CS Resources Abound But There’s Still a Crisis in CS Education

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

Late last week I attended and spoke at the Wisconsin Mathematics Council Annual Meeting at Green Lake.  They allowed me to speak twice about computer science.  In fact, we are lucky enough to have a math organization that encourages a group of us current and former CS teachers from around the state to put together a strand of sessions.  We were able to pull together 4 other individuals to talk on a variety of CS topics.

One of the topics I explored with 10 interested attendees was entitled “Resources Supporting Computer Science and Information Technology” with the description “In recent years, many useful resources have become available to both support schools developing computer science curricula and for teachers to teach these courses. We’ll explore materials available from CSTA, NCWIT, ACM, ISTE and other groups. The resources address a range of activities including creating a program, recruiting students and supporting and enhancing quality curriculum for high schools

My intent was to talk about resources from the four groups mentioned and then move into more specific resources including languages, language environments, curricula available, videos, mobile app development and a bunch of other stuff.  As it turns out we spent nearly all of the time on the NCWIT and CSTA resources.  Fortunately, I had a number of the resources to give to the attendees. I have a wiki on which I have all of the highlighted resources referenced with links.  At the top of the wiki I also have the set of slides I pulled together for this part as well as the second part.  If you go to http://ncwitcstaresources.pbworks.com you can get both parts of the presentation and the set of links.  This will also lead you to the second part http://csitresources.pbworks.com for all of the many items I culled from the monthly newsletter I write for ISTE/SIGCT (SIG for Computing Teachers).  Actually, if you want to get at those issues, you can click here http://sigct.iste.wikispaces.net and find not only the issues to this school year but a link to the previous 5 years of newsletters.

How’s that for unabashed self-promotion.  All free all of the time.

The next day I did a session with the more evocative title  “A National Crisis: The State of Computer Science and Information Technology in Schools and Future Workforce Projections”.  The description for the session was “This session will explore the trends in the workforce for computing specialists as defined by the U.S. Department of Labor, and look at the pipeline to fill the nearly 1.5 million positions that will be coming available over the next six to eight years. Then we’ll look at approaches to deal with this problem along with resources available.”

I opened the session with the slides developed by Cameron Wilson from ACM which highlight the incredible needs for Computing Specialist (US Dept of Labor term) individuals and the continued bad though slightly improving state of CS in middle and high schools (again I had about 10 attendees, some from the previous session, others new).

Aside from raising some eyebrows with the information, part way into this session I asked the attendees to sit in pairs and either take one of the CSTA posters available for them and come up with a lesson around the poster; or they could take the policy brochure and begin planning an advocacy event for a parents’ council or school board meeting.  During that time I heard and shared some incredible stores of schools just eliminating all CS courses because they thought it was enough for the students to learn to use Word and PowerPoint and, oh by the way, most programming jobs are overseas anyway!!!

Hard to believe that we still hear those kinds of statements and beliefs, but I guess that only means we have a bunch more work to do.  As an anecdote to ponder, I did point out that I sit on an IT Advisory Board for a large community college and one of the large employers of software developers announced that they’re moving all of the mobile app development back here from overseas because of much higher cost than earlier thought.  More of that is coming.

If you’re interested in the presentation slides and the wiki, you can go to http://expandingcswisconsin.pbworks.com  for that information right at the top of the wiki.  There’s other stuff there too which you might find interesting.

Onward and Upward!

 

 

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CSTA 2013 Conference – Excellent Learning and Network Opportunity

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

For over a decade the CSTA Conference (formerly the CS and IT Symposium) has been an excellent forum for K-12 teachers to network and learn.  I’ve been to nearly all of them and always look forward to attending.  I have learned much, made many acquaintances and renewed many friendships at the dozen of these Symposia/Conferences I’ve attended.  Well worth my time and I hope yours too.

This year the CSTA Conference is on July 15 and 16, 2013 at the Boston Marriott Quincy, Quincy MA.  July 15 will feature Hands-on Workshops and July 16 will feature Keynotes and Breakouts.

From Dave Reed on the CSTA Board:

You are cordially invited to attend the 2013 CSTA Annual Conference (formerly known as the Computer Science & Information Technology (CS&IT) Conference). This year the CSTA Conference is on July 15 and 16, 2013 at the Boston Marriott Quincy, Quincy MA.  July 15 will feature Hands-on Workshops and July 16 will feature Keynotes and Breakouts.

