kswilkens

[kswilkens]

The future of data science: Thoughts from Datapalooza 2023

What is data science?

Data science is a hot topic right now, but what does it mean and why should K-12 educators be paying attention to it? I went to Datapalooza 2023: The Future conference hosted by the UVA School of Data Science to learn more. 

As a K-12 computer science (CS) educator, I have considered data science to be part of CS, but it has also emerged as its own discipline. The UVA School of Data Science defines data science as the study of data and the methods used to learn from data. They also focus heavily on the interdisciplinary nature of the discipline that crosses boundaries between CS, math, and business with applications across other disciplines such as humanities, social and behavioral sciences, medicine, and architecture.

Several presenters described data science as having the potential to bring disciplines together for a purpose. What purpose is that? To gain insights, make predictions, and support data-based decision making in almost any field you can imagine.

There is a lot of attention on data science in large part because of the release of the latest round of generative AI models. In fact, ChatGPT had this to share when asked about the relationship between data science and AI - "data science and AI are interconnected disciplines where data science provides the foundational tools and techniques for working with data, and AI leverages these capabilities to build intelligent systems capable of learning and making decisions." 

The advancements in AI and data science are powerful and can have impacts, both positive and negative, on a massive scale. Mozilla has been considering the challenges of AI like how it exhibits bias, invades privacy, and reinforces existing power hierarchies and what trustworthy AI could look like, if it is designed to center privacy, transparency, and human well-being.

Why should K-12 educators be paying attention to data science?

I teach CS because I want students to become creators, and not just consumers of technology. The fascinating thing about the field of data science is that we are all participating in it as we generate vast amounts of data through social media use, fitness tracking, online learning tools, internet browsing, communication apps, gaming, device usage, content creation, location tracking and more. How much data are we generating? For a little perspective, in 2007 the digital universe was estimated to be a total of 281 billion gigabytes and the amount of digital information created had for the first time exceeded available capacity to permanently store it (Gantz et al., 2008). In 2023, it is estimated that 328.77 billion gigabytes of data are created every day (Statista). 

Because we are living in this the age of data, the message from Datapalooza is that data literacy needs to be as foundational as math and science in K-12 schools. In Virginia, K-12 educators can find data science standards as part of the K-12 computer science strand, Data and Analysis. In addition, Virginia adopted secondary mathematics data science standards in 2022. At the conference I also met a high school math teacher who is part of the pilot of a data science course along with 75 teachers across Virginia.

One thing I really appreciated about the conference is how passionately folks from the UVA School of Data Science talk about data science education. A few key takeaways that resonated with me:

Teaching calculus is not going to change much from year to year, but technologies are changing so fast that the focus of data science education needs to be on teaching students how to teach themselves. 

There can be a wide variability in student backgrounds related to data science, so it is important to create a healthy environment where students don’t feel like they need to compete with each other.

Leading with a project based on a real-world problem can provide the motivation students need to do what it takes to learn what they need to learn.

What is the future of data science?

I am hopeful for the future of data science education because it is so new. That has its own challenges for sure, but it also offers the opportunity to do things differently. There are persistent, pervasive, and problematic gender and racial gaps in CS education and technology fields (Cerf & Johnson, 2016; DuBow, W. & Gonzalez, 2020; Grover & Pea, 2013; Margolis et al., 2012). As the founder of Tech-Girls it often feels like we are applying bandages to a broken system. I’m excited that the vibe at Datapalooza was to acknowledge the challenges being faced and to lean into integration and the interdisciplinary nature of data science. You can learn more about the future of data science education in the UVA School of Data Science with Brian Wright, Director of the Undergraduate Program on the Once Upon a Tech podcast.

More resources:

Data Science: Telling a Story with Your Data (VPM/VDOE). This lesson extension provides a discussion guide, a hands-on activity about telling a story with your data, learning resources, and career resources to use in conjunction with the Computer Science Careers Across Virginia: Data Science video.

Data science vs. Computer science: What's the difference? (Rice University). A great resource to understand the college and career pathways in CS and data science.

Making Meaningful Connections: A K-8 CS Integration Guide (VDOE). A free, online Virtual Virginia course that includes a module on integration strategies and a module on the Data and Analysis from the computer science strand.

Internet Health Report 2022 (Mozilla). This report focuses on AI and shares findings through a series of podcasts and stories.

[kswilkens]

Bio-Med Tech-Girls 2023: Reflection

We kicked off the 10th annual Bio-Med Tech-Girls on August 7. In one week, 15 participants from 7 high schools toured 4 UVA Biomedical Engineering labs and 4 Civil and Environmental Engineering labs, learned from and were inspired by 20+ UVA student volunteers, got hands-on with computer science and biomedical engineering design challenges, were joined by guest speakers and wrapped up the week with a Demo Party on August 11 to share their design challenge projects with friends and family.

"What was most surprising was the range of experiences brought to us. I never expected to be able to talk to undergrads, learn about biomed, tour labs, and create my own project all in one program." - 2023 Bio-Med Tech-Girls participant

The Bio-Med Tech-Girls program is a unique collaboration between Charlottesville Women in Tech (CWIT), the department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the School of Education and Human Development (SEHD). Here are some highlights from the week.

