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.

Why relevance in STEM education matters

This cartoon simplifies the issues a little bit, and somewhat stereotypes, but you get the idea...

It's not about the theory, but the application right?

$125,000 teacher salaries

Looks like the founder of the Manhattan GMAT Prep Services founded a school where they pay middle school teacher as if they were b school grads. $125,000 a year, plus $25,000 bonus. The hiring process looks at the teacher's GRE/GMAT scores!

Adjusting for cost of living, $150,000 in NYC is about $120,000 in Seattle. That is two and half times the salary of a new teacher.

The high salary would be able to keep stellar teachers who would otherwise leave teaching for financial reasons, especially if they scored above 90% on the GRE/LSAT/GMAT.

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

Use Assassin's Creed 2 to teach art history

If you've read my previous posts, you know I'm a fan of art history, and I'm always looking for a more fun way to teach it.

Assassin's Creed 2 is a sequel to a very popular, and somewhat violent game, that takes place in Renaissance Italy. I remember one of the hardest things to do in an art history classroom is to visualize space and architechture without actually being there. AC2 fixes that for a fairly large chunk of art history curriculum.

There's gonna be Da Vinci, Florence, and Piazza San Marco, I mean look at the screen shots. You can walk around, kill things, and appreciate the architechture. Sure beats Rick Steves (and I like Rick Steves). This is a much better teaching tool than old slides from architecture books.

Even better, Venice looks like what it should have looked like in the time period.

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.