with-google/

CSTA 2019 Day 0

Sunday was the start of CSTA 2019 with workshops and the Chapter Leadership Summit. I wasn’t part of the summit and I didn’t get to any workshops but I still had a good day. I did crash the reception Google hosted for the chapter leadership summit though. Jake Baskin announced a million dollar grant to CSTA from Google and Google’s new “Code with Google” program. I expect to learn more about both as the conference goes on.

The highlight of the day was spending time with friends. I’ve been to every previous conference (going back before there was a CSTA) and in the early days it was much smaller so I made a lot of friends back then. I’ve made still more friends by being involved – volunteering in different ways. I had dinner with 10-11 friends almost all of whom had been on the conference committee with me, the CSTA board with me, or both. Besides helping the CS community, volunteering with CSTA is a great way to make friends.

I wonder how it is for people new to CSTA. It’s so much bigger today and while that is wonderful in many ways I can see it being overwhelming for some as well. My hope is that people expand their connections beyond people they may have come with or know from elsewhere.  Diversity is really important. Part of what made last night’s dinner so interesting for me was people from a number of different states and two countries other than the US.

Diversity came up in a number of contexts yesterday both in conversation and in he Google announcements of yesterday.  Companies in the industry are starting to really appreciate the importance of it but I really believe that as educators we have an important role in fostering diversity from the start.

Today, Monday, I will be working the registration desk for a while this morning, visiting the exhibit hall in the afternoon, and trying to connect with as many people as I can. Learn from the best I often say. If you’re around come find me. I am wearing my hat and I have “I Follow @AlfredTwo” ribbons if you’re interested.

Pre-conference Thoughts–CSTA 2019

I’m on my way to Phoenix AZ for the CSTA conference.  For years I would get there early and leave late. This was especially true when I was on the CSTA Board and there were Board meetings to attend. Traveling on my own dime and my own schedule this trip. This afternoon I will be helping at the registration desk. I’ll also be helping there tomorrow. Volunteering at CSTA is a small thing in some ways but I think it is really important to make some contributions. Plus it means I get a jumpstart on the “Hallway Track” that is part of what makes CSTA so wonderful.

Sunday and Monday are workshops and I didn’t sign up for any. That’s new for me but Monday afternoon the exhibit hall will be open and I really want to get to that. Almost 60 exhibitors this year. I think we had 6 the first year we had exhibitors. This shows how important CSTA is to so many companies, universities, and other groups supporting CS educators. Plus it is a great opportunity for educators to learn and have one on one personal conversations with exhibitors.  I’m a big fan of exhibit halls at conferences though I know not everyone is.

Unlike ISTE, where I was recently, the focus on CSTA is all computer science and the exhibit hall reflects that. One doesn’t have to search for relevant booths and it is still small enough that you are unlikely to miss something.

Tuesday and Wednesday I have lots of sessions in my app. I’m looking forward t o Mike Zamansky’s session on using GitHub as a CMS. There is also a session from Amazon Web Services on introducing the Cloud to students. Another key technology there! And a Nifty Assignments session to cap of  the day.

I’m still deciding on Tuesday. There are several sessions I’m interested in that are at the same time. A common problem, but a good one to have at a conference.

I have no idea what the “hallway track” will bring. I have so many friends at CSTA and they are doing so many interesting things. Learning from other teachers is really awesome. CSTA almost feels like a family reunion sometimes.

ISTE 2019 Trip Report

There was a time when I would have written a blog post every night of ISTE. Apparently I’m getting older or something and that is not a priority for me any more. Be that as it may I got some good stuff at ISTE this year. ISTE is not all about computer science the way CSTA (next week) or SIGCSE are but there is more CS than their used to be. You have to hunt for it a bit though.

Robots were big again this year. It seems like everyone is pushing robots as the silver bullet for teaching CS. I’m not so convinced and most of the robot stuff was aimed at younger students. K-6 or K-8 were big. Lots of people promoting their drag and drop Blockly-like programming tools. If you push you hear about Python and other text based languages.  I didn’t spend much time with robots. I don’t want to build my course around them. If others do that is fine. It’s just not me.

On the other hand I am interested in internet of things and integrating that into some of my courses. Plezmo has some interesting products in that space. I missed them in my walk through the exhibit hall but Alark Joshi, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco, sent me an email suggesting I check them out.  I’ve got a core kit ordered. I plan to use it for some experimentation on my own but also as a way to introduce IoT to my students in several courses. Should make for some good demos. Later I may add it to my curriculum. A lot depends on my experimentation.

