Improving CS Education with ICE

1. Improving CS Education with ICE Barbara Ericson Georgia Tech

2. What is ICE? • Institute for Computing Education • Partnership between • Georgia Tech’s College of Computing • Georgia Department of Education • Announced June 2004 by Kathy Cox and Richard DeMillo

3. ICE Goals • Train more CS-AP teachers • Start by training teachers for the Prog and Sys Management course • even teachers with no experience • When ready train for CS-AP course • Increase the number and diversity of CS students • Interesting curriculum • Help with recruiting

4. Why? • The U.S. Department of Labor predicts that despite the recent decline in the IT industry, computer software engineers and computer systems designers will be among the fastest growing occupations in 2002-2012 • The percentage of women has been declining • High of about 30% to about 12% now

5. How? • Modify curriculum developed for non-majors (CS1315) • Media computation in Python • High success rate • Usual is about 70% • This course has about 90% • Women succeed at the same rate as men • Unusual in CS courses

6. Course Content • Based on the book: • Introduction to Computing and Programming in Java: A Multimedia Approach • Due out Dec 2005 • Introduction to OO programming • With a LOGO-like turtle • Manipulating Pictures • Negate, mirror, make a collage • Manipulating Sounds • Reverse, clip, create a sentence • Working with Text • Random sentence generator, read HTML, and write HTML • Creating Movies • Working with movie frames

7. ICE Offerings • Summer workshops for teachers • 1 to 2 week long workshops • Shorter 2-day workshops for teachers • During the year • Summer camps for high school students • Summer camps and Sat workshops with the girl scouts

8. Summer 2004 • 1 week AP workshop • 17 teachers attended • 2 week Programming and Systems Management Workshop • 30 teachers attended • Two 1 week summer camps for high school students • 30 students each

9. AP Workshop

10. Prog and Sys Workshop

11. Prog and Sys Workshop Content • Media Computation • Manipulate Pictures and Sounds • 2d Drawing • Animation • Demos of current research • Robot dogs, aging in place • Talk on diversity • Student panel discussion

12. Workshop CS Content • Introduction to object-oriented concepts • Keywords and operators • Primitive and object variables • Class and object methods • Arrays • Iteration (for and while loops) • Conditionals (if, if-else, if-else-if, and, or) • Graphical User Interfaces • Input/Output and Exceptions • Debugging

13. Goals for Content • Motivating • For students and teachers • Creative • Open-ended assignments • Use student’s media • Authentic tasks • Start with what students use computers for (pictures, sounds, text, web, games)

14. Motivating • People don’t just learn to program • They learn to program “something” • If they find that “something” compelling they learn more • Students at Georgia Tech have found media computation motivating • They sometimes turn in the homework and keep working on it still

15. Creative • Most CS Juniors are surprised how creative the more advanced classes are • Because the early classes are not • Working with media allows you to be more creative • Use student’s media • Design the result • Share it with others

16. Negate an Image

17. Mirroring

18. Rotation

19. Remove ‘Red Eye’

20. Sepia-Tint

21. Chromakey

22. Teacher Collages

23. Prog and Sys Results • Survey results • 70.37% of teachers felt more capable • 96.30% got ideas on what to teach • 88.89% got ideas on how to teach • 44.44% felt ready to teach in fall • Teachers with no experience wanted a slower pace • Some of the teachers are using the content

24. Quotes • I didn’t want to take this workshop. I thought it would be boring and too math-based, but I am having fun. • My kids won’t believe that I am programming for fun. • This was the best (non-college credit) workshop I have ever taken. • The demos were awesome. I wish I had thought ahead & had a video camera to record demos.

25. Student Summer Camps • Two one-week summer camps for high school students • Not residential • 30 students in each camp • Content • Building a computer from parts • Computer engineering lab • Media manipulation in python • Demonstrations of research • Afternoon recreation

26. Student Summer Camps

27. Student Summer Camp

28. Student Summer Camp

29. Winter 2005 2-day Workshops • Preparing for the AP Case Study • Jan 24th - 25th • Using Turtles, Robots, and Sound to Teach Java • Feb 28th – March 1st • Preparing for the AP Exam • March 28th - 29th

30. Summer 2005 Workshops • 1 week intermediate Prog. and Sys. June 28-July 1st 2005 • Some programming experience • 2 week Prog. and Sys. for beginners • No experience necessary! • July 5-8th and 12-15th 2005 • 1 week College Board Endorsed AP July 18-22

31. Future Workshops • Fall Prog and Sys workshop • To see how it is going • Spring AP workshops • To prepare for case study and exam • AP Bowl • Competition at Georgia Tech before the exam • Database of practice questions

32. ICE Resources • Collaborative Website • http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt • Mailing lists • gacs-teachers-psm@cc.gatech.edu • gacs-teachers-ap@cc.gatech.edu • Classroom visits and questions • Barbara Ericson ericson@cc.gatech.edu • Summer camps for students • http://www.cc.gatech.edu/campice/