I have fallen in love with Google forms. I never thought of them as something you would use to conduct formative assessment until this past weekend.  We had our bi-annual CS Principles meeting, and the presenters integrated several 1 - 2 question surveys for us to complete and provide feedback. It was quick and easy!  It is Tuesday, and I have already created 5 forms for my students to fill out.  It has provided me with very quick feedback on what my students are thinking, at what stage of learning they are at, misconceptions that they have, how they are working in groups, what stage their project is in, and most importantly, what they think of my class today!  It is shaping how I present my next class and changing the way I teach.  Excellent tool.

I wanted to share the results of one of the surveys I provided to my CSP students. The survey that students participated in this morning had 2 questions.  

• What was your favorite topic, project or activity we did this year? 
  
• Why was that your favorite? 
  

I really only had 1 negative response, and I am affirmed by the number of students who's favorite topic or project involved some kind of programming. 

This past weekend, I attended the SIGCSE conference in Atlanta, near where I live.  This was the first time I have had the opportunity to attend SIGCSE, and I am so glad that I did. This conference is a phenomenal way to collaborate with CS teachers at all levels. I learned so much this weekend.  

We just finished second semester conferences for my elementary aged children.  In the conference for my daughter Emelia, our teacher began talking about her reading level and reading comprehension.  Time and research has been spent looking at student's ability to read words and their comprehension of the text and we know that these two quantities are not always equal.  Highlighted by the kindergarten teacher's reminder to be sure that Emelia is able to retell the story afterwards, have an understanding of beginning, middle and end of the story, and to further show comprehension through inferences about why things are happening, how characters are feeling, etc. At the end of this conversation, which my husband and I have heard repeatedly as each one of our children has passed through kindergarten, the teacher remarks that she has several children who can read every word in a chapter book, but they have no comprehension of what they have read. 

Isn't this true for computer science too?  Some of our students have the ability to write code, but they have no "coding comprehension".  As I look at some of the drag and drop programs that so many are turning to as a means to incorporate more "coding" into the classroom, I wonder if we are at the same time building "coding comprehension". Are the students really understanding the code that they are writing? Can they explain it? Do they know how to alter it to make it do something new? Can they apply these structures to something new?

I'm currently helping some elementary teachers teach an after school club on coding.  We have been using the code.org curriculum, and the students love it.  It is excellent for the teachers as well, because they do not need a lot of experience in order to use the curriculum with their students.  I believe this program has been a benefit to increasing awareness for computer science, and will definitely increase the number of students taking computer science courses when they arrive in high school.  

As much as I feel this is a benefit, I am concerned that these drag and drop programs and self-guided learning may not be increasing students "coding comprehension". Looking at my own classes where I have students who take an introductory programming class, and then move on to AP, I can see the lack of comprehension from one year to the next. Students who created beautiful Alice projects, are unable to apply the concepts of loops, conditionals and arrays to Java when they get to our AP class. How can we utilize these drag and drop programs as introductory coding tools, and still build code comprehension? Without the comprehension, students are not understanding what they are writing, just like a student who has a low reading comprehension is not understanding what they are reading. 

Just wanted to take some time for my own personal reflection on this course, and my approach to it this year.  Like with all new curriculum, this is truly a growing year.  The grand plans that I had in August, have been implemented with mixed results.  And I don't mind admitting, that next year, when I have a chance to do it all again... I will do it all differently. 

I believe the primary difficulty I am having with this class is that I have tried to compartmentalize the course, and put broad stroke topics (the Big ideas) into units.  They are called BIG ideas for a reason. They don't fit nicely into units.  I have come to realize that it will be better to teach this course utilizing the BIG ideas in all the units.  My approach next year will be a programming approach where the big ideas take on a role in each unit. 

I'm thinking that I will start the year with a unit that focuses on algorithms and writing programs on paper using flowcharts and pseudocode. Providing students an opportunity to explore advance topics without the limitation of a language.  Students often lack problem solving experience.  Devoting a unit to problem solving and algorithms will allow us to continue to utilize these skills as we explore current technology and break down how it works.  This will also prepare students for their performance tasks.  Through this unit, we can apply the Big ideas by studying current technology and how it relates to the Big ideas.  What is the algorithm? How does it use the internet? How does it incorporate data? What abstractions are present? What creative ideas do students have to extend and make this technology better? What problems do they see with this technology and what creative solutions do they have? What impact does this technology have on society? 