Doug Bergman gave a presentation on using Artificial Intelligence in projects using some tools from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Doug demonstrated using these services from Thunkable  This may be the piece that really makes my mobile application development course take off. You can learn more about AWS Educate at this link.

Unity also had a surprisingly big booth at ISTE. They have some free online courses which would be usable in the classroom. If I were to have a game development course I would go there first. As it is I plan to take some coursework myself and see how it might fit in to an existing course or perhaps into a new project course I want to propose at my school.

This relates to something else I found interesting at ISTE. Steve Demo presented on Virtual Reality in education. The Oculus Quest (which I got to try out) is pretty awesome and it is programable using Unity and C#. This combination might be awesome in a course after my Programming Honors or our AP CS A course. First I’ll learn some Unity and then I will look at AR/VR/MR devices to see what is practical in the classroom.

I did talk to someone from the Azure (Microsoft’s cloud offering) at the Microsoft booth. I will follow up to learn more about their options as well.  GitHub is something I really want to bring into my Programming Honors course next year and Microsoft owns GitHub now. GitHub for education will be at CSTA and Mike Zamansky is presenting a session on using GitHub so I’ll be in better shape there after CSTA.

So I enjoyed ISTE and I got some good value out of it. But because ISTE is so large a lot of the CS stuff (and people) get lost. CSTA will be a whole other story. Can’t wait to get there.

In Honor of BASIC

I found an interesting article today New Hampshire installs first historical marker to honor computer programming The BASIC programming language was invented at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Today it gets a bad rap and perhaps the original version deserve it compared to modern programming languages. For its time though it was pretty important.

The early personal computers all came with some version of BASIC.There were books one could buy that has listings of BASIC programs that we used to enter and play with. A lot of people got their start in computer science by teaching themselves BASIC.

The first language  I learned was FORTRAN but the next year my university got a Digital Equipment PDP-11 running the RSTS/E operating system. It cam with a great version of BASIC called Basic-Plus. I taught myself that on my spare time. As an interpreted language on a time sharing system, unlike the compiled FORTRAN on a batch system, this allowed a lot more and more frequent experimentation.  That really opened things up for me.

After university, knowing Basic-Plus got me my first professional software development job.

Later I learned Visual Basic and then Visual Basic .Net. Today’s Visual Basic is a far cry from the original BASIC of course but a lot of the basics are the same. There isn’t much you can do in C-family languages that you can’t also do with Visual Basic. And it is still more friendly for beginners than Java or C++ or C#.

It is still looked down upon by many and yet as the same time it still shows up on lists of most used languages (https://fossbytes.com/most-popular-programming-languages/)

These days I use C# for a lot of my personal programming but I still like to use Visual Basic (as I did for a quick hack today) Over my career versions of BASIC have been very important to me.

Teaching Students to Yearn to Learn

Summer time is time for me to do a lot of thinking about my teaching practice. I've been doing a lot of reading and a couple of quotes have helped me in my thinking. Two of them are about leadership and I see them as having applicability in education. A good teacher is a leader - trying to lead students to learn. The first quote is about using coercion.

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Grades are, or can be, a bludgeon. Sometimes teachers use grades as a way to force students to do work. I hate doing that. It feels like a metaphoric "hitting over the head." It may get students to do some work or at least to hand in something but it seldom really leads to real learning. That leads to the second quote I have been pondering.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Leadership is largely about teaching students to yearn to learn. A good teacher leader develops internal motivation in their students so that they want to develop the knowledge and tools one is trying to teach.

One of the things I have observed is that students who have a say in the projects they take on are much more motivated to learn the things they need to know to complete them. Getting students to want to learn is much more effective than trying to force them to learn so that they can get good grades.

Different Kinds of Professional Development for Computer Science Teachers

What to teach and how t teach are different questions. The first is all about content knowledge and the second is about pedagogy. For the most part it feels like professional development for CS educators is focused almost completely on content knowledge. A great many teachers are coming to computer science from teaching other subjects. There is this idea that a good teacher can teach any subject once they have the content knowledge. I’m skeptical. Computer science is not quite like other subjects. It’s more like teaching vocabulary and novel writing at the same time. We’re teaching how to write a novel to people who not only have never read a novel they don’t even know what the words mean.

Do I exaggerate? perhaps a little but the point is that we probably shouldn’t assume that teaching CS is the same as teaching other subjects. There is not a lot of professional development on how to teach CS.  We sure could use more of that.

Although if I am honest, we could use some deeper content knowledge training as well. It seems like most of what we see is pretty basic and designed for beginning teachers. But we all need more research based knowledge about how to teach what we do know.

