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CS Principles Panel

SIGCSE 2012 Raleigh, NC - March 2, 2012. CS Principles Panel. Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Associate Professor Amber Wagner – Ph.D. student (former AP CS teacher) K-12 Colleague: Bill Cowles, Booker T. Washington HS University of Alabama Department of Computer Science gray@cs.ua.edu

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CS Principles Panel

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  1. SIGCSE 2012 Raleigh, NC - March 2, 2012 CS Principles Panel Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Associate Professor Amber Wagner – Ph.D. student (former AP CS teacher)K-12 Colleague: Bill Cowles, Booker T. Washington HS University of Alabama Department of Computer Science gray@cs.ua.edu http://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray

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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. 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

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