Discussion: View Thread

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

Thanks for creating this thread, Lawrence! I love the sway box as well. (I confess to a bit of frustration with UPS because the box was damaged in shipping. Almost all of the swag is fine, but I have also enjoyed using the boxes from previous years and I won't be able to with this one.) The mug is already in use! The t-shirt is awesome!

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)
------------------------------

Evidence-Based Trends in K–12 CS Education Initiatives

UMD has created a rubric to evaluate coding curriculum. https://go.umd.edu/TECRubric
However, it is just a rubric.  There is no "Consumer Reports" for CS curriculum.  The closest is engage-csedu.org/ and csedresearch.org/ - both of which provide some of the info.  Also,  the CSforALL curriculum portal for a searchable directory of curricula that teacher's have done independent verification of what they cover.

Texas data showed that much CS in HS participation – and other academic success metrics - was tied to taking Algebra 1 in 8^th grade.  So Texas worked on fixing inequities there especially with switch to opt-out policy there.   Also minimizing requirement of Algebra 1 as a pre-req for CS

The American Education system was never designed to ensure all student's success in STEM

CS as an onramp for success in math. "Stop using math as a gatekeeper to CS - use CS as a way to find success in advanced math"

CSTA Town Hall

Key new thought was that there is a need for a shared definition, used by NSF and other funders, to articulate what equity in CS is, and how it can be achieved.  Current proposal is:

A justice-centered, equitable K-12 computer science education purposefully leverages the necessary resources, content, and pedagogy to create full access and meaningful outcomes for students of all identities and abilities, with a focus on designing programs that meet the needs of students underrepresented as well as those that sit at the identity intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and socioeconomic status in computing education.

 Many equity stats and resources in slide deck shared at shared folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/148dkJ55ht1Hr5A8ukcghSdVCwwuUvw7a?usp=sharing

Also dropped in on Data Literacy and Elementary CS is everywhere presentations.   Did not see Jacqueline's Intro to Data Science presentation.

Building the Bench: How to Grow CS Teacher Capacity

Presented by 3 staff members of Gwinnett County Public Schools – all in a department of "AI and Computer Science".  Gwinnett County is a suburb of Atlanta with only 18% White – the 3 presenters were all White women.  Has 182,865 students.   All of their non-specialty schools offer CS with 150+ CS teachers actively teaching CS Classes K-12.   By contrast, Seattle Public Schools has about 54,000 students.

Over the last 5-6 years, Gwinnett has developed several models to grow their CS Teacher Capacity:   Teacher Leader Models, Learning Cohorts and Communities, Modeling and Workshops, Certification and Endorsement Programs, One-on-one Coaching Formats, Resource Development.

Toward the end, I asked how much of this work has been shared throughout Georgia.   But need to follow up to get an answer.   Unfortunately, as this was an afternoon session, I ended up falling asleep for a few minutes.

Social Justice in CS

While a previous session focused on the definition of the word "equity" in CS education, this session provided a definition of "social justice" that somewhat surprised me:

"Equity addresses imbalanced systems.

Social justice takes equity one step further by offering solutions and action steps that work towards long-term, sustainable, equitable access for generations to come."

And promoted the idea of 4 dimensions of equity: Access, Success, Identity, and Power.   And even some of the definitions of these I found interesting. 

------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)

Original Message:
Sent: 07-11-2023 10:48
From: Lawrence Tanimoto
Subject: CSTA Virtual Conference 2023 Reflection

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)
------------------------------

Workshop B:  Set Up CS Framework

Intro stated: "Many schools and districts are looking for ways to get started with establishing equitable K12 CS education pathways. That's where the Set Up CS Framework comes in! Our interactive workshop will introduce participants to the SET UP CS Framework, a 5-step process that focuses in on building capacity for equitable and sustainable district-wide K-12 CS pathways.:"

I wanted to know if this was an alternative to the SCRIPT framework that I had heard so much about and which Washington is continuing to pour money into but has been unsuccessful to date.  I want to figure out what SCRIPT is but without paying $1200 to do so.  However, it turns out that SCRIPT is in the middle of Set Up CS so no gains there,

There were a few interesting exercises.   One was to find an article about CS education policy in Washington.   I found this one: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/give-every-student-access-to-computer-science-education/.  Situation has gotten worse since this article was written.   Another was to create a vision statement using generative AI.   For this I think I'm out of the mainstream of those at the session.   Am more and more thinking that making CS Education ubiquitous is a necessary but not sufficient condition for equity in CS ed,

Also stopped in on "Building a K-12 Computer Science Pipeline" which showed the experience of Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia.  As LCPS has 83,000 students, it provides a slightly more achievable model than Gwinnett County in GA.  Still, it sounds like they eventually hired 11 central office staff – all subject matter experts – to coach teachers in the district.  They also had CodeVA to provide additional support.   

