Computer Science Teacher

OCTOBER 24, 2023

The CSTA Call for Proposals is coming to an end October 30, 2023 11:59 PM PT. Presentations are what makes the CSTA Conference is what makes CSTA the best conference for K-12 Computer Science educators. It’s also a wonderful; audience for CS educators to present their good ideas. If you have a good idea that you have been using successfully in your classes you should think seriously about presenting to CSTA.

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Computer Science Computer Science Sciences 216

Computer Science Teacher

OCTOBER 29, 2023

My wife loves word puzzles. She is amazing at them. Me? Not so much. On the other hand I love programs and programming projects that involved string manipulation. So when my wife started playing a new (to her) word puzzle – the New York Times Spelling Bee – my thoughts went to solving it programmatically. If you are not familiar with the game, it involves seven letters for the player to make words from.

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Schooling Computer Science Computer Science 229

Computer Science Teacher

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

This looks like a great opportunity to make a difference in CS education. We are seeking community involvement in a new project called Reimagining CS Pathways: High School and Beyond, led by CSTA, CSEdResearch.org, ACM, Code.org, College Board, CSforAll, and the ECEP Alliance. Please consider applying to join us. We particularly need diverse voices from post-secondary as well as industry representation.

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Schooling Science Sciences Education 189

Computer Science Teacher

AUGUST 11, 2023

Dave Largent, a CS professor at Ball State University, had an important reminder on his blog - Dave's not here, or is he?: Teachers need to struggle to learn (davidlargent.blogspot.com) Our students often (usually?) struggle to learn new things. I think this is especially true in computer science. We as teachers with lots of content knowledge sometimes struggle to be empathetic.

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Learning Computer Science Computer Professor 178

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 12, 2023

I am at tending the 2023 CSTA Conference online. I’m not writing blog posts about it the way I normally do. Lots of reasons for that but I will post some learnings from it later. I am downloading lots of presentation slides as notetaking. But I wanted to take a few minutes to ramble about what has been going through my mind as I watch. One question I get a lot is: Why are your as a retired person still attending CSTA conferences and events.

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Computer Science Energy Computer Innovation 204

Computer Science Teacher

JUNE 6, 2023

Pat Yongpradit from Code.Org tweeted an image of what they are seeing in conversations about AI and Education. (The link on the image below goes to that tweet) Now I am not having the detailed conversations with policy makers that Pat is but these boxes pretty much match what I am seeing in my social media these days. That bottom right hand box is where I’d like to see myself and others but it feels like people in power are more on the left hand column.

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Education Education Government Teaching 187

Computer Science Teacher

JUNE 5, 2023

Facebook memories reminded me of a frequent conversation I had with students. They would ask me what would happen if they tried something and I would answer “I don’t know. Let’s try it and see.” Students often expect teachers to know everything. Well, if they believe their teacher is a real content knowledge expert. Of course there is more to be known than can ever be known.

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Computer Science Computer Creativity Science 145

Computer Science Teacher

MAY 25, 2023

Last night, when I could not sleep, I got up and wrote some code. I added some features and data checking to my Wordle solver helper program. When I finished I felt good about my work and myself. I think that made it easier to get to sleep and I slept well. It got me thinking this morning. When I was in university and still learning how to code I would occasionally get frustrated and feel less confident.

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Creativity Artificial Intelligence Schooling Learning 163

Computer Science Teacher

MARCH 18, 2023

Does anyone else lay in bed in the morning thinking about coding projects or is it just me? I’ve been playing around with a Wordle solver helper for a while now. It helps me find words based on what I know after each guess. One of the things like like to do is see how many possibilities there are based on different hints. Yesterday I had most of the letters but not in the right place.

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Artificial Intelligence Computer Science Computer Science 197

Computer Science Teacher

MARCH 14, 2023

tl;dr Book recommendations: Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, the Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II Overnight Code was recommended to me after I recommended Code Girls on Facebook. Overnight Code is a truly inspiring story of a woman with two strikes against her (female and Black) whose hard work, determination, and talents helped her do some revolutionary work in naval engineering and integrating

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Computer Science Computer Engineering Science 189

Computer Science Teacher

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

I was reading a tweet from a person saying they lost points a program written with pen and paper because the teacher thought the code would not run. When the student asked the teacher to write the code on the computer it ran. The Twitter discussion was on the wrongness of code assignments on paper but I am not sure that paper coding assignments are necessarily wrong.

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Logistics Computer Teaching Computer Science 164

Computer Science Teacher

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

One of the things that make me sure that programming will be around for awhile even with better and better artificial intelligences is that people are bad at giving instructions. Well, that may be unfair. They are reasonably good at giving instruction to other people but that is not the same as being good at giving instruction to the literal minded.

