Celebrate Computer Science Education

CS teachers go to class

Brian Scarbeau — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:04:19 GMT

At the Marriott Hotel in San Antonio, TX, there were close to 200 teachers from across the world attending the annual Computer Science Teachers Association Symposium. I have been fortunate to attend this event in the past as an attendee and as a speaker and I always look forward to it every year.

I enjoy meeting new teachers and talking to them about what they are doing in the class. I also enjoy seeing old friends and the opportunity to learn something new at this event.

My presentation was on Web Development using DotNetNuke. I've been using DotNetNuke in my web design class for a couple of years now so I was able to share with teachers how I teach my Web Design class. The room was full and only one person left during my presentation, so I think it was successful.

I was able to attend presentations by John Nordlinger who works for Microsoft Research. John has been involved with Game Programming and shared with us what colleges and universities were doing with game programming. I hope John's presentation will include several high school's that are teaching game programming in his next presentation because there are several of us doing that.

Leigh Ann Sudol who was on the Board at CSTA with me gave an interesting presentation on Teaching Technology with Technology. Leigh Ann does some interesting things with her programming students like having them blog, using a wikki, and a bulletin board in her class.

Chris Stephenson who is the Executive Director for CSTA gave an excellent presentation on the political landscape advocating for CS. Chris is extremely knowledgeable and stays current with state changes.

If you're a computer science teacher, you really should join CSTA and stay current with great periodicals that are mailed to you and you have access to a great website that is full of resources for you to use. Membership is free, so you have nothing to lose.

Technorati Tags: computer science education, computer scence

Technology night 08

Brian Scarbeau — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:52:43 GMT

Tech night 08 was a great success last night in the Lakefront room at LHPS. There were close to 50 students and parents in attendance to listen to Andrea Barr from Apple who talked about Podcasting. Etan Horowitz from the Orlando Sentinel talked about Tech Tips for students. Richard Connor from Laptop Plus dove into pc security and finally Dan Waters from Microsoft talked about the tablet pc and Onenote software. Lots of information in two hours time. Thanks to Microsoft for the donation of an XBOX and to the Orlando Sentinel for some give away prizes.

Here's the tech guru from the Orlando Sentinel talking about tech tips for students.

Richard Connor from Laptop Plus talking about computer security.

Technorati Tags: computer science education, xbox, orlando Sentinel, pc security, apple, podcasting

The List: What's In and Out for 2008

Brian Scarbeau — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:35:27 GMT

It was nice to see that Washington Post Writer Hank Stuever has included The Last Lecture by Randy Pauch in his What's In and Out for 2008. He has the lecture in the In column.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

This is a must see!! Over and over again....

Alice Summer Workshops

Brian Scarbeau — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:32:09 GMT

Barbara Conover asked me to announce this workshop on my blog so here goes:

Summer 2007 Workshops

. Learning to Program with Alice
. Alice and Media Computation

Registration Deadline: May 1, 2007

(The workshops are free!)

Led by the experts:

Dr. Stephen Cooper, Saint Joseph's University
Dr. Wanda Dann, Ithaca College

And funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, these workshops are designed and particularly appropriate for instructors wishing to:

Decrease the attrition among computer science students
Attract students into computer science
Provide a programming component for a computer literacy course
Aid in AP CS courses

Two three (3) day workshops will be offered on the teaching of Alice and Media Computation together in a CS1 course:

July 26-28 on the campus of Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island
August 1-3 on the campus of Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Georgia

This workshop will include (approximately) 1 ½ days of instruction in Alice; 1 day instruction in Media Computation; and ½ day instruction on combining the two for teaching CS1.

Learning to Program with Alice workshop will be offered August 8-10 on the campus of California State University, in Dominguez Hills, California. Workshop will include:

Introduction/review of the Alice environment
Scene set-up
Programming constructs, including objects and classes
Teaching tips
Curricular models
Instructional materials
Transitioning to Java/C++
Alice in an existing CS curriculum
Arrays and Lists (Visual and Non-Visual)
Sound
Camera control

All workshop materials will be provided. For more details concerning accommodations for each workshop, please visit:

http://visualization.sju.edu/aliceworkshops

If you would like to attend, please fill out and submit the form below. Please note that these workshops are completely free of charge.

Full Name
E-Mail
Your University, College or High School
I would like to attend the following workshop(s):

What to teach after the AP Computer Science Exam?

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:34:00 GMT

There is always some time left after the AP exam to teach our students more before we leave them for the summer. In Florida, we have a couple of weeks to learn more and if you’re from different parts of the country you may have even more time to teach students something new.

I am really sold on having students learn about creating games so that’s what I’ll be doing with my students. There are several options available for you to do with your students and several languages to use as well.

