 |  | February 26, 2005 Adam's Mark St. Louis Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri | Speaker Presentations Why Can't Smart People Figure Out What to do About Computing Education? By Russ Shackelford Computing has become fundamental to the education of those who will participate in modern society. It provides the infrastructure by which we communicate, do our work, conduct our business, and manage our affairs. Computing has dramatically influenced progress in science, engineering, business, and other avenues of human endeavor. In modern times, nearly everyone needs to use computers, and many will want to study computing in some form. It is important for society that essential computing knowledge and skills are part of basic education for everyone, and that the computing disciplines attract quality students from a broad cross-section of people and prepare them to be capable and responsible professionals and scientists. Why, then, do we treat computing education as a marginal issue? More importantly, what must we do to achieve the robust shared vision necessary for society to make a commitment to meaningful computing education?
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presentation, PDF, 258 KB, PDF Instructions
Teaching Recursion By Fran Trees "To iterate is human, to recurse, divine."—L. Peter Deutsch In this session, we will demonstrate activities to introduce recursion and include a variety of ways to teach (and not to teach) this topic.
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presentation, PDF, 189 KB, 30 seconds, PDF
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Web Programming: Building Numbers in CS By Brian Scarbeau & Dave Jacobus This session will review what one school did to increase enrollment in the Computer Science Classes with Web programming. Learn how to create a simple Web programming assignment using Web Matrix. In addition, learn how to use Web services with your programming class.
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presentation, PDF, 1.9 MB, 5 minutes, PDF
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example, PDF, 36 KB, 6 seconds, PDF Instructions
Student Assessment: Reflective Assessment in Computing Instruction By Philip East & Doug Peterson What do you hope to accomplish with your student assessment? Effective student assessment requires that teachers first explicitly determine the goal of particular assessment activities. Student assessments can be summative, diagnostic, or formative. Doug and Philip believe student assessment should almost always involve more than giving a grade or sorting students. In this session we will examine various assessment tools/processes--where they are appropriate, what they look like (in both programming and non-programming contexts), and how they can be used to improve student learning. Specifically examining (reflecting on) the goals of student assessment and the improvement of student learning is one way to begin reflection on ones own performance as a teacher. The goal of this session is twofold: 1. To provide some practical student assessment ideas and 2. to provide guidance (allowing participants who wish to) to start or improve reflective assessment of CS & IT instruction.
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presentation, PDF, 85 KB, 13 seconds, PDF
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Preparing Students with In-demand Skills for an On Demand World By Robin Willner The last ten years have seen a precipitous decline in the number of high school students applying for and pursuing careers in engineering and computer science. While young people and their families have been inundated with media reports of failing dot-com businesses and outsourcing, the reality in many businesses are vacancies for interesting and lucrative job opportunities. This workshop will provide an overview of the information technology (IT) industry, trends in innovation and technology, and information about current and future careers in computer science and engineering. There will also be hands-on activities and presentations that both teachers and parents can use with their students.
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presentation, PDF, 3.4 MB, 9 minutes, PDF
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parent guide, PDF, 385 KB, 1 minute, PDF
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JustBe By Katie Siek & Amanda Lynn Stephano Just Be is an interactive experience created by the Women in Computing group at Indiana University-Bloomington and conducted at local K-12 schools. The goal of the interactive experience is to help break common stereotypes about people in computing. The presentation begins by briefly discussing the need for breaking the stereotype and why we need more underrepresented groups in computing. During the interactive component, audience members will use eInstruction voting modules to participate in fun polls challenging personal stereotypes. Just Be concludes by describing interesting fields of computing to spark peoples interests in computing.