The CSTA annual conference is a professional development opportunity for computer science and information technology teachers who need practical, classroom-focused information to help them prepare their students for the future.

Learning and Networking Opportunities:

Take advantage of this opportunity for relevant professional development!

  • Explore issues and trends relating directly to your classroom
  • Network with top professionals from across the country and around the world
  • Interact with other teachers to gain new perspectives on shared challenges

Some of this year’s session topics include:

  • AP Computer Science
  • CSTA’s K-12 Computer Science Standards
  • Equity & Diversity
  • Mobile Applications
  • Robotics

Act now to register for the 2013 CSTA Annual Conference at:

 www.cstaconference.org

Pre-registration is required and will be accepted for the first 300 teachers. The registration deadline is June 16, 2013. Also, please note that you must complete the payment portion of the online form in order to be fully registered for the conference!

Thanks to the generous donations of our sponsors, the registration fee of $60 (+$60 per workshop) includes lunches, resource materials, and closing session raffle.

Please note that all workshops are “bring your own laptop” and that registration is limited to 30-40 participants, so be sure to register early to get your workshop choice. Workshop registrations are non-transferable and it will not be possible to change workshops onsite. Registration and workshop fees are non-refundable.

The 2013 CSTA Annual Conference is made possible by the generous support of Microsoft, Microsoft Research, Oracle, and the Anita Borg Institute.

Please join us for this exciting event!

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Context-free Content

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

Recently, I ran into an article in Education Week entitled “The Math Standards and Moving Beyond the Worksheet.”  In it a high school mathematics teacher (Algebra 2 and AP Calculus) described the laminated poster she had in her classroom where all of the state standards were listed.  She described how as she and her students progressed through the day-by-day plan of the sections of the textbook, crossing off each standard covered at the end of each lesson.  The more she taught this way, the more she realized that “teaching math” and “covering textbook sections” were not synonymous.

Ultimately her teaching experiences have caused her to ask “do the students really have a solid understanding of the mathematics they are using?  And, more importantly, do they understand why they’re using it?”

I think you know where I’m going with this.  Too often in computer science courses (and in fact in other IT courses that are offered in high school and I dare say in post-secondary) are planned so that a certain amount of material is “covered”.  Students get to practice modifying and writing code but often have no clue why they are writing this code.  They get to memorize some syntax but don’t understand what they’re memorizing.  There’s little of no context within which their work in writing code can be placed.  One might call this “context-free content”.  I think the author of the article is saying the same thing, but for mathematics.

Another way to look at this is to relate it to G. Polya’s four-step problem solving approach:

  • Understand the problem
  • Design a solution
  • Solve the problem
  • Assess your solution

Too often particularly in my early years of teaching computer science, I would “understand” the problem for them (put it in simplistic terms, over-simplifying), then with them I would “design” a solution (though even these simplistic problems might have had several approaches, we ended up with one).  They’d “solve” the problem (of course the detailed design encouraged almost identical solutions) and I would develop the test cases to see if their program “worked.”

There is little ownership by the students, little opportunity for real insight into any of these steps, little reason to learn and understand the programming techniques  beyond the next test.

I know I had to work hard to get  my students to expand their involvement beyond coding something that either we or I had understood, designed and assessed.  It wasn’t always easy but helping students find a context for their work with more realistic problems and situations always paid off with students being able to apply what they learned later in the course and more importantly in later courses.  Open-ended problems  helps out a lot.

Think about helping students understand the “why” along with the “how” of computer programming, especially when you’re given a course and a text to “cover” with a group of students.

Find a context for the content.

(full URL for the article:  http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/03/27/26crowley.h32.html?tkn=LNSFw%2FMoqekT4IEeYBSFfusZ4rOHVCeJYo%2F0&cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS1 )

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Chocolate flavoured CS Education Research

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Andrew.LuxtonReilly

With Easter just around the corner and two young kids at home, my mind has inevitably turned to chocolate.

And chocolate, inevitably, reminds me of how hard it can be to conduct education research.

A few years back, I submitted a paper to SIGCSE and one of the comments I received back from a reviewer has stuck with me ever since. I’ve completely forgotten the details of the paper, but it presented some kind of teaching approach that could be used in the classroom. I had collected student survey data and reported that students enjoyed the experience. The reviewer dismissed the evaluation as largely irrelevant and stated: “If I gave out chocolate in my class then students would enjoy that too!”

