Home Professional DevelopmentSpecial Programming at NECCSymposiaComputer Science2006 Agenda

July 8, 2006 Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, CA

Agenda

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Session Descriptions

Computer Science Education after the Boom

Despite the increasing importance and visibility of computers in people’s lives, interest in studying computer science has plummeted. In 2005, only 1.2% of incoming college freshman planned to major in computer science, down from 3.7% in 2000 and at its lowest level since 1977. The decrease was even more pronounced among women, whose interest in computer science dropped to a 30-year low. The primary reasons for the decline are thought to be fears of off-shoring and the incorrect perception that computer science is boring. Dr. Ellen Spertus will discuss how colleges are responding to these problems, including developing interdisciplinary programs, and ways you can excite students about computer science.

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Better Engagement and Learning with Better Assignments

Are you tired of working through mundane problems put forth in traditional textbooks? Are your students lethargic and uninspired by the current set of exercises, problems, and projects? With some thought, effort, and creativity, your assignments can become richer in content and more exciting for the students who complete them, and they can raise the level of engagement within your class.

"Hello World" and "Manhattan for 24 bucks" do not inspire today's student or develop problem solvers. The presenters take on this issue, and you'll leave with some inspiration and ideas for better problems for your own Computer Science and Fluency classes.

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Flash Programming

This presentation covers a wide range of Flash activities for use by teachers and students. Emphasis on curriculum integration permeates throughout. The first half of the session involves demonstration and discussion relating to the vocabulary and mechanics of using Flash followed by a rapid exploration of drawing, coloring, layers, simple animation, buttons, sound, video, actionscript (programming), and remote file access. The second half of the session emphasizes the application of Flash techniques and curriculum. A comprehensive body of Web resources underpins the presentation and allows students (and teachers) to review and revisit workshop material at any time.

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Game Development: A Tool for Teaching CS

Game development offers high school computer science teachers opportunities to teach computer science concepts and high-level thinking skills through exciting and effective student-centered learning strategies. Explore ready-to-go curriculum resources through this guided tour of materials and tips for effective teaching. Take with you all you need to teach a dynamic unit in your computer science classroom using game development in C# and Visual Basic using Visual Studio.NET.

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Kinesthetic Learning Activities in the Classroom

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 spreadsheet computation using a two-dimensional array of whispering students. 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 high school or college 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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Explorations in Polymorphism

Polymorphism is one of the elegant features of Java where we are allowed to tell our students that the computer is just that smart. During this workshop polymorphism will be explored through code examples (of various levels—both A and AB), role plays, and discussion. A focus of the workshop will be to share examples that participants can take back to their own classrooms and use with their students.

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Into the Loop: Increasing the Participation of African-American, Latino/as, and Female High School Students in Learning Computer Science

In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), contrary to national statistics and trends, the number of Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science courses has doubled, the number of enrolled Latino/as has tripled, the number of females has quadrupled, and the number of African-Americans has almost doubled from 2004–6. Researcher Jane Margolis will discuss these developments, including research findings that sparked a collaboration between LAUSD, the UCLA Graduate School of Education, and the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to address broadening the participation in computing. She will discuss the K–12 and university partnership activities to provide support for the AP CS teachers and students. She will also discuss the challenges to sustain, deepen, and extend these developments within urban schools in low-resourced communities. 

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To Google and Beyond

Google provides not just its well-known applications, such as Search and Google Earth, but a programming interface on which you and your students can build powerful new tools. This session will demonstrate and describe how to create such tools.

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Windows Vista

Learn about the new features of Windows Vista, the next generation operating system. An emphasis will be placed on how this operating system will be useful in the classroom and what options will be available for use by programming students.

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Responding to Millennials' Learning Preferences with Pair Programming

The Millennials, those born after 1982, demonstrate a distinct preference toward group activity and collaboration. Educators may dissuade these students from pursuing information technology courses by giving students lengthy assignments and forcing them to work alone—collaborating is cheating! Pair programming is a style of learning in which two students work together at one computer, collaborating on the same algorithm, code, or test. Research results indicate that students who pair program are more likely to continue in computer science courses without compromising their individual learning. These students are also better prepared to be collaborative team members.

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Simulations with Stagecast Creator

Stagecast Creator is an open-ended environment that easily allows students to create simulations and games without learning a programming language. It is easy to learn, easy to use, and engages students. Students can transform their understanding of concepts that are otherwise not easy to see. Learn how to use Creator across the curriculum to support student learning.

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3D Animation—An Innovative Approach to Introductory Programming

This session presents an innovative approach to object-oriented programming using Alice, a 3D animation and program visualization tool. Concepts of visualization and the central role of this technique will be illustrated. The Alice software is designed for novice programmers and supports development of programs for Disney/Pixar-like animations with objects in 3D virtual worlds. A demonstration of the software (developed at Carnegie Mellon University) will be included in the presentation. The software and instructional materials have been developed and tested for effectiveness in NSF-sponsored studies and are freely available to teachers. The instructional materials cover fundamental programming concepts: classes/objects, encapsulation, inheritance, methods/parameters, conditionals, and iteration. Participants will gain an introduction to this motivating, high-impact strategy for attracting today’s students to computer science.

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Networking Simulation

This session presents an active-learning network routing simulation activity. This activity can be used to effectively teach students about network routing tables, and how they can be generated and used in a network where the topology is unknown. This activity is based on one described in the brief SIGCSE Bulletin article by Lillian N. Cassel, entitled “Very Active Learning of Network Routing.”

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Web Programming with .NET

Do you teach your students Web programming? Want to? This session will show you how easy it is to implement Web programming within your curriculum. Whether you’re teaching Web design or programming you'll learn how to incorporate Web programming and experience “Curlique”—a free curriculum from Microsoft. Students will create Web pages for a Seattle rock group as an employee of the fictitious Web design company, Curlique. The fun assignments use Visual Web Developer. The software and curriculum are both free.

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Wiki Websites

Wikis, or “open editable” Web pages have grown in usage over the past three years due in large part to the user constructed encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Due to the fact that their interface is so simple to learn and easy to use from any browser, Wikis have the capacity to radically change the way we interact with the Web. We’ll be reviewing how educators can take advantage of Wikis for communication and information-sharing as well as how they can be used by organizations internally. Many examples can run locally on your own server or in some cases on a user’s machine. Other examples enable real-time editing and sharing of information. At the end of this session, users will have a deeper understanding of the power, importance and application of Wikis.

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Writing Successful Grants

This session is designed to enable participants to develop skills in grant writing and proposal evaluation. Participants will learn about the art and science of the grant writing process including sources of funds, designing a professionally written program proposal, and the major components of a proposal.

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Standing at the Epicenter: How Computer Science is Reshaping our World for the Better

We live in a magical time, when decades-old promises for computing are finally coming true. Computer science is changing everything: work, play, science, communications, fashion, health care, and even how we interact with our government. Someday, it might even bring about world peace. Today, more than ever, a computer science degree is a license to change the world; in the next generation, computer science will take its rightful place as a fundamental science and required knowledge for nearly everyone. As educators, we play an essential role in making this vision a reality.

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