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presentation, PDF, 1.8 MB, 5 minutes, PDF
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feedback document, PDF, 32 KB, 5 seconds, PDF
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The Design and Engineering of Problems, Programs, and Assignments From Theory to Practice in Teaching Programming By Owen Astrachan
In teaching programming courses we use a variety of assessments and projects
including short, simple exercises, non-programming problems, and larger programming
projects. What makes a good assignment? How can we design problems for students
to solve that help them learn and master essential material? How do we help
ensure a successful learning experience for students with wide-ranging backgrounds
and abilities? In this session we'll discuss characteristics of good programming
problems and assignments. We'll analyze differences between what makes a good
test question in class, what makes a good question on a national exam, and what
makes a good programming project. We'll emphasize the role of interfaces in
Java and discuss the design and engineering of materials we use to motivate
and assess students in the programming courses we teach.
Playing the Part: Using Handhelds in Participatory Simulations By Betsy Frederick & Irene Lee Want to get students thinking outside the box? Use participatory simulations with handhelds to engage students in higher-order thinking by making them the players in a real-life simulation of a computer network. This session is useful for people who teach technology, computer science, and anywhere problem solving is needed. Equipment for this session will be provided.
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presentation, PDF, 877 KB, PDF Instructions
The ACM Java Task Force: Interim Report By Eric Roberts
Since its introduction in 1995, the use of Java as an instructional language
has shown a steady increase -- a trend that is likely to accelerate with the
adoption of Java for the Computer Science AP. At the same time, those who have
used Java in introductory courses have identified a number of problems in terms
of its suitability for students, particularly at the introductory level. Concern
about these problems prompted the ACM Education Board in late 2003 to establish
the ACM Java Task Force (JTF) to "review the Java language, APIs, and tools
from the perspective of introductory computing education and to develop a stable
collection of pedagogical resources that will make it easier to teach Java to
first-year computing students without having those students overwhelmed by its
complexity." In this session, JTF chair Eric Roberts will present the preliminary
report of the Task Force and review the design of the educational packages it
describes.
Kinesthetic Learning Activities in the Classroom By Andy Begel This session will focus on kinesthetic learning activities (i.e., physically engaging classroom exercises). These might, for example, teach recursion by simulating the Towers of Hanoi with students instead of disks or illustrate orders of growth by building a human binary tree. The session will begin with a brief kinesthetic learning activity to motivate the value of these activities. We will follow with a variety of examples, and discuss how to deploy these in a classroom. Much of the session will be devoted to facilitated group work to help the participants design and test their own activities.
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presentation, PDF, 1001 KB, PDF Instructions
Selling the Sizzle: Bringing Students Back to Computing Courses By Chris Stephenson Where have all the students gone? Colleges and Universities across North America are reporting that enrollment in computing courses has dropped an average of 30% and in many high schools, the situation is even more precarious. This presentation will focus on some of the factors contributing to declining student participation in high school computing courses and will offer a number of proactive strategies teachers can use to bring more, and more diverse students back to computing.
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presentation, PDF, 695 KB, PDF Instructions
Teaching Java with Karel the Robot By Sandy Graham Karel the Robot is a tool that has been used by computer science instructors for decades to introduce programming concepts. This session will demonstrate how using a library of classes defining a 2-D robot in a city can be used to introduce objected-oriented concepts in Java. Using Karel the Robot reinforces the concepts with a visually interesting output. The object-oriented concepts covered will include: methods, instance variables, inheritance, overloading methods, overriding methods, and polymorphism.
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presentation, PDF, 311 KB, PDF Instructions
Directions in Computing By Janie Schwark The ways we use the power of computing and technology are changing and rapidly moving from living on the desktop to being with us all the time. This shift is opening up a new world of opportunities for students and will impact what they will need to learn throughout their academic careers and beyond. This session will explore how taking computing mobile is changing industry, the classroom, and our lives in general. See where we are today and where we are going as computers take on a variety of forms and become a pervasive part of everything we do.
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presentation, PDF, 5.8 MB, PDF Instructions
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presentation, part 2, PDF, 523 KB, PDF Instructions
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| Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium, February, 2005, St. Louis, Missouri, speaker presentations |
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