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Artificial Intelligence Computer Teaching Computer Science 130

Computer Science Teacher

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

Eugene Wallingford had a great post on WHAT WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO SUCCEED AS A CS STUDENT? It’s got a lot of good advice and I recommend it to students in high school or university. For now I want to focus on one or two pieces of his advice. Specifically, “Get to know your programming environment” For the most part, in class, teachers have time to do an introduction to the development environment but not much more.

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Learning Teaching Schooling Computer Science 159

Computer Science Teacher

JANUARY 27, 2023

I spent some time looking at the Rhode Island Computer Museum web page today. A lot of interesting stuff. Some great information under the Education and Activities page. If you teach the history of computers this is a great resource with text and pictures. The Collections gallery has a huge collection of images and descriptions of items they have as well.

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Computer Teaching Education Education 130

Computer Science Teacher

JANUARY 23, 2023

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra That doesn't mean people don't try. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence have a lot of people predicting what jobs are an are not likely to be replaced by computers. Technology is challenging the ideas about what jobs can and cannot be replaced by technology. Doug Peterson, who shares a lot of interesting articles, recently share this one predicting that leaders will not be replace.

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Artificial Intelligence Computer Teaching Technology 195

Computer Science Teacher

DECEMBER 31, 2022

Traditionally I write a year end look back on thee previous yest in CS education. (Last year at Looking Back on Computer Science Education in 2021 ) Honestly, that post would largely work for 2022 as well. I attended SIGCSE, CSTA, and the New England Regional CSTA conference. They were all great. There was good learning at all of them. But new stuff?

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Artificial Intelligence Computer Science Education Education 160

Computer Science Teacher

DECEMBER 19, 2022

Donald E. Knuth famously said "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." The important word there is “premature.” Optimization is not a bad thing. It isn’t always required though. The joke is that a programmer will spend hours coding a solution to a problem that can be solved in minutes manually. Is that a bad thing? It really depends on the circumstances.

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Computer Science Teacher

DECEMBER 17, 2022

Trying out ChatGPT seems to be all the rage these days in certain geek circles. I may even be late to the game but I tried a few things over the last couple of days. I started with one of my favorite little projects. Armstrong numbers are a form of narcissistic number which is a number that is the sum of its own digits each raised to the power of the number of digits.

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Equality Accessibility Artificial Intelligence Education 158

Computer Science Teacher

DECEMBER 2, 2022

Facebook memories remined me that ten years ago I was thinking about writing a program that would ring bells (nautical time) on the hour and half hour. I didn't write it back then. Probably because I was busy with my day job. It got me thinking about writing one now just for the fun of it. Now I have written a fancy clock program before. It looks something like this.

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Computer Engineering 130

Computer Science Teacher

DECEMBER 4, 2022

For most of my career I hive been hearing that some day computers will write all the code and human programmers will no longer be needed. Or at least, not as needed as today. Are we getting close to that time – finally? And if we are what does it mean for teaching computer science? Recently, the CS education world has been discussing GitHub Copilot.

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Computer Artificial Intelligence Computer Science Science 202

Computer Science Teacher

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

This year’s CSTA New England regional conference is at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) school of Education. It’s a great venue. There are around 150 people here. I can remember when CSTA national conferences were smaller than that. It just shows the growth in CSTA and the growing strength of CSTA chapters over the last several years. I am running into a number of people I know and meeting some new people as well.

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Robotics Problem Solving Energy Computer 204

Computer Science Teacher

OCTOBER 25, 2022

Mike Zamansky is stirring up trouble again. OK not really his intent I’m sure but people can get defensive. I have to say that I agree in principle with most of his post at Why PD doesn't work for CS Mike lists four different types of PDs. Teachers sharing practices conferences and meetings that teachers choose to attend PD run by content providers, that is, people selling something PD required by schools and districts It’s as good a break down as any though the fourth kind can really include an

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Computer Science Computer Science Sciences 178

Computer Science Teacher

OCTOBER 7, 2022

The Micro:Bit is a pretty cool piece of hardware being used in a lot of schools. It’s mostly used in middle school and above but that may be changing. New from Microsoft is Microcode beta. Programming is via a MicroCode web editor at aka.ms/m9. Microcode documentation is at Microsoft MicroCode for micro:bit (beta) Take a look at the intro video below.

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Schooling Computer Science Computer Science 162

Computer Science Teacher

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Last night I had a dream during which someone suggested that COBOL would make a good first programming language. They tried to promote the data division and English language syntax as plusses. When I shared this on social media it got a lot of laughs. Few would take this as a serious idea and with good reason. We used to joke that the hardest part of programming in COBOL was learning how to spell environment.

