TEALS is in the classroom!

After a summer of hard work, TEALS is finally in the classroom as of this week. Along with the newly completed Issaquah High School (a cross between MS Research and a Galleria), 4 new MS teachers will be teaching in the brand new labs with our brand new(ish) curriculum we worked on over the summer.
For everyone but me, teacher orientation day itself was new and exciting. I totally forgot how many questions about school and teaching I had just logistics-wise. For me, I forgot how much I missed teaching, even though it was just summer break.

What should be in a high school intro CS class?

I have always thought that intro CS should be taught alongside the other three big high school sciences, namely Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

It does seem like there are more school that are looking into re-vamping their typing / how to use office apps class with something more solid. Some of these school have AP CS, some don't, some makes the typing / app class mandatory with a test out option. They are usually a semester long.

In the current school year, I have been fortunate to be able to teach two of these one semester classes and tried out various teaching strategies and projects (sans typing and app). I think for a semester long introductory class to computer science and technology should have these basic elements:

1. Application usage (Office + Photoshop).

2. How everything works including binary math, digital circuits and logic (building them with kits), computer components, software, and internet basics. Of course this would also include history of how these things came to be.

3. Programming concepts and game design using Scratch / StarLogo or similar intro syntax light visual programming language (any sort of LISP is a big no no).

4. Intro programming using Java introducing ideas of OOP.

I think these ideas can fit into a semester long class, I will try it out next year and see if that's a realistic aim and where on the depth vs breadth chart each of the topics can fall into.

TEALS set to go

TEALS (Technology Education And Literacy in Schools), TechEd has been taken a long long time ago by a worldwide MS conference.

After a couple of informationals at Microsoft attended by around 60 people, we ultimately received 10 applications for four positions to teach at Issaquah High School.

The Advanced Math class did not get enough enrollment to warrant a class, but both AP CS and Web Design had overwhelming responses from the students. So much so that I realized that we might have to go to a college lab assistant model. That's how we ended up with four open positions. Each subject will have a teacher and a lab assistant.

The resume review process was hard to select who we wanted to interview and I felt pretty terrible for having to turn people away from teaching. This will only drive me more into expanding this program down the road. The interview took place on Monday and the four candidates we felt who were best fit for the positions all accepted.

For the next few weeks, I will be getting together with both teaching teams to start on getting text books selected, course laid out etc... I am very excited to work with these four amazing and enthusiastic people who share my passion in technology education.

One more month of school

My one semester long CS class is getting closer to the finish line. The kids have their tic-tac-toeprograms finished. We have started to watch WarGames in class as a reward for their hard work in the past few weeks. Of course, none of the kids have seen the floppy drives or the 300 bits/s acoustically coupled phone modems in the movie. Naturally, Tic-Tac-Toe plays a big role in the movie.

Funnily enough, this week, another Fox show featured Tic-Tac-Toe. A chicken who plays TTT in a riverboat casino that Cleveland has to clean up after.

Up next is making a half adder and full adder using the Radio Shack kits that we just recently got. That should be pretty fun and close out the semester.

EduConnect All Star

So it turns out this TEALS thing is starting to take off. I'm rather giddy about it actually. Anyway, got selected as Microsoft EduConnect's All Star. I will also be in a video at MGX (internal MS sales and marketing conference) and doing an EduConnect webcast as well. Hopefully TEALS will get a lot more exposure this way and get some more momentum inside the company and surrounding schools.

I will be conducting interviews with Issaquah High School for the positions next Monday. Very excited, can't wait to see the demo lessons.

TicTacToe makes it to the Simpsons

On last night's Simpson's (season 21, episode 19), they did a parody of children's games films (I think Monopoly and Battleship will actually be made into movies). Appropriate since the project this semester is TicTacToe.
Some favorite lines:
"The one who controls the center controls the board", Dune reference to He who controls the Spice, controls the Universe?
"I love you RomeO", "I love you JulieX". RomeO get crushed by X shaped star ship, JulieX screams "TicTacNoooooo!".
Anyway, that's relevance for ya. Or at least CS projects and pop culture relevance.

TEALS on MSW!

My Technology education and literacy pilot at MS took a very positive step yesterday. We were on MSW, the Microsoft internal website (see pictures below). The turn out was great, and the room was packed. I think we'll get enough interest to start the pilot next year on the right foot. To be continued...