Day 1 at UVA BME

Welcome with Shayn Peirce-Cottler, UVA BME Department Chair

What is CS? with Kim Wilkens, UVA School of Education and Human Development Education and Outreach Director

Robot Zine

UVA student lunch panel

Game Controller Design Challenge

Designing Games for Learning: Programming Cells

Day 2 at UVA BME

What is BME? with David Chen, UVA BME Translational Center Director

Explore Hummingbird robotics kit

Sheybani Lab 

Peirce-Cottler Lab 

Guest speaker: Sue Berres, Occupational Therapist, UVA Children's Hospital

Day 3 at UVA BME

What is Design Thinking? with David and Kim

Design challenge: Empathy

Lunch with UVA students

Blemker Lab 

Civelek Lab 

Design challenge: defining the need and brainstorming

Day 4 at UVA SEHD

Guest Speaker: Eileen Krepkovich, Biomedical Engineer, Barron Associates

Lunch panel: UVA Society of Women Engineers

Design challenge: prototyping

Day 5 at UVA SEHD

UVA Civil and Environmental Engineering Lab tours

Design challenge: testing

Demo party

[kswilkens]

Episode 11: Exploring elementary students’ understanding of CS concepts with Feiya Luo and Wei Yan

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into exploring elementary students’ understanding of computer science and computational thinking concepts with Feiya Luo and Wei Yan. Feiya is an Assistant Professor in Instructional Technology at the University of Alabama and Wei is a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Florida, majoring in Educational Technology.

Overall Takeaways:

Exploring Elementary Students’ Debugging Behaviors in Puzzle-based Programming: A Learning Trajectory Approach

Debugging strategies observed for this study include trial and error, step-by-step error elimination, abandoning and restarting, help-seeking, and using system-specific supports (provided by the platform being used).

Elementary Students’ Understanding of Variables in Computational Thinking-Integrated Instruction: A Mixed Methods Study

One challenge with teaching variables is that they are already part of a student’s experience in math and science and “students often have a different conceptual understanding of what variables mean in different content areas” (p. 523).

The learning theory used for the study hypothesizes that students progress through four levels of thinking about variables: data user, data storer, variable user, and variable creator. 

Most elementary students in the study did not progress beyond data storer.

Cognitive interviews found the students had trouble recognizing that a variable holds only one value at a time. 

Having students think aloud and interviewing them are formative assessment tools for determining their misconceptions.

Focus on mechanics of variables in elementary school before engaging in higher-level abstraction.

Takeaways for Researchers

Learn why some students are comfortable using debugging strategies and some are not.

Understand that introducing some CS concepts at the elementary school level like variables is complex, but it is not impossible to teach - it involves breaking down the concept into smaller pieces.

It is important to carefully design integrated instruction that includes teaching the mechanics of complex concepts like variables.

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators

Start with a CS concept you are most confident in and comfortable with.

Structure repeated exposure to concepts of variables and other more complex CS concepts to help students build more advanced understanding over time.

Seek out professional development.

Incorporate CS teaching strategies, like debugging, when integrating CS into your curriculum.

Resources:

Feiya Luo

Wei Yan

CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards

Learning Trajectories

LTEC-2 - Everyday Computing

Action Fractions - CS integrated in 3rd and 4th grade math

[kswilkens]

Bio-Med Tech-Girls 2022: Reflection

Over 5 days this summer, the Bio-Med Tech-Girls participants went on 4 behind-the-scenes tours of UVA BME labs, got hands-on with 3 different robotics platforms in the UVA Link Lab, tried out 2 makerspace technologies (VR and 3D design) in the UVA Library Robertson Media Center and had so many other wonderful experiences!

The Bio-Med Tech-Girls program is a unique collaboration between Charlottesville Women in Tech, the department of Biomedical Engineering, the School of Education, and the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia. The program is all about providing inspiration, community building and hands-on computer science (CS) and biomedical engineering (BME) activities for young women in high school, so they can get a glimpse of the vast opportunities available in these fields. Of course, the participants always inspire me too with their thoughtful questions, sharing what they are passionate about and coming up with ideas to solve real-world problems through the design challenge we set each year. This year 13 young women from 6 different high schools around the region participated in the program. Here are some highlights.

Day 1:

Dr. Homa Alemzadeh hosted us in the Link Lab along with her students Kay Hutchinson, Zongyu Li, Eli Bradburn and Joyce Park. The participants got hands-on with robotic surgery tools and programmed the Dobot Magician robotic arm.

Dr. Meara Habashi shared a lunchtime talk about diversity & inclusion.

Participants designed a robot assistant to solve a real-world problem through the Robot Zine activity and then began prototyping their solution with the Hummingbird Bit robotics kit.

Day 2:

David Chen and Hannah Moore hosted participants in the department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) for days 2 and 3.