Enjoyment is an important consideration, since the more that students enjoy something, the more likely they are to actually do it! But what they *do* has to be shown to be beneficial.

The more time that passes since I received that comment, the more I value it. With the perspective of distance, I’ve even come to use it as a yard-stick to measure my own research and that of others. Sure students enjoyed it – but is there evidence of some deeper and more significant benefit, or is it just chocolate? Students enjoy chocolate, but it isn’t a healthy option – too much of a good thing leaves no room for vegetables. What evidence do we have that the learning activity / software tool actually helps learning?

I recently pitched an experiment to a colleague of mine. I suggested that we could show that chocolate helped people learn how to program. In our classes, we have a big attendance problem, with less than 50% of students attending most of the time. I suggested that a free chocolate bar to each person might be sufficient motivation to get them into the class. If indeed, the chocolate was enough of a motivator to attend, and if lectures actually help students learn anything, then the class average might be higher than in previous years. In other words, offering students chocolate might produce a significant improvement in learning – perhaps a greater positive impact on learning than anything else I’ve tried recently. Unfortunately, getting the project funded is proving difficult.

I see a lot of papers that show how much student enjoy a given approach / tool. Some of them even show how it improves learning. They always make me think of chocolate.

Andrew

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Employability Skills – Cooperation Between a School and its Business Advisory Board

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

Milwaukee Washington HS of IT has an advisory board made up of about 20 representatives from area businesses and post-secondary institutions. These members are focused on IT and engineering occupations.  We meet monthly throughout the year.  Based on a retreat we held last August, 2012 we decided in conjunction with the principal and several teacher leaders from their Learning Team that our focus this year would be on employability skills development not only for the students in the IT and engineering programs but for the entire school.

A committee of the advisory board worked on ideas to implement this.  As a full board we had a joint meeting with the entire faculty to elicit ideas from them.   As a result this committee developed an Employability Skills poster which you can see here (MilwaukeeWashingtonPoster_FinalPrinterArtwork).   One key element of the poster is the bottom right area of the poster.  You’ll see the logos of the organizations who make up the board.  All of these organizations support the contents of this poster and in fact several even asked for a copy or two to post in their organization.

During the development, the principal and the committee wanted to make sure this poster would be highly visible throughout the school.  The goal was to produce enough copies of a great looking poster so that there would be one in each classroom and also posters in the hallways, guidance area, main office, at the entrances …. everywhere.

At the suggestion of one of the business board members on the committee, a teacher idea workbook was also developed.  This is a folder with a page for each of the six main employability skills areas, some examples from the business and post-secondary community along with space for classroom implementation ideas.

In early March, 2013, we had the rollout of the posters and the teacher workbook at another joint meeting of the Advisory Board and the staff.  During this hour-long professional development session the teachers were divided into small groups to take one of the six areas and brainstorm ideas on how to incorporate that idea into the units they’re currently teaching.

The hour went very well.  The teachers appreciated the poster and shared some exciting ideas they already had to move this forward.  Since that time, another board member (a retired faculty member who like me taught at WHS) has been visiting each individual teacher.  For some teachers who didn’t make the PD, she’s spent time explaining the purpose and discussing ideas with them.  For others she has been encouraging their further involvement in the use of this poster with students.  For all teachers she’s been working to have them plan on a speaker from the advisory board to address one or more of the topics.

While this has taken a big effort to move this forward, we are already seeing success in classrooms.  I hope you’ll agree that the development of these skills are not only important for all kids but are or should be an important aspect of computer science and information technology curricula and classrooms. MilwaukeeWashingtonPoster_FinalPrinterArtwork

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Networking: You’ll Never Walk Alone

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

I just returned from another excellent SIGCSE conference, this time in what became snowy Denver.  I had several days to catch up on new ideas, get refreshed on old ones and I even heard presentations that reaffirmed ideas for me.  However, for me the most important reason to attend conferences like this is the people-to-people networking that happens.

For most of us involved in teaching computing in the K-12 arena, we often are the only computing teacher in our school, maybe even in the entire district.  In a professional CS sense, we are alone.  While I suppose for some this is ok, I prefer to have one or more individuals to bounce ideas off of.  Also, having your own group of professional friends who are doing similar things – a professional community for yourself – is always really useful and fun.