Evolution of CS class tshirts

Over the past few years of CS teachin', I have had some good class shirts bought / made. The first one is pretty obvious. The kids all wore it during their AP CS test. The scores and TShirts agreed.


Think back to the early 2000's, what can make CS cooler than a Hollister class tshirt? Letting the student know that they should relax during the AP test. This laid back approach to AP test taking also worked out pretty well.

Lastly, this year's CS shirt. The black square thing is a 5 inch floppy. The kids in the class have never seen one. Oh well, at least it's on their shirt. I need one that says coach on it.

CS classroom dynamics

Since I got to teach 2 separate semesters this year, I noticed that class dynamics between the kids affects their learning quite a bit.
The first semester kids were very open and willing to try things, and really into learning about CS. As a result they learned more. The current class of kids were more the traditional good students. They are smart, and great students, but not as open to collaborating with others as the first semester kids. When they get stuck on a problem, they tend to not ask how their classmates approached the problem, but internalize it and wait until I ask them if they are stuck. They are also a little more scared of getting things wrong instead of just trying it out. I'm not sure if this dynamic was there to start with or something I did differently.
Either way, I need to change it and get a more open and collaborative environment going.

TEALS is underway

In addition to teaching, I realized that I really need to scale myself out. The STEM in education problem will not and can not be solved by me alone. So with that in mind, I started a pilot program at Microsoft in conjunction with the Issaquah school district to bring 3 MS employees to teach part time at Issaquah High School.
The plan is to find one teacher for each of the following classes:
- AP CS
- Web Design
- Linear Algebra
I have to say, it is amazing how much the administration makes a difference. The IHS administrators are the most awesome and open minded bunch of guys and gals I know. It is their willingness and flexibility that makes the pilot program possible. We will have internal MS recruiting sessions in the coming weeks. In addition, IHS has also announced the program to the school community at large. I am very excited to say the least.
Oh TEALS stands for Technology Education and Literacy in Schools. Anything with Tech or Ed has already been taken up by MS's annual conference called TechEd. I still remember one year it was in Boston when I was in grad school and everyone had a TechEd backpack on the T...

UPrepTacToe

For the new semester, instead of the Fraction Calculator, the project has been change to a TicTacToe game. While the underlying concepts the students have to apply and implement are very similar, we'll see it does better.
THe transition from Scratch to Java has not been entirely easy. Some students in the class are still having issues with the structure of Java programs. One part is giving it some time, the other is just having them thinking in very clear CS mode. They still thinking in English terms and directly put that down the best they can into Java, instead of filtering it with what methods and techniques they have learned and then putting it down as Java code. Once again, time would correct that, but in a one semester class, there isn't much of that.
I am also toying with the idea of doing a mini-project using the RadioShack hobby kit I used as a Harvard TF to demo binary adders. I had initially considered the easier to use snap on kit, but turns out there just isn't enough real estate on the board to do an adder. So back to the kit with the breadboard...


In a way, I'm using this class to figure out 2 things. One is what a high school level general intro CS class should look like, and what should go into the 1st semester, and what should go into the 2nd. If the adder segment goes will, we will use it again next year.
Oh yeah, UPrep has a 2 week long spring break. I'm not sure how that will affect the project, but we'll see.

From Scratch to Java

So we have now transitioned from Scratch to Java. Picture == 1000 words...

A new semester, new tweaks to class

A new semester has already begun. The students have finished the Scratch portion of course. We are starting to going into Java, however, the students range from Freshmen and Juniors. There is a difference in foundation in the understanding of how computers work and how they think logically. I plan to infuse a bit more of how computers work as we learn Java. Should be interesting and hopefully will turn out well. For example, we are starting to look into how Java primitive ints work underneath the hood. We will see how 32bits limit the positive range up to 2^31-1 before it turns negative etc...

Almost end of 1st quarter update

The kids are doing quite well in Java. The fraction calculator project is well under way. It's interesting to see the moment that something clicks in their mind. They'd be struggling with the whole concept of StringTokenizers and after two or three days, you can see that little light going off. It's pretty cool.
Also, nothing beats actually getting them up on the board to write code to make everything absolutely clear.
Right now, trying to get them to factor out chucks of code in their main method into actual reusable methods.