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Teaching Learning Computer Science Computer 130

Computer Science Teacher

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

Every couple of weeks I bake a couple of loaves of bread. The bread mostly gets used for breakfast sandwiches. Now my bread does not look as perfect as what I could get in a bakery. And the bagels? Once in a while I try my hand at bagels, don’t look anything close to what I get at my favorite bagel place. But they all taste good and I find it very satisfying to make it myself.

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Computer Science Computer Publication Science 130

Computer Science Teacher

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

I was reading through The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy , as one does, the other night. Specifically, the section on student misconceptions. Misconceptions are one of my favorite topics in teaching computer science. The articles in this book are very helpful in understanding what student misbelieve and why they do so. I’ve seen students with all of the common misconceptions and, of course, I try my best to help them overcome them before they get students into trouble.I tried to remember if I ex

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Computer Science Computer Teaching Science 182

Computer Science Teacher

SEPTEMBER 3, 2022

" A rose by any other name would smell as sweet " William Shakespeare. There are cultures where people have a sort of public name and a secret or true name that is rarely shared because knowing ones true name gives people power over them. In fact, knowing a name is powerful in all cultures. Consider the difference between calling “hey you” versus calling a child by their actual name.

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Computer Publication Communications Computer Science 151

Computer Science Teacher

AUGUST 17, 2022

I was thinking about data science lately. The problem is that I don’t know much about data science. I learned about data bases in school and worked with them some in industry but that was mostly about how they work internally. I used to give talks on how B* Trees worked and I could (back then) give serious talks on how databases do journaling. But I never did much of anything with real work data applications.

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Computer Science Computer Science Sciences 189

Computer Science Teacher

AUGUST 16, 2022

It;s seems like artificial intelligence has been “10 years away” for the last 40 years. Back in the mini computer days every computer was custom and configurations were designed by people. I worked for a company that believed that configuring computers was beyond the ability of computer software. From there I went to a different company that was developing rules based artificial intelligence.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Education Computer 185

Computer Science Teacher

AUGUST 13, 2022

Way back in time, cybersecurity was all about controlling access to the computer in the locked room with the raised floor. Well, you had to trust the people you did let in of course. I will not say much about the students I went t university with who competed to create the best, most realistic login emulator to steal passwords because, you know, that was all in fun.

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Education Education Artificial Intelligence Computer Science 212

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 28, 2022

Learning about Jacdac devices was my incentive to buy a Micro:Bit 2.0 The Micro:Bit 2.0 has a number of upgrades and new features from the original. These include a microphone and a speaker among others. That is probably justification enough to get an upgrade but being curious about the Jacdac devices, which requires the newer model, was the deciding factor.

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IoT Learning 206

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 19, 2022

Mike Zamansky had another interesting post ( CS - it isn't all that ) that got me thinking. The last three paragraphs started me going. For example As CS becomes more part of the system I expect teachers to have less freedom in what they teach and how they teach. As a community we might be able to steer the ship towards keeping the good stuff but then again, we might not.

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Computer Science Computer Teaching Science 158

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 18, 2022

CSTA 2022 was energizing! After three years of not seeing people in person it was awesome to reconnect with people. And to meet new people. The energy level was high through the whole event. Masks and proof of vaccination were required which I thought was great. It seemed to work out well at SIGCSE. Quite frankly, after lots of stories' of people getting COVID at ISTE which did not have those requirements I really apricated the carefulness of CSTA.

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Energy Computer Science Learning Computer 130

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 17, 2022

It’s a short day today but with plenty to learn. Last night was a great party at the Museum of Science and Technology. I left early (age?) but I know that a lot of people stayed late and partied hardy. There may be some tired faces in sessions this morning. It was a great community building event so well worth it. First session for me was “You CAN Teach Cyber Security with CYBER.ORG’s Cyber Learning Standards.

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Computer Science Computer Science Sciences 205

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 16, 2022

I got an early (for me ) start this morning. I attended a briefing session for session proctors (after missing yesterday’s) so that was good. A hot up of tea and some review of the schedule and I was good to go. First session for me, Developing Cyber Sleuths ( link to slides here ) Cyber security is a rapidly growing area of need and of course creation.

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Schooling Learning 148

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 15, 2022

I blog about what interests me or stirs my curiosity. One thing that fits that is what are the really big tech companies doing to support CS education. So I am going to write briefly about the presence of Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft (alphabetical order). Anyone else notice that we never see Apple at CSTA? All of these companies have sessions at their booths and as regular conference sessions to talk about what they offer.

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Engineering Computer Science Curriculum Computer 208

Computer Science Teacher

JULY 15, 2022

Day two started off great as I connected with several people from my home CSTA Chapter –CSTA New Hampshire. The CS community in New Hampshire is growing and the CSTA Chapter has been a part of that. I’m planning on getting more involved in chapter stuff in the future. My first session of the day was about teaching ethics when teaching artificial intelligence.

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Artificial Intelligence Architecture Teaching Schooling 199