But, you ask, how can I make that happen for me?  Today there are any number of ways to become part of a community and develop your own professional linkages. E-mail based listserves (mailing lists) are available within our CS community.

One such list is available to SIGCSE http://sigcse.org members.   There are lots of K-12 teachers on this list and there has been some great conversations recently.  Joining SIGCSE is relatively inexpensive ($25US) and with it comes other noteworthy benefits.  Membership here as in other groups I’ll mention is worldwide.

CSTA http://csta.acm.org has a newly hatched listserve which is only for its worldwide membership of over 13,000.  Joining CSTA is free and we like free.  I would encourage you to spend a little time to join CSTA.  There are a number of benefits like getting the bi-monthly newsletter CSTA Voice and having easy access to lots of good materials for your classroom.

Usually, when I join a list, I read the list for a few weeks to get a handle on the kinds of topics being discussed.  By all means, though, post a question or an answer at least occasionally.  You’ll begin to see people who may be in a similar situation or who regularly provide you with answers to questions you’ve had (whether or not you’ve actually posted them).  You’ve started to build your own community!

If you join CSTA, you can also look for additional networking opportunities by clicking on CSTA Chapters under About CSTA.  See if there’s a CSTA Chapter in your area and make a contact to see what they’re up to. Many exist (like 45 at last count).  Find out about their upcoming meetings, about their website, about upcoming online opportunities.

In Wisconsin, we just had our first meeting and about 20 came for an all day Saturday workshop from several leaders in Chicago dealing with the Exploring CS curriculum.  We had a great workshop, but also had a chance to meet one another, share some experiences and in general begin to figure out how we can keep this networking going both electronically as well as f2f.  (I’m finally getting into these texting abbreviations)!

One other worldwide CS community you can join is the APCS Teacher Community https://apcommunity.collegeboard.org/web/apcompsci.    You only have to sign up  to reap the rich benefits of this group. While it is primarily focused on the AP CS-A course, this is also open to educators interested in APCS and computer science education in general.  Over the years there have been many discussions that might be very useful to you while trying to set up a computing program at your school, choosing resources, even on topics like recruiting and good software to involve middle school kids.  I would encourage you to set up an account (click on the link below the Sign In Block and just above the “Meet the Moderator block).  If you create an account with a non-school domain, the moderator will be asking you for your connection to education.  (It’s me – I’ll be nice to you, though).

At the beginning I mentioned the SIGCSE conference in Denver. Being able to attend conferences like SIGCSE where you can network with both high school and college-level individuals offers an excellent opportunity to continue and develop these relationships.  There are other conferences that focus on K-12 teachers:

the CSTA Annual Conference
< http://csta.acm.org/ProfessionalDevelopment/sub/CSTAConference.html>

the ISTE International conference
< http://www.iste.org/conference/iste-conference>

There are plenty of opportunities to network at any of these conferences.  I should say that the ISTE conference is mostly about using computers.  There are a number of sessions on computer science and information technology, STEM, robotics and other areas of interest to computer science teachers.  If you’re also involved with infusing technology in your building, there plenty more sessions at ISTE for you.

Conferences like these are spectacularly rich in networking opportunities.  Of course, one downside is that these cost some real money that most school districts don’t have.  So take advantage of the many online opportunities I’ve mentioned which are either low or no cost and will help you develop that professional network you’ll likely need at some point in your teaching career…and if you can attend either a local, national or international conference at least once for a great experience.

As the song from the play Carousel says “…and you’ll never walk alone…”

 

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Meritocracy – Are We There Yet?

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

I’ve recently come across two well known individuals in the IT world who believe that the IT entrepreneurial and employment worlds are a meritocracy, that gender and race don’t matter, only the quality matters.  One of the articles is on the blog at the Women 2.0 site http://women2.com  where the COO from Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg was interviewed for an article entitled “Sheryl Sandberg Explains Why Younger Women Should Pursue Tech Careers”< http://www.women2.com/we-need-more-women-in-tech-heres-why/>   Ms. Sandberg made excellent comments, but while her comment supporting “It’s a meritocracy” is accurate, I really think it’s delusional.   In fact in her next quotation in the article she actually spells out why.

I think that while this is true for women who get to that level, there are way too many instances where all kinds of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) prejudices abound not only for adult, but even moreso for those much younger females.  The roadblocks can be immense and can start at an early age.  But even these hurdles, some subtle, some overt, continue right through K-12, into college and into the workplace.