Mini-Session A: Broaden Participation with CSForAll Alliance Membership

Since PSCSTA is already in CSForAll and we have CSforAll Washington, it was not really necessary for me to attend this.   I probably should have attended Get Started Coding in Minecraft Education with MakeCode

Mini-Session B: Building K-12 CS Education Capacity in Preservice Pathways

This was about the benefits of a research project to teach faculty in Schools of Education about CS education.   After the intervention, faculty had a more nuanced understanding of CSEd and could better separate CSEd from general technology use.  There was also more work to integrate CS ed in their courses.   Should PSCSTA play in educating Schools of Education in Washington about CSED?

Mini-Session C: What's Driving the Future of Education?  Three trends

From Google education:  Lots of cool uptopian ithought some of which I hope come to pass.  But not sure if they wanted to talk about 5 ideas or 3 ideas.  At the end of the day, they mostly seemed to ramble.  

Evidence-Based Trends in K–12 CS Education Initiatives

UMD has created a rubric to evaluate coding curriculum. https://go.umd.edu/TECRubric
However, it is just a rubric.  There is no "Consumer Reports" for CS curriculum.  The closest is engage-csedu.org/ and csedresearch.org/ - both of which provide some of the info.  Also,  the CSforALL curriculum portal for a searchable directory of curricula that teacher's have done independent verification of what they cover.

Texas data showed that much CS in HS participation – and other academic success metrics - was tied to taking Algebra 1 in 8^th grade.  So Texas worked on fixing inequities there especially with switch to opt-out policy there.   Also minimizing requirement of Algebra 1 as a pre-req for CS

The American Education system was never designed to ensure all student's success in STEM

CS as an onramp for success in math. "Stop using math as a gatekeeper to CS - use CS as a way to find success in advanced math"

CSTA Town Hall

Key new thought was that there is a need for a shared definition, used by NSF and other funders, to articulate what equity in CS is, and how it can be achieved.  Current proposal is:

A justice-centered, equitable K-12 computer science education purposefully leverages the necessary resources, content, and pedagogy to create full access and meaningful outcomes for students of all identities and abilities, with a focus on designing programs that meet the needs of students underrepresented as well as those that sit at the identity intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and socioeconomic status in computing education.

 Many equity stats and resources in slide deck shared at shared folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/148dkJ55ht1Hr5A8ukcghSdVCwwuUvw7a?usp=sharing

Also dropped in on Data Literacy and Elementary CS is everywhere presentations.   Did not see Jacqueline's Intro to Data Science presentation.

Building the Bench: How to Grow CS Teacher Capacity

Presented by 3 staff members of Gwinnett County Public Schools – all in a department of "AI and Computer Science".  Gwinnett County is a suburb of Atlanta with only 18% White – the 3 presenters were all White women.  Has 182,865 students.   All of their non-specialty schools offer CS with 150+ CS teachers actively teaching CS Classes K-12.   By contrast, Seattle Public Schools has about 54,000 students.

Over the last 5-6 years, Gwinnett has developed several models to grow their CS Teacher Capacity:   Teacher Leader Models, Learning Cohorts and Communities, Modeling and Workshops, Certification and Endorsement Programs, One-on-one Coaching Formats, Resource Development.

Toward the end, I asked how much of this work has been shared throughout Georgia.   But need to follow up to get an answer.   Unfortunately, as this was an afternoon session, I ended up falling asleep for a few minutes.

Social Justice in CS

While a previous session focused on the definition of the word "equity" in CS education, this session provided a definition of "social justice" that somewhat surprised me:

"Equity addresses imbalanced systems.

Social justice takes equity one step further by offering solutions and action steps that work towards long-term, sustainable, equitable access for generations to come."

And promoted the idea of 4 dimensions of equity: Access, Success, Identity, and Power.   And even some of the definitions of these I found interesting. 