BTW, Garth Flint had a nicely related post on his blog https://gflint.wordpress.com/2019/06/10/cs-professional-development-in-montana-where-should-it-go/

Join the Online #CSed Conversations

At it’s best, social computing is a conversation that moves in a positive direction. The more people who participate the better the conversation and the more benefit for everyone involved. For computer science teachers, who are often alone in their school. opening and participating in online conversation can be a real benefit. These conversations can cross boundaries of time, space, and even online environments.

A recent example. Garth Flint wrote an end of year post (Last Day of School And Done with Java) that I lead to a post of my own. (How Well Can You Code the Projects You Assign Students?) Mike Zamansky wrote a follow up post of his own. (Do It First ) All of these posts were also discussed in Facebook and Twitter. And of course there are comments left on the various posts. So there are multiple ways to participate in the conversation.

No one has to participate in all the conversations or all online tools/communities to benefit though. Things, especially good ideas, tend to propagate across paths. That’s how networks work after all. There are enough people who act as transmission nodes that the best knowledge and the best ideas tend to move around pretty widely. Everyone benefits from this. People who lurk (read and don’t respond) learn a lot which is an almost invisible benefit. At least it is usually invisible to the people who are writing but it is probably pretty visible to the students whose teachers take what they learn and use it to better their own practice.

Still I wish more people took an active part in the conversation. Be it a comment on a blog or Facebooks post. A tweet with a link and a comments.Tweets in a Twitter chat.  Or an original blog post of their own. (I REALLY wish more CS teachers blogged about what they are doing.) How ever people participate we all benefit.

Computer science educators tend to be a very supportive community. Jump in with both feet.

Change the Programming Language, Change the Course

A recent Facebook post suggested changing the language for Advanced Placement Computer Science A (what some of us annoy others by calling AP Java). This comes up regularly with lots of people suggesting their favorite language. Changing the programming languages means changing a lot more than the language though.

Different programming languages have their own idioms. Their own way of doing things. Programming languages and the concepts one can teach with them are closely related.The change to Java (and to some extent C++ before it) was based on a desire to teach more object oriented programming and design. The language was picked after the concepts to teach were chosen.

I wonder how often we (CS teachers) pick a language first though. DO we pick the concepts to teach based on the languages and the programming idiom we are familiar with or do we  think wider?

My honors programming course is largely a warm up for AP CS A and preparing students with the concepts they’ll need is a goal. I use C# rather than Java though because it seems to me (without the sort of research based evidence I should probably look for) that it has a lower cognitive load than Java. It seems to work for us.

My APCS Principles class is using the curriculum and tools developed by code.org. It uses their block based App Lab with the option to use/view JavaScript. This language and tool does appear to be based on the concepts rather than fitting the concepts in after the fact. So I’m happy with that.

One thing I will be pondering over the summer is what concepts should I teach. Am I teaching the right concepts or should I change them? What about cognitive load? I was re-reading How to choose programming languages for learners: Reviewing JavaScript and Ready by Mark Guzdial and his points about cognitive load really resonate with me.

Block languages do seem, based on evidence, to have lower cognitive load for beginners. I’m less comfortable with them; probably because I’m so old school. Student attitudes towards them are mixed with some really loving the low cognitive load and some having trouble taking them seriously. I have to keep in mind the concepts I want to teach as well.

No matter how I look at it though it is never as easy as “just teach the same things the same way but with a different programming language.”

How Well Can You Code the Projects You Assign Students?

Garth Flint had another good post today (Last Day of School And Done with Java) He lists some interesting projects he assigned and writes about some lessons learned. Any time a teacher learns from student projects I count that as a double win. But one of his comments really resonated with me. Garth writes “I did only two of the six assignments myself.  With the others I saw the solution so did not code them up.  I should have coded them up just so I could answer questions better for the students. “ Highlight mine.

Some years ago I wrote a couple of editions of project books for both C# and Visual Basic. (I may update them this summer if I have time.) People seemed to like them and I received numerous requests for coded solutions. I had them and usually provided them. I really think that teachers should always write their own solutions though. In fact, the less you know about programming the more you should code up your own solutions. As Garth pointed out in his post, when you code your own solutions you can better help students.

And if a project is a good learning experience for students it will also be a good learning experience for a teacher who is working on their own skill and knowledge base.

I’ve got a ton of programming experience and know a lot of tricks techniques that I would never expect beginners to know. So I try to write solutions using the tools and language constructs my students will have at their disposal. This helps me understand what issues students are likely to come across. It saves me time later.

Of course students are clever and think of ways to do things that an experienced coder would never come up with so I learn some new things from them. And the smart kids look up features we don’t cover in class and build “interesting” solutions. That’s all good. Better than good really. I’ve actually come up with several new to me ideas from students.

