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Steve Kelly

What would an exceptional middle and high school computer science curriculum include? -... - 48 views

  • What would an exceptional middle and high school computer science curriculum include?
  • This isn't a complete answer, but one thing the very first introductory classes should require is that the students turn off all their electronic computers and actually learn to walk through  algorithms with a computer that exists only on paper. (Or, I suppose, a whiteboard or a simulator.) This exercise would give the students a grounding in what is going on inside the computer as a very low level.My first computer programming class in my Freshman year of high school was completely on paper. Although it was done because the school didn't have much money, it turned out to be very beneficial.Another class I had in high school, that wouldn't normally be lumped into a Computer Science curriculum but has been a boon to my career, was good old Typing 101.
  • If you followed the CS Unplugged curriculum your students would know more about CS than most CS grads:http://csunplugged.orgIt's a really great intro to basic computer science concepts and very easy for students to understand.  Best of all you don't even need a computer per student if your school doesn't have the budget,
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  • For younger students, I think that the ability to make something professional-looking, like a real grown-up would, is paramount.  Sadly, I think this means that LOGO and BASIC aren't much use any more*.
  • So, we have a few choices.  You can try to write phone apps that look just like real phone apps, design interactive websites that look just like real interactive websites, or do something with embedded systems / robotics.  Avoid the temptation to make these things into group projects; the main thing every student needs to experience is the process of writing code, running it, debugging it, and watching the machine react to every command.
  • It is important to consider what an 11 to 18-year old is familiar with in terms of mathematics and logical thinking. An average 11-year old is probably learning about fractions, simple cartesian geometry, the concept of units, and mathematical expressions. By 15, the average student will be taking algebra, and hopefully will have the all-important concept of variables under his/her belt. So much in CS is dependent on solid understanding that symbols and tokens can represent abstract concepts, values, or algorithms. Without it, it's still possible to teach CS, but it must be done in a very different way (see Scratch).
  • At this point, concepts such as variables, parenthesis matching, and functions (of the mathematical variety) are within easy reach. Concepts like parameter passing, strings and collections, and program flow should be teachable. More advanced concepts such as recursion, references and pointers, certain data structures, and big-O may be very difficult to teach without first going through some more foundational math.
  • I tend to agree strongly with those that believe a foundational education should inspire interest and enforce concepts and critical thinking over teaching any specific language, framework, system, or dogma.
  • The key is that the concepts in CS aren't just there for the hell of it. Everything was motivated by a real problem, and few things are more satisfying than fixing something you really want to work with a cool technique or concept you just learned.
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    Great resource for teachers (especially those of us not initially trained in Computer Science) about what should 'count' as Computer Science.  Worth the read!
Roland Gesthuizen

Free Computer books Download | Online computer ebooks | online free computer science eb... - 158 views

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    "Freebookcentre.net contains links to thousands of free online technical books. Which Include core computer science, networking, programming languages, Systems Programming books, Linux books and many more."
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    Great collection of Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics and Electronics books.
Roland Gesthuizen

Computer Science Teachers Association - 44 views

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    "The Computer Science Teachers Association is a membership organization that supports and promotes the teaching of computer science and other computing disciplines. CSTA provides opportunities for K-12 teachers and students to better understand the computing disciplines and to more successfully prepare themselves to teach and learn."
paul lowe

Technology Dictionary - 3 views

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    Our Technology Dictionary has over 14,000 technology and computer related terms. The Technology Dictionary consists of definitions of IT and computer terms including but not limited to programming languages, software, hardware, operating systems, networking, mathematics, telecomunications, electronics, and more. The Technology Dictionary is based on the FOLDOC (The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing) compiled and maintained by Denis Howe. We add new definitions to our dictionary daily, and if you want to contribute something, don't hesitate to contact us. If you like the site bookmark it and tell your friends about it.
Jeff Andersen