Scratch as a beginner language in high school

So we spent the first 4 weeks of school learning about CS using Scratch. I think for high school, 3 weeks would have been perfect. The last week, we weren't really learning any new concepts, but just making the projects more complex.

We have started Java, and it is a lot easier to explain a bunch of CS concepts by referring to their equivalents in Scratch. The for loop was an easy one after the students used the repeat if function in Scratch. Same goes for setting variables and conditionals.

Sadly inputs in Java and parsing will be much harder to deal with...

Back in teaching

I am now teaching CS part time, and the course is intended for high school students. It is actually divided into 2 parts, which I have only done as a Teaching Fellow, Scratch to get the kids understand variables, conditionals, loops, message passing, and next week, Java! We'll see how that goes.

CS education (literacy) through the school system

Getting a CS literacy curriculum through the state / district level is the most obvious, and probably the hardest way to get CS into kids' hands.

First of all, changes to the state curriculum is no easy task.  California, of all places, home to the world's 8th largest economy and silicon valley, has no CS curriculum requirement for graduation.  The amount of bureaucracy to get this done will be huge.  The state and school districts will have other priorities, and will face big challenges from teachers unions, parents, other competing programs (the arts for one) for money.  

Working CS in the state curriculum guideline is one thing, then there's the implementation of it at the district level.  Current district level technology directors (if they have one), is more of a position where the objective is to integrating technology into education, not technology education itself.  

Teachers Unions will obviously have a say in this matter as well.  A whole certification program will have to be spooled up.  Guidelines for hiring, and evaluating CS teacher, and people with enough expertise to do so.  Indeed, there will also be a problem of teacher supply.  Imagine during the dotcom bubble, how many CS teachers would have taken the scale instead of jumping ship to industry.

Parents will have many different opinions on this as well.  Perhaps money spent on CS would be better spent on another science, band, art, auto shop.  A whole host of voices saying that why computer science instead of X.  Textbook choice will yet be another matter, which one?  Do we want kids to memorize, or go with constructivism?  Parents will have an opinion on this.  Especially parents in the tech industry.

Well, why would this be a good idea?  The entire infrastructure will already be there for teaching kids CS.  Just add teacher and curriculum.  Once in the state curriculum, every student will have to go through the class for graduation.  That is a huge plus.  There will be standardization, assessment, state funding, etc...

The long range goal for CS education will have to be this.  Despite record number of H1B visas, and ever fewer number of CS grads (economy has something to do with this), the push for STEM, there just isn't a national push for this.  There's no single huge moment like when Russia launched Sputnik that spurred the country on.  

 

Getting CS education into kids' hands, so to speak...

What's the best way to get our school age kids technology literate?

Should we just kinda let it happen through their everyday interactions with it outside the school system? As if by osmosis?

Should we do it in after school programs?

Should we try to get industry to push it into schools though sponsored extra curricular clubs?

Should we try to push it into state wide curriculum?

All of these will have pros and cons, meet various resistance, and constraints.

I have thought about this quite often, and have not come up with a good solution. I will try to break each down in the next few weeks.

US First Robotics on KUOW

This is a refreshing take on the US First competition from the point of view of a proud Mom.
I participated in the competition my final year of school, when the entire thing was just getting off the ground. It's grown quite a bit, I'm very happy to see it so popular.
It's a great example of outside influences helping engineering education in high schools where otherwise there would be none.
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=17349

CS theory, application, and education

I always knew that UC Berkeley has a great CS department, and it was theory heavy.  Apparently the latest US World News rankings agree.  So what does that say about the CS students that Berkeley unleashes into the wild?  I have heard certain knocks about Berkeley EECS grads.  I think mostly it has to do with the purpose of the EECS education.

As great and challenging as the engineering education I received at Berkeley, I feel there are two classes that should have been mandatory for all EECS students (the ones on the CS track anyway).

1.  CS169: Software engineering.  This class should be expanded and perhaps made into a 2 part series.  The real world requires working in project teams that's a part of an even larger group.  We needed to learn the entire software product cycle.  From requirements gathering to complexity and risk management to support and sustained engineering.  

2.  CS160: User interfaces.  No EECS student should be able to graduate without a course in HCI, plain and simple.

I think the Berkeley EECS program should take into consideration that a majority of the graduates will be going into industry rather than aiming for a professorship down the line.