Examples abound like the woman sitting in her first engineering class in a local university being told by the professor in front of the class that she should withdraw for this program and allow her seat to be taken by someone who will more likely succeed (this was about 10 years ago and this woman is now the successful owner of a highly regarded engineering firm); or the young woman who won a national Award for Aspirations going to the engineering department to enroll in her college courses and being told that the biology department is down the hall.  And this is 2013, folks!

The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT, http://ncwit.org) focuses on these problems and continues to do a great job finding and developing solutions. Most recently they’ve released “Girls in IT: The Facts”  < http://www.ncwit.org/resources/girls-it-facts > and along with the report an excellent infographic < http://www.ncwit.org/infographic/3435>.  I would encourage you to take a look if you’re at all interested in this idea.

Another article on Women 2.0 by Jessica Stillman entitled “Women in Tech:  What has and hasn’t changed in 15 years” < http://www.women2.com/women-in-tech-what-has-and-hasnt-changed-in-15-years/> references similar issues and talks about some solutions including focusing on K-12.

Returning to the original Sheryl Sandberg interview article, to me, if Ms. Sandberg were to look around (and I’ll bet she’s aware of this), tell me that it’s a meritocracy when there are few startups run by women, when there are very few corporations with women in high positions like hers, when there are so many girls in the NCWIT Aspirations Awards essays that talk about all kinds of issues they’ve had to dodge as they try really hard to pursue computer science and IT.  Too many give up and therein lies a problem.  No meritocracy here, at this level.

If a woman manages to get past these and many other hurdles, then the situation and landscape probably is much closer to a meritocracy for startups and venture capitalists who fund them.

I mentioned at the beginning there was another individual who has recently written about meritocracy in the IT industry.  That would be Jason Calacanis, who wrote an essay where he says “the tech and tech media world are meritocracies. To fall back to race as the reason why people don’t break out in our wonderful oasis of openness is to do a massive injustice to what we’ve fought so hard to create.” While he’s specifically addressing race, I picked up on meritocracy.

I think he’s accurate in stating “our core beliefs: 1. anyone can do it, 2. innovation can come from anywhere and 3. product rules.” He wrote this post with good intentions, but…

When I hear meritocracy I hear just another excuse – the tech industry does (for the most part) look at new ideas on the basis of merit, but the problem is those in underrepresented groups never managing to make it past the many barriers that continue to exist.  The barriers may be overt or (mostly) subtle, but they’re certainly there at least for now.  I think things are getting better, particularly the last half dozen or so years. Thankfully groups like NCWIT, CSTA and ACM are exposing the problems and working toward solutions.

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Obtaining Ethics Approval For Research

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Andrew.LuxtonReilly

Like most education researchers, I have had bad experiences trying to obtain Ethics approval for proposed research projects.  I’ve had a number of applications approved with only minor changes, some with major changes and a couple rejected entirely.  I’ve complained to colleagues about the need to jump through these irritating bureaucratic hoops and received some sympathy.

I became acutely aware of how many other researchers were struggling with the Ethics approval process when I was presenting a paper at ICER in 2008.  During question time, the topic of Ethics approval was raised and I mentioned that we had obtained “blanket” approval to look at exam scripts (and any other exam data, such as results) of any student within our department.  We could use this data to answer any interesting research question that might arise, without having to seek consent from individual students.  I explained that it was considered to be archival data that we (as teachers in the department) already had access to, so no special consent was required.

That got a round of applause.  Not for the research, but for the ethics approval we obtained.  I must admit to being somewhat surprised at the time, but having had numerous discussions about various Ethics Committees since, I am no longer surprised.  Feelings about the Ethics approval process run deep.  And they are not positive feelings.

I continued to complain to my colleagues about why the Ethics committee held up my research for petty, inconsequential reasons.  I lamented the fact that the committee obviously consisted of idiots!

Then I became one of them.  I joined the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee in the middle of 2012.

I still complain to my colleagues.  But now I complain about why researchers can’t follow simple instructions, and why they submit incomplete and inconsistent applications. I lament the fact that so many researchers are idiots!

That is not entirely true.  The statistics produced by the Ethics committee in my institution show approximately a third of applications are approved immediately, a third are approved on condition that minor changes are made, and a third have major issues that require resubmission.  The majority of applications have no major problems.  But there are also some very poorly thought out proposals.