Programming Cells and Diabetes Simulator with Mukti Chowkwale and Bryana Harris from the Saucerman Lab.

Peirce-Cottler Lab tour with Paul DeCostanza

Civelek Lab tour with Qianyi Yang, Jordan Reed, Noah Perry, Yonathan Aberra

Guest speaker: Dr Susan Blank, founder of BEATDiabetes

Day 3: 

Introduced this year's design challenge: addressing problems that individuals living with diabetes face.

We introduced the design thinking process for solving problems and participants worked on empathy maps, drafting need statements, and brainstorming ideas.

Lunch speakers: Sarah Hernandez and Zehra Demir, graduate students in the Sheybani Lab

Blemker Lab tour with Allie McCrady, Emily McCain, and Mario Garcia

Griffin Lab tour with Juliana Trujillo, Clare Flanagan and Sloan Pyatt

Day 4: 

Got hands-on with VR and 3D design in the Robertson Media Center with Fang Yi and Arin Bennet

Lots of prototyping solutions happened in the School of Education Design Lab

Day 5: 

Wrapped up projects, created poster boards and shared their projects at the Demo Party. The participants did an amazing job of coming up with unique & useful solutions in just a few days!

DiaBag (Ari, Cami, Polina, Tenzin)

Problem: A way to make packing and keeping track of diabetes supplies easier.

Solution: They designed a series of specialized handbags and backpacks to carry and track levels of supplies. They used 3D design and incorporated the Hummingbird bit into their prototype.

Moo-Monitor (Amelia, Lyndsey, Zada)

Problem: A way to help someone wake up to their low/high alerts.

Solution: They designed a stuffed animal for young children with diabetes with vibration and sound alerts that increase in intensity over time. They incorporated the Hummingbird bit into their design.

Diabetes for Dummies (Charlotte, Gaby, Sienna)

Problem: A way to help caretakers (teacher, babysitters, etc) not familiar with diabetes.

Solution: They designed an intro to diabetes package with a brochure, game, and website. They incorporated 3D design and Scratch into their prototype.

Level Up Your Health (Grace, Lily, Sophie)

Problem: A way to help someone manage their diet.

Solution: They designed an app to help children learn how to manage their diabetes through gamification. They incorporated Scratch into their prototype.

We could not do this program without all the wonderful folks who volunteered their time and shared their passion for BME and CS with the participants! I want to give a special shout out to David Chen for his partnership and Hannah Moore for her support this year and every year since the first Bio-Med Tech-Girls in 2014!!!

[kswilkens]

Episode 10: Confronting racism in CS through community, criticality, and citizenship with Aman Yadav

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into the paper, Breaking the Code: Confronting Racism in Computer Science through Community, Criticality, and Citizenship with Aman Yadav. He is a Professor in the College of Education and the College of Natural Science at Michigan State University. Aman’s teaching and research focuses on computational thinking, computer science education, and problem-based learning.

Big ideas from the paper:

Examine the role CS education has in the oppression and harm of marginalized communities.

Move away from a top-down approach to curriculum design to a community-oriented approach that is connected to students' lived experiences.

Move from focusing solely on developing technical skills toward an understanding of the role CS plays in maintaining and perpetuating systemic injustices.

Empower students to solve authentic and community-based problems.

Takeaways for researchers:

School of education leaders and faculty need to be public advocates and be vocal within their own states and nationwide for the importance of teachers in schools and public education in general.

In addition to research, we need to think about the systemic issues related to CS education.

CS education researchers in schools of education need to design professional learning that supports teachers to make those calls to action that bring community, criticality and citizenship into their CS curriculum.

Research is needed on how teachers' own lived experiences also play a role in them implementing anti-racist and justice-oriented CS education.

Takeaways for K-8 teachers and administrators:

Administrators and national organizations need to go beyond just access to CS as the metric to measure success. They need to make sure that teachers have the supports, knowledge, and resources they need to provide high quality CS instruction. It's not just about having bodies in the CS classroom, it's about what kind of learning experiences students are getting.

Find ways to use CS as a tool for civic engagement.

Consider how to dismantle existing ways of teaching CS that prioritizes technical competencies and work toward educating students to think about ethical and moral perspectives and their role as future computer scientists and technology creators.

Resources:

Aman Yadav

Toward Justice in Computer Science through Community, Criticality, and Citizenship

Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

Design Justice

Dr. Timnit Gebru

Culturally Responsive-Sustaining CS Education: A Framework

[kswilkens]

Episode 9: Using art to explore emotion, problem solving and identity in CS with Maggie Dahn

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into the paper, Dynamics of emotion, problem solving, and identity: Portraits of three girl coders with Maggie Dahn. She is an Associate Project Scientist at the University of California, Irvine working with the Connected Learning Lab and Creativity Labs. Maggie has a background in visual arts and engages in design research to study how people learn in different contexts and the affordances of art making for the development of voice and identity and issues of access and equity.

Research paper takeaways: Kids are feeling things and art making can be a tool for reflection on emotion and helps put young people in positions of power.

Context: An after school program for middle and high school students focused on creating a debugging culture through art and code.