If you want your students to continue to learn about JAVA then there are two game opportunities that are pretty good. One is robocode which I’ve used with students in past years. Robocode is a fighting game with robots. The Robocode's battles take place in an arena, where small automated 6-wheeled robots fight it out until only one is left. You can compete with individual robots or with a team of robots. Students create their own robot and code the robot to survive in the battlefield.

The other game is a space invader game. This tutorial comes with all the sprites and sounds to create this game with some good instructions on advanced JAVA concepts that are not covered in the AP course.

Another good project is in J# and it’s called Hunt the Wombat. You can have your students learn a different IDE and they can experience intellisense when they code.

Hunt for the Wombat is a 4-6 week project designed to give AP Computer Science students the opportunity to apply their programming skills, gain broader awareness and understanding of the software development process and have fun along the way. By participating in a "real world" scenario where they build a computer game, students can gain experience with project teams, methodologies and core development phases: Discovery, Design, Development and Deployment.

There’s opportunities for your students to use their Visual Basic.NET skills by working with the Black Jack Card Game The Card Game Starter Kit is a fully-functional blackjack card game. It contains a reusable framework for building your own custom card games!

For C# fans there is Space Blitz by Andy Dunn from Zbuffer Games. Andy is a Microsoft MVP and I was fortunate to have lunch with him and new Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss at the Microsoft Summit last month in Seattle. Space Blitz has a video to download as well as a 2d Primer.

There is also rocket commander. The Rocket Commander tutorials will show you how you can create visually stunning 3D games in a series of 30-minute videos.

If you want your students to get really excited then you can introduce them to XNA game express. Why? Because the games that they learn how to create can be deployed on their xbox at home and with the xbox creator club, the game can be shared with friends.

XNA is based on Visual C# Express Edition and allows you to create games for both Windows PC’s and the Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following:

The XNA Framework, a set of managed code development libraries that make it possible for game developers to be more productive when creating games for Windows and the Xbox 360.
The XNA Framework Content Pipeline, which is a set of tools that allow developers to more easily incorporate 3D content into their games.
XNA Game Studio Express also contains a full set of documentation, how-tos, and starter kits that demonstrate how best to use the content pipeline and XNA Framework.

XNA comes with a starter kit called Space war. Students can bring in their xbox controller and connect to a pc and view the code to see how the game is created. They can modify the game as well to make things run faster, slower etc.

All in all, there is plenty of material available for your students to have FUN! Why not, they deserve it after studying hard for the AP Computer Science Exam.

AP Teachers & Students Exam Preparation Resources

Brian Scarbeau — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:12:00 GMT

Right now, all of our classes are finishing up with teaching the AP computer science course and all of the requirements given in the AP JAVA subset. If you are looking for review material, here is a list that I've found to be valuable to my students. Review books: The one that I have used for 11 years now has been the book by Skylight Publishing called Be Prepared for the AP Computer Science Exam in JAVA. The book is written by Maria Litving along with Roger Frank, Judith Hromcik, Dave Wittry and Gary Litvin. All contributors except for Gary are AP Teachers and have been involved with the CollegeBoard either as Readers, Chief Readers, or Exam contributors. The book reviews all concepts required for the exam and has 2 practice exams in both the A and AB part. My students in the past have told me that if you can pass the Litvin review book tests then you'll get a good score on the AP exam. Eimacs.com has the exam online if you want your students to review that way. The 2nd book that I required my students to get was the McGraw-Hill book called 5 Steps to a 5 AP Computer Science written by David Levine and Kathleen Larson. David is a college professor and Kathleen a high school AP Computer Science teacher. The layout of the book is similiar to the Litvin book and it too comes with 2 practice exams for the A & AB exam. The students liked the practice exam especially the free response questions because they were easy. This book gives students success on the taking the practice exams but they do find the Litvin book harder. Roselyn Teukolsky has a reveiw book that Barron's puts out called the AP Computer Science 2007 Levels A and AB. I don't use this resource book because of time. Barbara Cloud who teaches at Colgate University and Chris Nevison also a Professor at Colgate and was the Chief Reader a couple of years ago has some AP CS resources that you need to purchase but it has good reviews and 2 AP exams for students to review. Georgia Tech has a nice site where you can take A or AB multiple choice questions online and you get feedback from your answers. http://manatee.cc.gt.atl.ga.us/apExam/begin_test.jsp Finally, the CollegeBoard site has several Free Response Questions from past years to give your students and you can purchase the 2004 AP CS exam from the CollegeBoard with gives you an idea of what they test in JAVA. Better hurry up and start reviewing because you only have about a month left for the exam. Good luck!!

AP Computer Science Course

Brian Scarbeau — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:32:00 GMT

Alfred Thompson, a former high school computer science teacher and now a Microsoft employee, blogged today on taking a look at AP Computer Science.

