CS Principles Panel

Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Associate ProfessorAmber Wagner – Ph.D. student (former AP CS teacher)K-12 Colleague: Bill Cowles, Booker T. Washington HS

University of AlabamaDepartment of Computer Sciencegray@cs.ua.eduhttp://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray

SIGCSE 2012Raleigh, NC - March 2, 2012

Observation: Teaching CS – 1980s style Typical example was text-based, trivial, and

uninspiring

Motivation: New and Exciting Contexts Media Computation

Programming in a more exciting context by manipulating multimedia artifacts

Robots Lego NXT

2D/3D Animation Environments Alice, Scratch, AgentSheets

Motivation: Newest Context Teen smartphone penetration around 62%1

Novel ways to engage through the “creative hook” and tinkering

“I wish I had an app for that”

Social networking and crowd sourcing a daily activity among teens

Increasing adoption of smartphones in science and medical applications

1http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/168085/nielsen-smartphone-penetration-reaches-48.html

Summary of Alabama Principles Course Split between BYOB (Snap!) and App Inventor Readings

Books: Hal’s Blown to Bits, Wolber et al. App Inventor book

Papers: Wing’s Computational Thinking, Kramer’s Is Abstraction the Key to Computing?

Grades: Six individual assignments (two short essays) Two team projects (presentation, implementation) Three exams and 7 very short quizzes

Sample Projects Homework Examples

Hangman App Essays: Reflective essay on student major and CS;

research and analyze a computer simulation model Team Projects

BYOB Almost all were game variations (Example)

App Inventor Rendezvous planner Tornado damage assessment app for Civil Engineers Textbook buying broker

Collaboration with High School Peer Bill Cowles, Booker T. Washington HS Montgomery, AL

Almost exactly a 2 hour drive from Tuscaloosa Shared syllabus, homework ideas, various lectures Restriction on meeting times

Visit and talk to Bill’s class Initial planning during CS4HS summer workshop in 2011 Weekend AP training session Bi-weekly email

Things that we felt were a success Creativity Soared Team Projects Highly Collaborative Diversity

17 different majors across 29 students (first essay) Broad interest from Freshman to Seniors 13 of 29 students were women or males from

underrepresented populations Sustainability

Strong interest on campus to offer again in Fall ’12 11 High School teachers in Alabama want help in pursuing

an early adopter Pilot for 2012-2013

Things that did not work so well Rushed to cover all CS Principles

topics in a 3-hour course

Recruiting issues (temporary) Big Data idea never finalized

(but almost ready) Four students dropped the course

before midterm Some team project ideas were

unrealistic 1 case of cheating