Distance Learning: How Accessible are Online Educational Tools | American Foundation fo... - 5 views

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    More and more schools, colleges and universities are using online educational tools that students are required to use to obtain course syllabi, access lectures and associated material, participate in class discussions, read course material, and receive grades and feedback from instructors. These popular tools, such as Blackboard, can frequently pose significant barriers to students with vision loss because they do not work well, if at all, with computer programs commonly used by students who are blind or visually impaired to access content displayed on the computer screen. For example, screen reading software reads the contents of the screen aloud. Screen magnification software enlarges text and graphics displayed on the computer screen in a customized way.
Lisa C. Hurst

Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education | WIRED - 10 views

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    "AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
Deborah Baillesderr

ScratchJr - Home - 59 views

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    An iPad and junior version of the well know programming platform Scratch. The app has been designed for 5+ year olds and boosts simplified versions features of the more mature version. Children still snap programming blocks together to build amazingly creative things. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
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    Scratch for ages 5 to 7
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    "Coding is the new literacy! With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) can program their own interactive stories and games. In the process, they learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively on the computer."
Roland Gesthuizen

Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins? - 16 views

  • The state program works with teachers to change their lesson plans appropriately; the goal is to get students to think critically and engage with all subjects through creative work. "Since our beginnings, we've always looked at notions of creation," Mao said. "It's not about consumption of content, it's about the creation of knowledge."
  • making a laptop program effective is only 10 or 20 percent about the hardware itself, with the rest being about making sure the teachers know how to use them and how to lead students to proper learning goals
  • Bolting old lesson plans to new computers will do little, but future programs with strong teacher buy-in and excellent institutional support have the potential to do much more.
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    Countries considering "one-to-one" laptop programs might also compare the OLPC experiences to a different program in Maine. At present, this northeastern state distributes a MacBook to every middle school student and to about half of high school students, for a total of over 70,000 laptops.
Greg Brandenburg

Bringing Girls and Boys to Computer Science with 'Alice' - 1 views

  • Attracting females is key to the future of computer science, Rodger says. In 2008, only 11.8 percent of U.S. bachelor's degrees in computer science went to women, according to the Computing Research Association. And Duke's showing is hardly better, said Rodger, who is trying to turn that around by making programming fun to learn.
Roland Gesthuizen

BBC News - School ICT to be replaced by computer science programme - 3 views

  • "Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word or Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations," he said.
  • "Children are being forced to learn how to use applications, rather than to make them. They are becoming slaves to the user interface and are totally bored by it,"
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    The current programme of information and communications technology (ICT) study in England's schools will be scrapped from September, the education secretary has announced. It will be replaced by an "open source" curriculum in computer science and programming designed with the help of universities and industry.
Thieme Hennis

Lifelong Kindergarten :: MIT Media Lab - 4 views

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    "Crickets are small programmable devices that can make things spin, light up, and play music. You can plug lights, motors, and sensors into a Cricket, then write computer programs to tell them how to react and behave. With Crickets, you can create musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, dancing creatures, and other artistic inventions -- and learn important math, science, and engineering ideas in the process. Crickets are based on more than a decade of NSF-funded educational research. Lifelong Kindergarten researchers collaborated with the LEGO company to create the first "programmable bricks," squeezing computational power into LEGO bricks. This research led to the LEGO MindStorms robotics kits, now used by millions of people around the world. While LEGO MindStorms is designed especially for making robots, Crickets are designed especially for making artistic creations. Crickets were refined in collaboration with the Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) museum network, and are now sold as a product through the Playful Invention Company (PICO)."
elsjekool