Results: Creative reflection spaces like journaling, art making, and storytelling can open possibilities for learners to understand and examine the integration between problem solving, emotion and identity.

Takeaways for researchers:

Opening up the way you see how art can contribute to CS. See art as providing a way of thinking, seeing the world, and approaching problems. Art supports creating cultural and social connections and art making can create a sense of shared empathy. 

Takeaways for K-8 teachers and educators:

Look for opportunities to incorporate art, try it out and experiment. Think about how art can be multifaceted and used as a reflective tool to support development in CS. Think about how to support uncertainty and surprise. You don't always need to know the answer of the art making (or technology creating) activity before you start it. Consider how you can facilitate creating a calming environment for your students.

Resources:

Maggie Dahn

Art as a Point of Departure for Understanding Student Experience in Learning to Code (paper)

Debugging Failure: Youth Resilience in Computer Science (video)

Dear Data Project

[kswilkens]

March: MozFest ambassador update

I joined MozFest earlier this month as a participant, volunteer, and session facilitator. There are always so many creative things happening at MozFest and after logging my volunteer hours and doing some podcast interviews with participants, I felt energized and connected!

The session I co-facilitated was a podcast series to capture the Voices at MozFest. We had an open call to participants, facilitators, space wranglers, volunteers, and youth leaders to share their story. During the week we interviewed 2 facilitators and we have a couple more interviews lined up post MozFest.

As you'll see at the end of this post, it's not too late to join MozFest and and that includes joining the podcast!

In her interview, Tani Olhanoski, co-founder of Mysilio, highlighted creative ways that their software development team uses curiosity, play, and experimentation as a way to prototype and test out their ideas. During MozFest, they created an interactive exquisite corpse game to help attendees explore Web Monetization.

Our interview with Stella Anne Teoh Ming Hui from the Malaysian Philosophy Society was also fascinating as she explored rethinking the implications of the metaverse through philosophy in the Youth & Futures space.

One of the most creative things I experienced at MozFest this year was the Zine Fair. It was set up in a virtual space called Spatial Chat with a DJ spinning chill tunes. You entered this virtual space with your avatar that you could move around to view the zines and connect with other participants and zine authors. I got to meet Khushbu Kshirsagar, creator of the Zine Machine, a really cool paper-based math tinkering kit. I also found Kelly Wagman’s Gender, Power, and Tech zine very powerful!

Other highlights included joining the Opening and Closing Circles and several Dialogues & Debates including Education in a Mixed AI Reality. I am so glad that many of the sessions I missed will be available on demand until June 25. Tickets are still available and still pay-what-you-can, so you too can get inspired by the hundreds of sessions from folks around the world who are passionate about trustworthy AI, internet health, and digital rights!

[kswilkens]

Episode 8: CS and CT in preservice education and in the classroom with Anne Leftwich

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into a report on the state of CS in preservice education programs and a special issue from ACM highlighting a variety of research on CT in preK-5 with Anne Leftwich. She is a Professor and Interim Chair of Instructional Systems Technology within the School of Education and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and the Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology at Indiana University – Bloomington.

Overall Takeaways:

National Computer Science Education Preservice Case Studies

Do elementary preservice teacher education programs require CS/CT?

Yes - 68%

No - 22%

Other -13%

What's the delivery mode?

Edtech course - 72%

Method course - 54%

PD - 16%

Other - 13%

What curriculum?

Other - 50%

code.org - 36%

Scratch - 32%

Hour of code - 17%

Project lead the way - 13%

CS First - 4%

Barriers

Lack of credit hours in teacher education

Lack of available faculty with CS knowledge

Lack of preservice teacher awareness

Lack of funding

Computational thinking in preK-5: Empirical evidence for integration and future directions

What is computational thinking?

Computational thinking is often distilled down to just problem solving, but it's about taking a problem and breaking it down so it could be solved with computer science.

Levels of CT integration

Exist - CT concepts already present and can be elaborated upon

Enhance - use CT to support subject-specific learning

Extend - extend subject-specific learning by integrating CT tools and practices

Exhibit level - use CT to show subject-specific learning

Challenges to CT integration:

Limited CT teaching experience

Limited time and lack of CT-specific assessment knowledge and tools

Limited pedagogical understanding for meeting students’ diverse instructional needs

Low teacher-buy-in for teaching CT

Takeaways for Researchers:

Be really intentional about what integration looks like and how the integration of CS or CT and the subject area are making it better for both and what it takes to get there.

We need to better understand how students learn CS and CT separate from integration, so we have a better understanding of what concepts they can handle, what misconceptions they encounter, and what are the best pedagogical strategies.

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators:

Work toward demystifying CS and CT and embracing the idea that it is achievable and something you can use in your classroom.