To be clear, I don’t want every student to write their solution the same way I write mine. I want to see some creativity and imagination. But I also don’t want to have to admit I have no idea how to implement a solution of my own. Well, not often anyway.

Since I teach several level of CS from our freshmen course which only has a few weeks of programming to our APCP P course with Programming Honors in the middle I sometimes code up several solutions. Some things that are possible with limited tools are much easier with more advanced tools. Arrays for example can be a powerful tool. I wrote about this a couple of years ago at Taking Things To Another Level  where I talked about revisiting a popular freshmen project later in Programming Honors.

It’s summer break and I’ll be doing some coding. Trying new projects to see what students will need to know to code them themselves. I’ve been looking forward to having the time to do this for moneys.

Helping Doesn’t Always Help

My programming students are working on their final/semester projects. As is typical some of them are doing extra work on their projects at home. Normally that is pretty great. They get better projects and they learn that they can continue learning and coding on their own. Some students get help from parents. We’re in a pretty high tech area and lots of parents are software professionals.

I don’t blame parents for helping. Parents are a students first and best teachers. Most times parents work within the scope of what their students are learning in school and do a good job of explaining what they are showing. But occasionally we see some code that really begs for a discussion with the student to see if they actually understand the code they are using.

Usually the clue is that the code includes features that are not covered in class. The Ternary operator ( ?: ) in C-family languages for example. This is not something we really have time for in a single semester first programming course. It’s pretty cool and really useful in the right circumstances but it can be an extra cognitive load for beginners.

Again, teaching this operator is a great thing. Having a student include it in their code without understanding it is another thing completely.

It’s not just parents that do this. Students do it even more often. One student discovers something cool or useful and shares it with others. The first student usually has a pretty good handle on it but don’t always do a good job of helping the other student understand it. Students, like the parents I see helping, mean well.

It drives teachers crazy though because it makes it hard to tell what a student understand and what they included just because someone told them it would solve their problem. This is one reason I still do quizzes and plan to do more next year.

Society tells students that the result – a good grade – is the important thing. For many students, and a few too many parents, grades and learning are independent. Teachers mostly see their job as teaching and not grading. It would be easy to just give everyone an A and make them happy. In the long run though we wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors.

Learning From Today and Planning For Tomorrow

It’s the end of the school year for me. Next week is our final exam week and my students are working on their semester projects. I use projects rather than an exam because I think students learn more from projects. Writing an exam would be easier in some ways but I am more about learning than grading. It seems like my students are learning a lot. Many of them are really grokking how to put all the concepts we have been learning together for the first time. Others are stretching themselves to learn new concepts beyond what I taught in class. And I’m seeing some new (to me) ways of addressing old (to me) problems. It’s win win.

Semester projects reminds me in a serious way that diversity of thought, of looking at a problem, and at putting tools together is really important. I’ve gotten a couple of new design patterns to add to my toolbox that were driven by students seeing different ways to do things. This is not unusual. It seems like every semester I learn something new from my students. Sometimes it is errors I have never seen before and sometimes it is new ways of solving problems but it is all good. It’s never the same course twice.

And that brings me to planning for next year. I created a number of new demonstrations this year. Some worked great. Some not as well. I’ll spend time evaluating them this summer. I’ll also spend some time thinking about new projects for next year. It is difficult to find the time to come up with new things during the school year. There is too much grading, adjusting the schedule to match what is going on in school, and just plain teaching. And maybe I’ll record some short talks or demos to make available to my students for review.

While I am mainly a project oriented person I have seen some value in quizzes for formative evaluations. They are faster for one thing. And they help determine who really gets the concept and who is getting a bit more peer assistance on projects than they really should. So I plan to write a bunch of them over the summer. Not full period exams but 15 minute quizzes. Automated grading speeds things up and I am finding that the tools for seeing what questions are gotten wrong and correct is helpful to me.

I’ve got a good bit of work planned for the summer. I’m also attending ISTE and the annual CSTA conference. I expect both of them to provide me with some new ideas to incorporating into my teaching next year. If you’re at either of these conferences I hope you’ll look me up. I love connecting in real life with other teachers.

I also hope to learn some new things this summer. I’ve ordered a copy of GitHub For Dummies. I figure it is about time I learned GitHub. Maybe I will use it with students. I think that would be very valuable for them but it depends on me learning enough to get them started. I plan to continue trying to figure out how to format apps for my Android phone using Xamarin and Visual Studio. Code is easy (C# for the win) but the UI APIs are a bit more of a learning curve. I’m not planning on using it with students right now but I want to write my own apps for me.

SO what are your summer professional development plans?