Paul Ford: What is Code? | Bloomberg - 35 views

  • There are keynote speakers—often the people who created the technology at hand or crafted a given language. There are the regular speakers, often paid not at all or in airfare, who present some idea or technique or approach. Then there are the panels, where a group of people are lined up in a row and forced into some semblance of interaction while the audience checks its e-mail.
  • Fewer than a fifth of undergraduate degrees in computer science awarded in 2012 went to women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology
  • The average programmer is moderately diligent, capable of basic mathematics, has a working knowledge of one or more programming languages, and can communicate what he or she is doing to management and his or her peers
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  • The true measure of a language isn’t how it uses semicolons; it’s the standard library of each language. A language is software for making software. The standard library is a set of premade software that you can reuse and reapply.
  • A coder needs to be able to quickly examine and identify which giant, complex library is the one that’s the most recently and actively updated and the best match for his or her current needs. A coder needs to be a good listener.
  • Code isn’t just obscure commands in a file. It requires you to have a map in your head, to know where the good libraries, the best documentation, and the most helpful message boards are located. If you don’t know where those things are, you will spend all of your time searching, instead of building cool new things.
  • Some tools are better for certain jobs.
  • C is a simple language, simple like a shotgun that can blow off your foot. It allows you to manage every last part of a computer—the memory, files, a hard drive—which is great if you’re meticulous and dangerous if you’re sloppy
  • Object-oriented programming is, at its essence, a filing system for code.
  • Where C tried to make it easier to do computer things, Smalltalk tried to make it easier to do human things.
  • Style and usage matter; sometimes programmers recommend Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style—that’s right, the one about the English language. Its focus on efficient usage resonates with programmers. The idiom of a language is part of its communal identity.
  • Coding is a culture of blurters.
  • Programmers carve out a sliver of cognitive territory for themselves and go to conferences, and yet they know their position is vulnerable.
  • Programmers are often angry because they’re often scared.
  • Programming is a task that rewards intense focus and can be done with a small group or even in isolation.
  • For a truly gifted programmer, writing code is a side effect of thought
  • As a class, programmers are easily bored, love novelty, and are obsessed with various forms of productivity enhancement.
  • “Most programming languages are partly a way of expressing things in terms of other things and partly a basic set of given things.”
  • Of course, while we were trying to build a bookstore, we actually built the death of bookstores—that seems to happen a lot in the business. You set out to do something cool and end up destroying lots of things that came before.
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    A lengthy but worthy read for all non-programmers on code.
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    Explains code
Lee-Anne Patterson

One to One Computing Blueprint - 0 views

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    The Stillwater Area Public Schools began their laptop initiative in November of 2003. At that time, each teacher at Stillwater Junior High School (SJHS) and Oak-Land Junior High School (OLJHS) received a laptop and began a program of professional development focused on increasing teachers' knowledge and skills related to using the laptops and integrating technology into their curriculum. Students at both schools received laptops in the spring of 2004. High school students had their own laptop in a one-to-one program that allowed computers to be taken home. The junior high used mobile laptop carts, offering a 3:1 student-to-laptop ratio. Both schools made wireless Internet access available throughout their buildings and offered students and parents online access to course assignments and grades.
Roland Gesthuizen

Kindergarten coders can program before they can read - 26 July 2013 - New Scientist - 50 views

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    "Going back to school to meet the 4-year-olds who are learning to program computers thanks to a new graphics-based coding language"
Jennie Snyder

Why schools must move beyond 'one-to-one computing' | eSchool News - 42 views

  • “Horrible, horrible, horrible implementation from every program I visited,” he said. “All of them were about the stuff, with a total lack of vision.” His research convinced him not to move forward with one-to-one computing.
  • “Yes. Unfortunately, too often I concur.”
  • Unless we break out of this limited vision that one-to-one computing is about the device, we are doomed to waste our resources.
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  • they are nothing more than “shiny new spaceships.”
Tim Cooper

TEDxGeorgiaTech - Mark Guzdial - 21st Century Literacy includes Computing for Everyone ... - 16 views

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    Interesting outlook on why teaching computer science is applicable and needed for everyone. Guzdial does a lot of work with Squeak (which is a forerunner of Scratch).
Tim Cooper