Many of my students were disappointed with the first half of the school year. This course was marketed as a programming course, and when we didn't do any programming for the first 1/2 of the semester, they were understandably chomping at the bit. When we moved into Alice 3.0 they were a little bit more satisfied, but it wasn't until we started working Java that they let go of the resentful feelings they had toward my course. My model of CS Principles through programming may not work at every school.  In my district students are exposed to programming during middle school. We have elementary and middle school clubs that are working on programming and robotics. These students are already sold on programming and are eager to expand what they have learned. By not taking a programming approach I fear that I will lose student interest, rather than build interest and build a strong CS program. 

I welcome your response as to your approach to CS Principles and how it is working. And ... as for next year... I'll let you know. 

Crystal

 

When I enter a classroom, one of the first things I notice are posters and wall decoration.  In math classrooms, you will see instructional posters with formulas or shapes  and the order of operations.  You may also see inspirational posters about determination or cool math patterns seen in the world.  In a language arts classroom you will see posters on verbs and nouns, facts and opinions, and cause and effect.  In a foreign language classroom there are posters that labeling the classroom with the equivalent foreign language word.  These posters act as visual reminders and clue for students.  With a class that requires students to assimilate a ton of new vocabulary as well as remembering programming structure, a few posters may be helpful.  

Look for posters on computer science, and they are few and far between. Mainly I find posters on hardware or inspirational posters about careers. These are great.  But I want posters on what I'm teaching.  I want posters that show examples of lines of code.  I want specifically... Java posters. 

So, I've taken my classroom back to elementary school. Besides, we are teaching students everything they need to know about programming and many have no prior knowledge. A little like elementary school.  Walk into any elementary classroom, and there is not a bare spot on the wall. The walls are covered in clues that help students learn the new material.  My classroom is becoming much the same. I purchased large posters that resemble notebook paper and developed a basic class outline for students to follow.  I purchased some wide sentence strips that allowed me to write a single line statements such as how to create an instance of an object or to list the primitive data types. 

The feedback from my students has been very positive. They don't have to dig through their notes to find the structure of something we just learned, and over time, they stop having to look at the posters, and just know the material. I have inspirational posters in my room as well, but these instructional posters, truly let people know what we do in my room.  We aren't just playing games, or making PowerPoint presentations, we are writing programming code.

My students have completed the first of 3 performance assessments that are required during the CS Principles pilot.  The performance task is called Explore.  In this task, students investigate an innovation looking at several aspects: impact of the innovation: social, cultural or economic, the algorithm for how it works, and any abstractions that are applied. Students also create an artifact that represents the innovation and its impact. 

In preparing my students to complete this task they completed a history project. Each student was assigned a person of significance in the computer science community from Ada Lovelace to Mark Zuckerberg. They researched the persons' innovation as developed an infographic that represented the positive and negative social impact of the innovation. This is very much what students needed to do for the PT Explore piece.  Students struggled with seeing the negative of the innovation. They are so in love with technology, it is hard for them to recognize, for example, that they are more sedentary because they play video games instead of playing outside. Many students had an easier time with Facebook, because unfortunately they have seen first hand the effects of cyberbullying. In addition to creating an infographic, students had to write a paper about their person. 

What I found extremely interesting when looking at their projects and grading them is how much better students answered the questions when they didn't try to write an essay. When students answered the questions individually, their answers were more focused and they were less likely to skip a question. It made grading much easier too. For future performance tasks, I will be recommending students not try to write an essay. 

My students also had difficulty with creating an artifact that addressed the question.  I don't believe the directions were as clear as they could have been. The development committee has since addressed this and have release a new version that clearly states what they need to do for the artifact. I applaud the development committee for so quickly addressing this issue. 

Performance tasks can be found at csprinciples.org. 

I'm a little fired up tonight.  I should be using my weekend to catch up on some chores: fold the laundry, wash the floor, make my bed.  I should be working on grading some papers. I was hoping to be able to get around to writing some curriculum that I'm working on or aligning our state IDT standards to ECS. All these are on my to do list and I had promised myself that this was going to be a productive weekend.  Well, this blog post just couldn't wait. I don't have all the answers nor have I done any real research on this topic, none the less, I hope that you chime in with your opinion. 

