Embedding a CS & E Curriculum Finding Engineers in your Colleagues Classrooms Michael Chabin The...
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Transcript of Embedding a CS & E Curriculum Finding Engineers in your Colleagues Classrooms Michael Chabin The...
Embedding a CS & E Curriculum
Finding Engineers in your Colleagues Classrooms
Michael Chabin
The Holton-Arms School
The Problem
The number of women receiving Bachelors degrees in computer science peaked at about 38% in the early 1990s.
Only 9% of professional engineers and 20% of engineering undergraduates are women.
The Holton-Arms School
• School for Girls Founded 1901
• 660 students grades 3 - 12
• Class of 2004 (75 students):– 2 National Merit Scholars (9 finalists, and 31
commended)– SAT-1 means: Verbal 704, Math 692– 4 Admitted to Princeton
The Holton school motto is: Inveniam viam aut faciam. ( I will find a way or make one.)
With a motto like that, and students like ours, we should be producing engineers!
Some Reasons Girls Don’t Explore CS&E
• They don’t know what Computer Scientists and Engineers do (few people do). – Bioengineering– Adaptive Optics– Nano-scale machines
• Problem-solving activities like Legos, HO trains, race cars, model rockets, and even computer programming are less available to girls for social reasons. (This is mitigated in a girl’s school.)
• Despite our best efforts schools still tend to “teach by telling” rather than allowing students to create genuinely original solutions - perhaps especially in the critical middle-school years and earlier.
Goals:
• Ensure that every girl understands technology well enough to exploit it as students and, eventually, to govern it as voters.
• Ensure that any girl who has an interest in engineering discovers it, and having discovered it, goes to college prepared to pursue it.
• Excellent Students• Parents in strategic locations (NIH, AAAS, U of
MD Engineering & etc.)• A Head of School who is committed to an
engineering program.• Adequate funding
Assets
Faculty and students are already over subscribed. • No new required courses,• Cannot add to student workload, • Cannot require teachers to master new
technology.
Challenges
• An introduction to Object-oriented Programming with Java.
• AP Java (two semesters).
Current Offerings
In terms of encouraging girls to consider CS&E majors, results have been disappointing. Last year five of Holton’s 660 students took AP Java.
One of those decided her interest in Computer Science was misplaced. “Too much vocabulary,” she complained.
Parts of AP Java will be obsolete by the time our students graduate from college. Sun Microsystems may not survive that long. Can Java survive alone? Is it really the best of all possible languages?
It is, after all, the third AP language in 11 years.
The most important concepts of programming can be learned in a variety of languages - often more efficiently than in AP Java.
AP Java places too much emphasis on rote learning (many texts include vocabulary lists).
Expertise is the ability to learn what one needs to solve a problem. Our students have to make effective use of tools they haven’t been introduced to.
- Swapping disk drives- Taking a drill apart and putting it back
together- Figure out what Fireworks is on their own
AP Java conveys too much material, sacrificing key concepts and the time required to develop them.
We are delighted to sacrifice completeness for depth.
The key element in all of engineering is play, something for which there is no time in the AP curriculum.
We hope to build a CS&E curriculum in which play is a key component.
AP Java is about programming.
There is much more to Computer Science & Engineering than programming. There are languages besides Java.
AP Java is a year-long course.
We hope to make the engineer’s attitude a Holton cultural value. We need to provide children with regular challenges from grades 3 through 12.
Traditional teaching structures exclude girls from CS&E.
We hope to give our students direct experience with real problems and partner them with scientists, graduate students, and other accomplished women.
We hope to construct a CS&E curriculum that:
Is less vulnerable to obsolescenceEmphasizes learning to learnPermits freedom for in-depth exploration Embodies engineering-as-productive-playHelps students solve real problemsInvolves students from grades 3-12Provides role models
The question is . . . How?
Essays and short-stories are converted to HTML
Art is scanned
Sculpture and ceramics are photographed with a digital camera - perhaps in VR 3D.
PowerPoints from class would be included
So would computer programs and spreadsheets
Digital images and video could record everything from science experiments to class trips.
Imagine that highlights from concert recordings are included
Videos from sporting events, speeches, and performances
Even guest-shot videos from friends.
It would be a durable archive of a student’s year.
It would be a profoundly effective way to communicate the student experience to parents.
It would be a treasure for grandparents.
Most important, from a CS&E perspective, it would be a vehicle for implementing an “embedded” or “virtual” CS&E curriculum.
We might require a robot . . , . . . but no class in robotics.
Students who are working on a project can arrange for individual or group help directly with CS&E faculty - or from each other.
The important notion is this: it is up to the students to arrange for the help they need. They can get it from CS&E faculty, from parents, or from each other.
We are still working on the specific grade-by-grade requirements.
The nice thing is we don’t have to get it right the first time. Nothing is easier to change than a list of requirements.
Third Grade: A Squeakland ProgramFourth grade: Lego Movies, digital images Fifth Grade: PowerPoint, Go-cart, Sixth Grade: Lego Robot, video interviewSeventh Grade Flash animationEighth Grade: Flash with ActionScript
Java - Scientific formulaeJava - Sum 1 to 1000000
Ninth Grade: Stella - Predator-prey ArcGis- Poverty map
Tenth graders might build a simple digital control system, produce reasonably sophisticated Flash Movies, be responsible for the videos of school plays and recordings of school concerts.
Juniors and seniors might focus on mastering skills to qualify for a summer internship:
IRAF - astrophysics (1 already)GIS - epidemiology, geophysics, etc.Stella - decision support Maya - 3D modelingFlash - Museum kiosks
To help with such complex projects, we hope to recruit experts, ideally women who are graduate students in a related discipline.
Unlike other elements of the curriculum, these are dynamic. They can be changed in response to:
Student interestChanging technologyCurrent themes, like elections or weatherSpecial opportunities
Once a particular competence is required for the Digital Portfolio teachers can make assignments that use that particular skill.
If seventh graders are required to produce a Flash animation then any teacher from grade 7 up can assign one, even if the teacher has no experience with Flash and no intention of getting it.
Digital Portfolio offersParents: a better idea of the school experienceStudents: a broader audience
experience with a variety of toolsTeachers: the ability to assign technology
they haven’t mastered.freedom from having to teach
technical skills.The School: a profoundly flexible CS&E
and technology curriculuma visible archive of excellence
Because people know what they are, APs tend to co-opt the curriculum. Parents and students alike tend to think of them as a pinnacle of High School academics.
In fact, they are not.
The critical accomplishments of a student’s K-12 career are highly individual. Digital Portfolios can capture that in a way that APs never will.
Students can still take the AP.
Our students regularly get 5s on the AP English exam and we have no AP English.
We’ll keep three CS&E electives, but they’ll be:- Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
will be half Flash and half digital electronics
- One semester Scientific Programming- One semester half Stella and GIS
For now, however, our focus will remain on Digital Portfolios as the best way to develop CS&E interest and competence in our students, and the best way to demonstrate student achievements to parents and colleges.