Quite timely I thought even after I posed this question last week to Microsoft boss Bill Gates, "Is computer science education dead". Quite timely indeed even after I said something to my Associate Director here at school on Friday about how frustrated I am teaching AP Computer Science and that when our school hires another Computer Science Teacher next year that maybe that's when I have that teacher teach AP Computer Science and not me.

Alfred walks on dangerous waters posing this question but kudos to him for stating what he believes in. To give history to those that don't know about the Advanced Placement courses: The program began in 1955 as a way to give bright high-school students a chance to get ahead before college. That year, 1,300 students took AP exams nationwide, compared with more than 660,000 last year according to the College Board (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-apclasses1907mar19,0,479211.story?page=1)

The program charges $85.00 per test and last year 14,059 students took the AP Computer Science A exam. It is a tough exam that students are required to take and a tough job for AP computer science teachers to prepare students. Teaching in the south allows me to have more time to teach my students than teaching in the north. Our school year starts in August and in the north they start after labor day. The exam is in early May and the AP curriculum consists of several standard topics to cover along with a case study. In the past, my students have done well on the exam. I teach bright students at a private school. All my students passed the exam last year.

If you're interested you can find out more about the curriculum at this site: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_compscia.html?compscia

I have taught AP Computer Science for 11 years now and there have been 3 languages. Pascal, C++ and now JAVA. When new versions and improvements of JAVA come out then the curriculum gets changed. The case study is also going to be changed for the next school year.

I only teach one section of AP Computer Science and my enrollments have always been low for this course. We have made changes at our school where we are now requiring incoming Grade 9 students to take Honors Programming or Web Design to meet the school's computer science requirement. We are also requiring students in lower and middle school to get introduced to programming at our younger age. I'm also changing the curriculum for our Honors Programming II class to teach XNA and C# so students can create games and deploy them to their XBOX console. Hopefully, more interest in the Advanced Placement course will take place with these changes.

Back to Alfred's blog.... He brings up good points but as they say "You're not going to change city hall". The language JAVA will stay the same because it's free and is an OOP language that runs on all platforms, the test will be the same because the rubric works with the questions that are asked, the level of difficulty will remain the same because it's a college course and students get college credit. What still needs to get addressed is why some colleges and universities don’t accept the AP score that a high school students gets for taking this difficult course and exam. Many schools don’t accept a 3 or 4 which is a passing score for the AP exam. They might take a 5. This has always been the case with students getting frustrated for passing the exam but not being able to get 3 college credits by certain universities. Maybe something can be done about that. Alfred, can you add that to your list?

Calling all high school computer science teachers... Survey Time

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:45:00 GMT

The Computer Science Teachers Association is once again asking you for your input. Across the U.S. there are growing concerns about computer science in high schools. While there are many anecdotal reports about dropping enrollments and state-level teaching certification battles, there is a critical lack of solid information. For this reason, we are asking you to take a few minutes to participate in our national high school CS survey http://csta.acm.org/Research/sub/CSTAResearch-2.html

How to ask a billionaire a question....

Brian Scarbeau — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:25:00 GMT

At the Microsoft MVP summit today, Bill Gates gave the keynote to 1800 MVP award recipients from all over the world. Before the session, many people were already in line. My thoughts were to eat breakfast fast and then get in line to get a good seat. In line it was a great experience for me to be able to be with people from all over the world. In front of me were a group from Brazil and they have a great sense of humor even though I had no clue what they were speaking in Portugese. To my right side were two men from Italy and to my left was a group from Japan. The atmosphere was very electric for the start of a great summit. Bill Gates was introduced and immediately a standing ovation. He spoke about the past and getting the company started and eventually spoke about the future. If you've read any of his speeches before then you'll get an idea of what he said because it was a pretty standard talk. After the presentation, there was a question and answer period and I immediately got up to ask him a question. What I didn't know was that I was going to be the first one to ask him a question. I iintroduced myself to him and then asked him if Computer Science Education was dead! I then told him that I was part of the Microsoft Faculty Advisory Board which is now defunct because of budget. I also told him that I wrote curriculum for high school teachers to use and I also trained teachers as well. All these are not being done at all because of a budget cut. His reply to me was that he was not aware that Microsoft was not doing these things and that he'll look into it. He also addressed the question of Computer Science Education being dead by saying that we need to do a better job of getting the brighter students into our classes. Hopefully, he'll look into that as well. Needless to say, it was an exciting day for me to be able to ask a billionaire a question.

Digital Literacy Certificate

Brian Scarbeau — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:22:00 GMT

Sixty seven of my students have successfully passed the Digital Literacy Certificate exam that was sponsored by Microsoft Corporation. The students had online lessons in the following areas: Computer Basics The Internet and World Wide Web Productivity Programs Computer Security and Privacy Digital Lifestyles Students were required to take an exam that tested their knowledge in these areas. Congratulations!