It all started with a quiet game of Moncala with my 5 year old daughter Emelia. We have a wooden Moncala set with real stones and sat at the kitchen table to play.  It is Saturday night, and our children have declared Saturday night game night. Great idea!  It is just Emelia and I this weekend, so we played Moncala instead of the traditional family game of Monopoly.  I usually win more than I lose when playing any games with my kids.  I don't believe in letting them win. I'll give them tips along the way, but only after they've made a bad decision. They can learn from it for next time, but I'm not playing to lose. I play to win!!! Always have. Sorry kids. Well tonight, I lost. Not once, not 1/2 the games.  I lost 5 out of 6 games to my 5 year old!!! She was strategic in her playing.  She was thoughtful.  She lost the second game to me and was determine that I wasn't going to win any more games. She was a problem solver, a mathematician. I told her as much.  I said, "You are a great strategic player and that is going to make you an excellent problem solver someday." 

I bragged on my child on Facebook, and included the fact that she is being seen as average in her class.  All satisfactory on her report card, no excellent.  I know what people are thinking. I'm just one of those Mom's who thinks my kid is great. Everyone thinks their kid deserves all E's. Someone mentioned, maybe she just doesn't apply it at school.  I don't think so.  Well, that isn't why I'm upset.  I know kindergarten grades don't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, or do they?

This past week, I started recruiting for AP CS A. I utilize AP Potential which is accessed through the collegeboard.  AP Potential uses PSAT data to determine a student's likelihood of passing an AP exam.  I've used this process for many years, but this is the first time that I was so struck by the fact that out of the 158 students identified as having 70% potential of scoring a 3, 4 or 5 on the AP Computer Science A exam, only 60 of them were female. How am I supposed to build a class with a 50 / 50 ratio of girls to boys when my pool is only about 37 / 63? And what data are they using? Math and English scores. So this means that females are not only being left behind in the field of CS, but also potentially math and English. This is why I say, lack of females in CS is a symptom of a much larger problem. 

So, I wonder, where does this start? I have 3 children, 2 boys and 1 girl. I will admit that teacher conferences are dreaded at our house.  We don't want to hear again how our boys call out answers, and the long list of other behavioral grievances their teachers have, all nicely sandwiched together between glowing comments about how smart they both are.  Our boys are both in the gifted program scoring very high marks on standardized tests in both math and language arts as well as science. Our older son is in both advance math and advanced language arts. These advanced classes have helped to keep them engaged in school so that the behavior is tolerable. As parents we are grateful. As an educator, I know that the odds that I had 2 gifted kids and 1 average kid is not likely.

Teacher conferences for our daughter have been very different. Pleasant actually.  We had conferences about her in preschool and in kindergarten. We delight in the fact that she is so well liked by her peers and teachers. That she is helpful and sweet. She is dependable and often asked to help the teacher distribute papers or complete other tasks. She's a doll! We think so too, but she is also smart.  She potty trained herself at 22 months old, and was speaking in full sentences while her peers grunted and learned sign language to communicate. She taught herself to tie shoes when she didn't even have any shoes of her own to tie. She is excellent at math. She is creative and tells the most detailed and elaborate stories. And lets not forget how she just creamed in 5 games of Moncala. But her brilliance is not recognized because in comparison to her brothers, she, like most girls, is compliant. Always has been. 

Are our daughters missing out because they are too compliant? too nurturing? too mature? As an educator, we know that when students are bored, they get into trouble.  To this end boys are offered extra challenges to occupy them when they have completed tasks early. Girls are asked to pass back papers. Could this be the root of a much bigger problem? Is the message we are sending one that communicates subconsciously to girls that they are not smart enough for these challenges? 

Happy National Computer Science Education Week!!
Everyone is talking about Code.org's Hour of Code national event!  I hosted a cluster wide event for the Hour of Code on Monday, December 9th.  Our cluster consists of 4 elementary schools, 2 middle schools and 1 high school. We are working toward becoming a STEM / STEAM school, so this type of event fits in perfectly, and our cluster principals were very excited about it. 