Computational Thinking: I do not think it means what you think it means - Medium - 32 views

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    This is an excellent deconstruction of the pop term "computational thinking" and a reconstruction of Papert's real meaning (which is so much more powerful!).
Diana Irene Saldana

Computer Science Unplugged | - 48 views

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    CS Unplugged is a collection of free learning activities that teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. The activities introduce students to underlying concepts such as binary numbers, algorithms and data compression, separated from the distractions and technical details we usually see with computers. CS Unplugged is suitable for people of all ages, from elementary school to seniors, and from many countries and backgrounds. Unplugged has been used around the world for over fifteen years, in classrooms, science centers, homes, and even for holiday events in a park!
Gregory Louie

Students tap into technology - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - 1 views

  • use their laptops to read "Don Quixote" and Dante's "Divine Comedy" on the Internet
  • Technology is the wave of the future
  • a computer program
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  • "Most jobs require computers," noted Brittnee Stephen, 16, as she assembled a slideshow on her HP Mini laptop. "It's good that we're learning it now."
    • Ed Webb
       
      The technology is still very visible, if students are talking in terms of 'computers' rather than the skills involved. We don't talk about 'paper' but writing, critical reading etc. Yet here the platform itself is emphasized. Early days, I guess.
  • has just begun incorporating technology
    • Ed Webb
       
      Uh, no. They have been using 'technology' forever, in the form of, say, books.
  • students seem far more interested in learning via interactive technology than they had been with a chalkboard and an overhead projector
    • Ed Webb
       
      Well, the problem here is that some of that can be ascribed to novelty. Once every class uses 'interactive technology' (yuk) then how much difference will there be? The tools are great. All tools can be useful. But focus on the pedagogy, people!
    • Scott Merrick
       
      I'm for focusing on understanding. I love the word "pedagogy" because most lay people don't really know what it entails--theory (which can be anything institutional or community deems effective or correct), practice (which, as we know, can be summed up with the phrase "mileage will vary"), and some third thing which if I could come up with it I'd have the magic 3 elements in an effective argument. I think effective tools used effectively by effective teachers (there! 3 uses of one adjective!) will remain effective as long as they are used to promote understanding. No argument here, Ed, just sayin'...
    • Ed Webb
       
      Perhaps the magic third thing would be 'attitude' or 'state of mind'? Alternatively, perhaps another of those non-transparent terms, 'praxis'. The point I was trying to make, of course, was that it ain't what you use, it's the way that you use it.
  • "I think the kids that have turned school off because it's boring to them will come here and see something familiar,"
    • Ed Webb
       
      Boring and familiar seem to me to be closely related, not opposites. I suspect that often when students say their learning environment is 'boring' they mean 'challenging'.
  • Educational technology does not come cheaply
    • Ed Webb
       
      The cost of books is astronomical!
  • "Learning is changing,"
    • Ed Webb
       
      Was it EVER the case that we could "just deliver a lecture and expect all the kids to get it"?
    • Gregory Louie
       
      Computer technology in my classroom has revolutionized my teaching of biology. Instead of static images on a printed page, or talk and chalk, my students can manipulate 3-D images of DNA, RNA and proteins. These have even been embedded in a research-based learning progression that leads the students to a robust understanding of the foundational elements of molecular literacy. 1. Atoms and molecules are constantly in motion. (A visualization is not possible on a 2-3 printed page.) 2. All atoms and molecules have a 3-D structure that determines how they interact with other particles. 3. Charges and other intermolecular forces play a role in atomic and molecular interactions. My students can see these for themselves, change the number of particles in a box, or the distribution of charge on a large particle or the temperature of the box and other thought experiments which they can follow in real-time. There is no way, I could do that without the computer!
anonymous

15+ Ways of Teaching Every Student to Code (Even Without a Computer) | Edutopia - 82 views

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    Computer Science Education Week is Dec 9-15.
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