Resources:

Anne Leftwich

Computer Science for All in SF

How are we Preparing our Preservice Teachers to Teach CS? A National Perspective

CS Unplugged - Sorting networks (sample classroom lesson)

[kswilkens]

Episode 7: Formative Assessment in K-8 CS with Shuchi Grover

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into two papers: Designing an Assessment for Introductory Programming Concepts in Middle School Computer Science (2020) and Assessing Algorithmic & Computational Thinking in K-12: Lessons from a Middle School Classroom (2017) with Shuchi Grover. She is a learning scientist and computer science and STEM education researcher. Shuchi's research is primarily centered on computational thinking, CS education, and STEM learning in the PK-14 years with a focus on the design of curriculum, assessments, tools, and environments.

Research paper takeaways:

Designing an assessment:

“Without sufficient attention to thoughtful assessment, CT can have little hope of scaling in K-12.”

Context: Pre-post measure of intro programming CS course with 74 middle school students across three classrooms.

Results:

CS curriculum, teacher CS experience and expertise, and students’ background and academic preparation all impact student performance on an assessment.

Open-response items on an assessment help provide better evidence of student understanding than multiple-choice items alone.

A holistic measure of student learning and engagement comes about from using several forms of assessment and not just one assessment at the end of a course.

Assessing computational thinking:

“Desired outcomes for current CS initiatives include students’ conceptual growth and also affective measures such as identity development, motivation, and engagement"

Context: 28 students from 7th and 8th grade enrolled in a semester-long CS-related elective class.

Results:

The exam-based summative assessment included mostly multiple choice questions with a few open-ended questions. Benefits from this approach include scalability, objectivity, and ease of grading.

The challenges with this summative assessment method were issues with reliability of the question items when they included multiple CS concepts or did not take into account English language learner needs.

Even those students who did poorly on the exam-based assessment had high engagement with the final project and a basic understanding of the CS concepts.

Takeaways for Researchers:

What can we learn about learning from other fields that can be applied to CS education?

How can we use assessment to help determine what and how the CS standards should be laid out?

Pay more attention to formative assessment in CS. What sort of assessments work? Which sort of assessments surface misconceptions? Which assessments are good for formative, but not for summative and vice versa?

There's a lot we still have to learn about measuring computational thinking and programming skills as well as giving student feedback through automation.

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators:

Formative assessment is important because it helps identify student misconceptions and provides a mechanism for giving feedback to students on their learning.

The goal of teaching and learning CS is not just to develop computing skills, but also interest and motivation.

When your goals are interest and motivation, identity development, and conceptual learning - you can't measure that with one instrument. You have to have a buffet of measures and probes.

You can use assessment as a form of curriculum design.

While more challenging to grade, open-ended projects help students make connections with their homes, their lives, their communities, and their cultures.

Assessment is a signal to the learner about what is important.

Resources:

Shuchi Grover

Measuring Student Learning in Introductory Block-Based Programming: Examining Misconceptions of Loops, Variables, and Boolean Logic (2017)

What We Can Learn About Student Learning From Open-Ended Programming Projects in Middle School Computer Science (2018)

Toward A Framework for Formative Assessment of Conceptual Learning in K-12 Computer Science Classrooms (2021)

Computer Science in K-12: An A to Z handbook on teaching programming (2020)

A brief introduction to evidence-centered design (ets.org)

K-12 CS Framework

CSTA 2020 Formative Assessment Session

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century (National Research Council, 2012)

[kswilkens]

Episode 6: Equitable CS teaching strategies with Luther Tychonievich

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into two papers: Tapestry Workshops: Helping High School Teachers Grow and Diversify Computing and Lessons Learned from Providing Hundreds of Hours of Diversity Training with Luther Tychonievich. He is an Associate Professor of CS at the University of Virginia. I first met Luther when he got involved with the CS Institute in 2019, helping us bring the equitable CS teaching strategies he talks about in this episode to K-8 teachers.

Research paper takeaways:

Context:

Focus primarily on increasing women's representation of computing which bottomed out around 17% in 2010.

Taught high school teachers how to get more students into their CS classes and how to help those students have a better experience.

Tried a lot of different things to see what worked.

The baseline keeps changing, so workshops aren’t static.

Results:

CS teachers wanted more time connecting with each other because often they were the only one doing CS at their school.

Follow-up surveys revealed that there were increases in the total number of students taught and in gender diversity.

Over time many part-time CS positions became full-time with a near demographic match based on the schools they were in.

Verified that they could train the trainer so others could run workshops.

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators:

Things that don't seem like they would matter that much, have surprisingly large impact. For instance, you should invite females into your class and encourage them to invite their friends. If they come in groups, the sense of belonging they feel will result in an increase in happiness, success, and quantity of those students in your class.

We can't fix all of the problems and make discrimination go away, but we can do a lot with equitable strategies to improve our classrooms.

These strategies require some short-term effort, but actually make things easier long-term because your students will be happier and more engaged.

Pick one strategy, decide what you are going to do with it, and share your commitment with others.

High school focus - how do you create CS classroom environments that help students thrive?

K-8 focus - what do we mean by teaching computing and why is teaching computing unlike other subjects, especially the experimentation culture of CS?