We broke the event into 2 separate hours. The first hour was for elementary school students only.  We had hands-on activities as well as labs available for computer activities. Four labs were full of parents and students. It made for a very fun family activity.  Elementary and middle school students preregistered for the event by filling out a Google form. 

For the hands-on activities, students worked with binary numbers, doing decoding, binary bracelets, binary magic card tricks, and binary tiles. We also built a huge flowchart on the floor. Students walked through the program, flipping coins and rolling dice to determine their path and whether or not they were "Stuck in a Loop".  There was an area where students decoded a fax message, and also acted like robots, following directions to stack cups. Approximately 85 students and their families attend the elementary hour. We had a lot of high school students working as volunteers to run the hands-on activities and give directions. 

Our second hour was for middle school and high school students. We had approximately 50 student participants and families. They were able to work in our labs on the tutorials. 

This was a very successful event for our school. Our students received a lot of praise for the way they worked with the elementary school students.  The next day several of them said how much fun they had just spending time with these excited 3rd - 5th graders. Best of all, computer science awareness has risen in our community. 

Next year, we are planning to combine the elementary and middle school students together in the evening, and hold our hour of code event for high school during the day by setting up laptops in our lunch area as well as our media center. We didn't have as large of of turn out for high school students and feel we will reach more students this way. 

These first few weeks of school have felt like a blur.  It is funny to think that I have been back teaching students for a month now, and my northern counterparts are just now posting back to school pictures of their kids on Facebook!  That used to be me, but I'm not jealous come Memorial Day and they still have a month to go. But I digress.

This new CS Principles course that I have been piloting has taken off like a rocket. I started the year with 74 and ended the first week with 96.  Needless to say, we are always moving. We have completed a few collaborative projects so far that have really impressed me.  Most recently, my students created infographics on famous computer scientists.  They turned out great.  I haven't had a chance to read their papers yet, that will be my weekend light reading.  I can't wait.  I was observed the other day while they were putting these projects together, and what a beautiful thing it is to have an administrator ask a student about their project, and the student is able to speak intelligently about their computer science person and what their contribution is to the field of CS. And best part... it was all them. They researched these individuals and formed their own opinions on the work that was done and its impact on our society today.

Most recently, we have been creating a Google site for all the AWESOME projects that they have been working on. These will be their student portfolios that they will add to and revise throughout the year. Currently these projects are private, and shared only with those who have the link. I have created a private site that I have linked their projects so that I can evaluate and give feedback.  It is my hope that at the end of the year, students will have some awesome projects to show off to their parents and friends. They should leave with a collection of work that shows all that they have learned this school year. 

After 15 years of teaching, I have had one of my best ideas EVER.  I thought of it last year when we were hearing more and more about the requirement of teaching soft skills in our CTE classes. I decided I would start the year by shaking the hand of every student that walked into my room, every day. How can I child feel unwelcome, unloved, uncared about, feel like you don't like them, when you give them a genuine smile, a genuine greeting and a hand shake? 

I know I'm not the first to do this with their students.  A few months after thinking I had the BEST idea EVER, I visited the middle school classroom of Mr. Rod Hames. He teaches in my cluster, and I like to visit him a couple of times a year to see what cool things he's doing. I arrived in the middle of a class, and at the bell changed, Mr. Hames went into the hall and greeted each of his students with a hand shake and a smile.  WOW! It was very powerful. Mr. Hames had an interesting take on the idea.  He said to me that he had read some where that some students go all day without any human contact. How sad is that.

So, I've come out of my own little shell.  I have pushed back the nagging thought that the students are going to think I'm strange, and I have greeted them with a handshake and a smile.  I started on registration day.  I greeted the students first, their parents second. I'm sure some parents were taken a back, as they stood there with their hands stretched out, and I reached for their child's hand first.  But you know what, right from the beginning I want my students to know that while I'm going to work with their parents, they are the bigger part of the team.  They are why I go to work every day!

When I went over my classroom norms and syllabus, there was a constant theme.  The theme that was echoed to us by our principal at the start of school.  She said we needed a giant dose of positivity.  Consequently, my supply list included (after tissues and a ream of copy paper) determination, positive attitude, creativity and a SMILE.  My norms were very much the same.  Be curtious, be respectful, do your best, be determined and have a good attitude, AND

...greet me at the door with a hand shake and a smile.