I’ve come to think of the Ethics approval process as being essential.  It acts (in part) as a gatekeeper to make sure researchers are not likely to do something that has serious unanticipated consequences.  No doubt that doesn’t apply to your research – it certainly doesn’t apply to my research, which is always without risk to anyone involved.  But it does apply to some of the research.

I haven’t been on the committee very long, and I have already seen some applications that make me wonder.  For example, one researcher (from Fine Arts) wanted to take photographs of children for a photographic study on identity.  The photographs were to be taken in the researchers own home and required the children to undergo numerous costume changes.  Once taken, the photographs were to become the property of the researcher, to edit/modify as they desired and could be sold at a later date.  Another researcher wanted to interview workers that had been injured on building sites (and would assure the workers of confidentiality), but then intended to show the interview transcripts to the company health and safety officer for editing and approval before they were used in research.

Could anything go wrong in either of these projects?  Would you approve them?

 

Andrew Luxton-Reilly

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Politicians and educational reform

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Amber.Settle

The president of the United States just started his second term, and Mr. Obama has spent a lot of time recently making his agenda for that term clear.  In an interesting twist for computing educators, part of what he’s mentioned is relevant to us.  He’s put forth the idea that computer science should be required in high school, with the goal of making students producers and not just consumers of digital media, games, etc.  The ACM recently circulated a shortened clip of his remarks available, but a longer video is also available.  People who have worked on getting more computer science into the K-12 curriculum are naturally excited by this development and not without reason.  The curriculum in the UK was recently revamped with the support of the education secretary to focus more on computer science, and computing educators in the U.S. would no doubt like to see politicians there help in reforming K-12 curricula in a similar fashion.  Politicians can also make computing professionals lives more difficult with poorly thought-out legislation, such as The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act that was recently re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.  An article discussing that bill is highly critical of it.

Given that politicians can have such an influence on policy that impacts computing educators, it seems important that we try to influence their actions.  The ACM recognizes this and has several sub-organizations that work on public policy.  But as an individual computing educator, it’s interesting to think about what we can do to influence policy makers.  The answer to that question will likely differ by country, but it seems like it’s worth the time and effort.

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What? Change the way we teach CS???

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein

On a recent Saturday, I had the distinct privilege of being part of one of the workshops being offered to Chicago Public School teachers who are teaching the Exploring Computer Science curriculum http://exploringcs.org. This was a terrific opportunity for me to experience what I had heard about a number of times from, among others, the authors Joanna Goode and Gail Chapman. You can get an excellent feel for this curriculum and how it fits in a larger scheme of change in CS instruction by reading the articles Beyond Access: Broadening Participation in High School Computer Science in the current (December, 2012) issue of ACM Inroads; also Beyond Curriculum: The Exploring Computer Science Program in the June 2012 issue of ACM Inroads

What makes this workshop very different from others I’ve attended is the focus not only on content but also on pedagogy. This was a computer science workshop where instead of just hearing about and playing with content, we were mostly exercising and (for most of us) challenging our thinking about teaching computer science. Much of the six-hour workshop was spent in small teams of 3-4 teachers who were given a lesson we (at least I) hadn’t seen before. We had about 90 minutes to come up with our approach to teaching this inquiry-based lesson and then later some of the teams were chosen and given the opportunity to actually teach our 40-minute lesson to the “class”. The beauty of this is that we didn’t just talk about inquiry-based teaching but actually practiced it among our peers.

The content itself was not difficult (and this is true for much of the course), but the change in pedagogy challenges the root behaviors of most teachers. The course lessons are set up to avoid lecturing as much as possible and to provide an interesting, engaging problem setting for the students to work on in pairs or groups. Collaboration, reflection, evaluation, higher order thinking skills are among the key elements.In fact there were three words that the workshop leaders wrote on the easel: Equity, Inquiry, Content. This really sums up the intent of this very successful curriculum. Each lesson in ECS is focused around these.

In fact, after reading, hearing and finally experiencing this curriculum, I’m convinced that all computer science, and probably all courses ought to be taught in this engaging manner. The key is the pedagogy – the shift in the instructional paradigm away from what most of us do now.

We aren’t succeeding in reaching lots of kids with the way we’re teaching computer science today. This approach provides a pathway to huge change in the classroom. We have to change to succeed.

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