Resources:

Luther Tychonievich

In Memoriam: Joann Cohoon

Tapestry Workshop

CS Institute

Experimentation culture in CS (video with Luther)

Creating equitable CS experiences handbook

[kswilkens]

Episode 5: From researcher to edtech entrepreneur with Tom Lauwers

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode I take a deep dive into two papers: Robot Diaries: Broadening Participation in the Computer Science Pipeline through Social Technical Exploration and Designing the Finch: Creating a Robot Aligned to Computer Science Concepts with Tom Lauwers. He is the founder and CEO of Birdbrain Technologies. The papers we discuss in this episode are the first steps on his entrepreneurship journey as they show the initial research for the Hummingbird Robotics Kit and the Finch Robot.

Research Paper Takeaways:

Robot diaries

Context: Afterschool program with 8 middle school girls

Results: Parent interviews revealed that while their daughters were interested in tech, their experience in male-dominated tech activities were problematic. Post workshop, there was an increase in comprehension and accuracy in describing different robot parts.

Designing the Finch

Context: Community college pilot in CS1 and CS2 classes

Results: Retention in the course improved and the Finch robot had very few hardware errors despite use from home and school.

Takeaways for Researchers:

Consider how you can move research from having just an academic impact, to research resulting in social impact.

You need to involve the people you are trying to serve as early as possible and you need to give them agency to say if they don't like an idea.

Work with educators and students from the start. Think about the learning goals, assessment, and classroom environment and let that drive a lot of your design decisions.

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators:

When looking at edtech tools, ask questions like: How was the product designed and evaluated? Was this tool designed with students and teachers in mind or is it an educational toy making its way into the classroom?

You have real insight, knowledge, and experience that technologists lack and you should be involved in the process of the development of new tools for the classroom. Feel empowered because you should be empowered. Good edtech tool companies will value your thoughts, opinions, and experiences with their product.

What kind of resources are there around the tool: Is there a community of other educators to join? Are there professional development opportunities? Is it free or do you have to pay for it? What kind of curriculum resources are readily available?

Bringing something like robotics and CS into the classroom because you have decided it is best for the students is the best motivation and will help you as you get out of your comfort zone to do it.

If it doesn't work the first time (which is probably won't), allow yourself to be okay with that. You will have to experiment and keep a growth mindset.

Resources:

Tom Lauwers

Birdbrain Technologies

[kswilkens]

#CSForAll Commitment from the Charlottesville CS Community

The Charlottesville CS Community through a collaboration with the University of Virginia and Charlottesville City Schools makes a commitment to provide professional learning experiences and ongoing support for at least 42 K-8 teachers to help them infuse CS into their curriculum, serving 1000 students by Summer 2023.

In the summer of 2020, we launched the Creating Equitable CS Experiences Workshop with a cohort of 14 K-8 educators from Charlottesville City Schools. The workshop ran again in 2021 with a second cohort of 14 K-8 educators. We plan to run it again during the summer of 2022 with a third cohort of 14 K-8 educators from Charlottesville City Schools.

We infuse culturally responsive and equitable CS teaching practices throughout the workshop.

Many of the sample lessons we provide have been field-tested through our non-profit partners, Tech-Girls and C4K.

Each cohort of educators commits to remixing and/or creating two CS-infused lessons/units that they then incorporate into their curriculum in the coming year.

We track participant growth in self-efficacy toward computer science and equitable teaching strategies with pre and post-workshop surveys. We published preliminary results of our findings at SIGCSE2021 (Changes in K-8 Teacher Self-Efficacy with CS and Culturally Responsive Teaching through an RPP Workshop).

We also track implementation of the lesson plans/units and follow up with a survey and/or interview to determine what went well, what could be improved, and plans for continuing the lesson in the coming year.

The CS-infused lessons the teachers used are shared on the GoOpenVA repository as openly-licensed digital resources available to educators throughout Virginia and beyond.

The workshop is funded in part by an Advancing Computer Science Education (ACSE) grant from the Virginia Department of Education.

The PD is also available online for free through the CS Institute.

Learn more about CSForAll commitments here.

[kswilkens]

Episode 4: Elementary and middle school as a path to future CS with Michelle Friend

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into two papers: Middle school girls’ envisioned future in computing and Bricklayer: Elementary Students Learn Math through Programming and Art with Michelle Friend. She is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska Omaha. I first met Michelle through the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) where she is a founding and current board member.

Research Paper Takeaways:

Middle school girls’ envisioned future in computing

Context: The study took place over two years with 71 8th grade students from a private girls’ school in Silicon Valley.

Results:

35% of participants in the study did not reject the possibility of a future career in computing.

Girls open to computing careers had high confidence in their computing skills, higher interest in computing, and placed a higher value in computing.

Participants in the CS Career group were more likely to have a parent who is a computer scientist: 46%.

Girls who are open to future computing careers are more likely to have mentoring relationships with adults around them.

Bricklayer: Elementary Students Learn Math through Programming and Art

Context: Ten one hour workshops using Bricklayer with 66 3rd through 6th grade students in a gifted program across nine schools in one district.

Bricklayer: Open-source, online educational ecosystem designed to teach coding to all ages groups and background levels.

Results: Students improved their ability to answer questions about coordinate graphing and visual-spatial skills. Participants did not demonstrate improvement from pre- to post-test on functional reasoning.

Takeaways for Researchers:

Kids can do so much more than we think they can.

Look for group-worthy projects to invest time and research into.

Look to get involved with research-practice partnerships (RPPs).

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators:

Encourage and invite students to pursue CS, especially students who might not see themselves in a typical CS class in your school or community.

If you can capture students' interest in CS in middle school, then they are likely to stay interested, even if CS is not available in high school.

Look to get involved with research-practice partnerships (RPPs).

Look for ways to incorporate coding art to help students improve their spatial ability

Just like reading and number sense, knowing computer science concepts is a basic skill that everyone needs.

Resources:

Michelle Friend

Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA)

The Girls' Middle School

Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education (SIGCSE)

Bricklayer - math and coding through art

Bootstrap

Intro to Processing: Face challenge & Code art

Research-practice partnerships (RPP)

[kswilkens]

October: MozFest ambassador update

The MozFest call for proposals (CFP) is open now through November 5! MozFest is a unique event for anyone interested in joining the movement to fight for a more humane digital world! MozFest will be held online March 7-10. MozFest sessions are organized into a series of spaces including:

Creating Neurodiverse Wellbeing

Decolonized AI Futures

Digital ID & Privacy

Digitizing Cultures & Languages

Gender, Tech & Intersectionality

Misinformation & Disinformation

Rethinking Power & Ethics

Sustainability & Climate Change

Youth & Futures (for youth, by youth)

I want to highly encourage students, teachers, and really anyone working in the education space and passionate about a tech future that is equitable, sustainable and humane to consider proposing a session. You can find a lot of support from Mozilla for proposing a session and I’m always happy to brainstorm ideas!

[kswilkens]

Episode 3: Supporting diverse learners in K-8 computational thinking with Jean Salac

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into two papers: TIPP&SEE: A Learning Strategy to Guide Students through Use–>Modify Scratch Activities and Supporting Diverse Learners in K-8 Computational Thinking with TIPP&SEE with Jean Salac. Jean is a Computer Science PhD candidate and NSF Graduate Fellow at the University of Chicago's CANON Lab working with Professor Diana Franklin. I was really excited to catch up with Jean because I first met her when she was studying CS as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia. She has a passion for CS instruction that is accessible and effective for people from under-served communities, making computing accessible for everyone and closing the digital divide.

What is TIPP&SEE?

One of the most popular approaches to introducing a new concept in CS is through a strategy called Use -> Modify -> Create, where a concept is introduced through guided instruction before moving to more open-ended project work. This inquiry-based approach has many positives, but sometimes a project is too open-ended for some students. They need a little bit of a boost in the Use -> Modify step and TIPP&SEE is one way to help them get started. The mechanisms in TIPP&SEE come from highly effective strategies in teaching reading comprehension to students with disabilities, students who have trouble reading, or students acquiring English as a new language by helping them get ready for what they are about to read and teaching them that different kinds of text look different.

Get a TIPP from the project page:

Title: what is the title of project? Does it tell you something about the project?

Instructions: What do the instructions tell you to do?

Purpose: What is the purpose of this activity? What will this code teach you?

Play: Run the project and see what it does! Which sprites are doing the actions?

SEE inside:

Sprites: Click on the sprite that you want to learn from or change.

Events: Look at the event blocks starting with the scripts. Which scripts are the most useful?

Explore: Try different changes to the scripts and observe what happens!

Research Paper Takeaways:

“As momentum continues to build for integrating CS/CT into elementary school classrooms, it is imperative that CS/CT instruction be effective for diverse learners. A learning strategy like TIPP&SEE provides some much-needed scaffolding for such diverse learners, advancing not just equitable access, but also equitable outcomes in elementary computing" (p. 84).

Context: Sixteen 4th grade classrooms participated, six were bilingual. Fifteen teachers were randomly assigned to teach Use -> Modify projects with or without TIPP&SEE worksheets.

Assessments were designed to measure student learning across CS/CT concepts of Events & Sequence and Loops.

TIPP&SEE enabled students who were performing below proficiency on state testing in reading and math, students with disabilities, and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to perform similarly to their typically achieving peers on CS tasks.

Students using TIPP&SEE outperformed students who used an unmodified Use –> Modify –> Create approach on nearly all questions of moderate and hard difficulty.

Takeaways for Researchers:

We don't have to keep reinventing the wheel in CS. Other discipline-based education fields have been around far longer than CS. They have a much longer history of research and literature that we can draw from.

CS researchers, talk to your colleagues in education and learning sciences and vice versa.

A lot of computing curriculum comes from the university setting where writing a program from scratch is the norm. This does not translate well into K-8 settings.

In CS education at least, it seems like we are just at the tip of the iceberg in understanding what instructional strategies work for all students, regardless of academic and/or economic advantages or disadvantages.

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators:

Supporting diverse students doesn't have to come at the expense of other students. Teaching in a way that is accessible to all learners, almost always benefits all students, even the ones who didn't need the support.

Scratch Act 1 (introductory computational thinking curriculum with TIPP&SEE)

Scratch Encore (intermediate CT curriculum with TIPP&SEE)

[kswilkens]

September: MozFest ambassador update

I help teach a course at UVA called Designing Games for Learning. It is a dream class from the diversity of students who join us on the journey to the journey itself, which Jennie Chiu has designed as a series of Quests! This week we started Quest 3: What biases exist in games and learning? Today we had A.E. Osworth, author of We Are Watching Eliza Bright, join us. I invited Austen because I got the chance to interview them for the Virginia Festival of the Book about their book and I knew they would have a lot of insight to share with students about representation, bias, and culture in games, tech, and beyond.

So, you may be wondering what does this have to do with MozFest? The inspiration for the novel was sadly Gamergate, which many of our students had never heard of. This could be seen as a good thing, but as Austen pointed out the root problems from Gamergate didn't start out in the video game industry and are still very much present in our culture today. When a student asked what lessons were learned from Gamergate and what is being done differently today, Austen shared that it brought previously hidden or ignored online spaces into the light which is good, but that next steps are needed, like for instance holding tech companies accountable to deal with hate speech, fake news, biases in tech, privacy, and the list goes on. I shared with students that being part of the MozFest community is a way I can learn more about the problems and then support/work with others towards solutions.

If you are looking for a community that is shining a light in the dark spaces of tech and making real change happen, then you should join the MozFest community too! There are so many ways to get involved:

Join us on Slack! mozillafestival.org/slack (must be over the age of 16 to join)

Sign up for the MozFest newsletter: mozillafestival.org/newsletter

Follow MozFest along on Twitter or LinkedIn

Contribute to one of 15 MozFest Trustworthy AI Working Group community-led projects: https://mzl.la/3z1tGlL

Volunteer at MozFest: https://mzl.la/3yynUqB

[kswilkens]

Episode 2: Continuous CS professional development with Jared O’Leary

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into the paper Measuring the effect of continuous professional development on elementary teachers’ self-efficacy to teach coding and computational thinking with one it’s authors Jared O’Leary. Jared is the Director of Education and Research at BootUp. BootUp is a non-profit that provides professional development (PD) to K-8 educators at a district level. They take a continuous PD approach which means their goal is to work with teachers several times throughout the year, over a 2-3 year span.

I have cited this paper several times in a variety of assignments primarily because of their findings that hands-on PD, delivered at the right pace, and seeing student success were both important drivers for increasing elementary teachers' confidence to teach coding. When I realized that Jared was one of the authors, I knew I wanted to get their perspective on the research because they are a champion for CS education in K-8. I first met Jared when I was a guest on their #CSK8 podcast, so it was fun to interview Jared for this episode.

Research Paper Takeaways:

"One of the greatest contributors to teachers' confidence to teach coding was seeing students succeed with coding." (p. 20).

Context: 127 elementary coding teachers’ change in their beliefs about teaching coding and CT as participants in year-long continuous PD experience.

Mixed method design: quantitative data was the primary driver and qualitative data was used to further explain and provide context.

Teachers found it easier to learn: sequence, algorithms, and logic

Teachers found it more challenging to learn: variables, conditional logic, and functions.

Teachers had lower confidence with decomposition and abstraction than other computational thinking practices.

Growth in teacher confidence in teaching CS came from: PD, experience teaching coding in class, and resources.

Challenges identified by teachers: time, lack of knowledge (systematic or personal deficiencies)

Successes identified by teachers: student interest, knowledge and success

Takeaways for Researchers:

What is the impact of CS education on other subject areas, especially if it takes time away from other areas?

How much time is being allocated for K-8 CS education?

How are administrators assessing CS education in their schools and districts?

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers:

Consider interest-driven learning with a focus on students creating stuff as a way to introduce CS. There are lots of free resources at BootUp.

There are many opportunities to learn CS and you don’t (can’t) learn it all. Start somewhere, based on an interest and with a supportive community, if possible. Here are just a few of the many resources out there to learn CS:

Coding Train - learn P5.JS with Daniel Shiffman, Associate Arts Professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts

CS Institute - self-paced, asynchronous Creating Equitable CS Experiences workshop created for K-8 teachers.

CSTA accredited PD programs - list of PD opportunities from the Computer Science Teachers’ Association

Learning Creative Learning - explore Scratch with other educators. Content is always available and there are also a few times during the year when it runs like MOOC.

Pathfinders Online Institute - provides K-12 teachers with a series of live and recorded short-term PD modules in CS and maker education.

Takeaways for K-8 Administrators

You don't have to hire people who already know CS.

Invest in time for your teachers to learn to code, whether through PD you provide or through teachers’ self-learning.

Don't wait to tell your teachers they are going to teach coding until they show up for PD.

Coding TAP Crosswalk Document - provides an explanation of what to expect within a coding classroom as it relates to TAP (teacher advancement program) discourse.