------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)

Original Message:
Sent: 07-11-2023 10:48
From: Lawrence Tanimoto
Subject: CSTA Virtual Conference 2023 Reflection

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)
------------------------------

Breakout E: Fostering Community Among CS Educators Part 1

By Dr. Chris Gregg of Kira Learning – this turned out to be a lively talk on the various problems that new CS teachers face and how to help them.   Tracey was there too.   While not much new, it was well put together.   I purchased his book "Your First Year Teaching Computer Science: A Practical Guide to Success for New Computer Science Teachers" for review.

Breakout F: The ABCs of CS Sustainability

A discussion on how to create sustainable CS programs by several equity fellows, from a new ideas in CS policy perspective, it was quite interesting.   It gave a "complementary" process to SCRIPT – although I still don't know exactly what SCRIPT is – and broke down CS education policy to the Federal, State, and District level.   It also gave some great new state level policy recommendations: state supported CS curriculum for all grades K-12, state required CS education as grad requirement, required CS education for all grades, CS coursework prior to HS, soliciting regional SME

Mini-Session C: C'ing Yourself Teaching CS

By Jessica Holloway, a teacher in Tennessee, I thought it was helpful to give me more empathy with new CS teachers.

Pedagogical Practices:  Did hop in on these but no notes to share

Breakout G: Expanding CS in Middle Schools: Lessons from State Directors

State Directors of CS in South Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee discuss what they've done to increase middle school CS enrollment.  No slide deck available.   Some ideas:  new CS teachers get $2000 stipend for 5 years, allow Middle School CS work to count toward HS credit, hometown hero videos, CTE budget for physical computing shared among schools, more central office creation of content, more flexible endorsement strategies: 1900 teachers signed up for a micro-credential program in TN.   SC noted that often even non-credentialed teachers can often teach CS well.

Keynote: 

Wow! UW had two AIICE student advisors of the six on video and of the 4 live:    Kianna Bolante and Sonia Fereidooni.   Too modest to point this out in chat.  Where was Lauren?

New PSCSTA member Michelle Amato of Eckstein MS in Seattle posted the following about IGNITE worldwide.

Workshop B:  Set Up CS Framework

Intro stated: "Many schools and districts are looking for ways to get started with establishing equitable K12 CS education pathways. That's where the Set Up CS Framework comes in! Our interactive workshop will introduce participants to the SET UP CS Framework, a 5-step process that focuses in on building capacity for equitable and sustainable district-wide K-12 CS pathways.:"

I wanted to know if this was an alternative to the SCRIPT framework that I had heard so much about and which Washington is continuing to pour money into but has been unsuccessful to date.  I want to figure out what SCRIPT is but without paying $1200 to do so.  However, it turns out that SCRIPT is in the middle of Set Up CS so no gains there,

There were a few interesting exercises.   One was to find an article about CS education policy in Washington.   I found this one: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/give-every-student-access-to-computer-science-education/.  Situation has gotten worse since this article was written.   Another was to create a vision statement using generative AI.   For this I think I'm out of the mainstream of those at the session.   Am more and more thinking that making CS Education ubiquitous is a necessary but not sufficient condition for equity in CS ed,

Also stopped in on "Building a K-12 Computer Science Pipeline" which showed the experience of Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia.  As LCPS has 83,000 students, it provides a slightly more achievable model than Gwinnett County in GA.  Still, it sounds like they eventually hired 11 central office staff – all subject matter experts – to coach teachers in the district.  They also had CodeVA to provide additional support.   

Mini-Session A: Broaden Participation with CSForAll Alliance Membership

Since PSCSTA is already in CSForAll and we have CSforAll Washington, it was not really necessary for me to attend this.   I probably should have attended Get Started Coding in Minecraft Education with MakeCode

Mini-Session B: Building K-12 CS Education Capacity in Preservice Pathways

This was about the benefits of a research project to teach faculty in Schools of Education about CS education.   After the intervention, faculty had a more nuanced understanding of CSEd and could better separate CSEd from general technology use.  There was also more work to integrate CS ed in their courses.   Should PSCSTA play in educating Schools of Education in Washington about CSED?

Mini-Session C: What's Driving the Future of Education?  Three trends

From Google education:  Lots of cool uptopian ithought some of which I hope come to pass.  But not sure if they wanted to talk about 5 ideas or 3 ideas.  At the end of the day, they mostly seemed to ramble.  

Evidence-Based Trends in K–12 CS Education Initiatives

UMD has created a rubric to evaluate coding curriculum. https://go.umd.edu/TECRubric
However, it is just a rubric.  There is no "Consumer Reports" for CS curriculum.  The closest is engage-csedu.org/ and csedresearch.org/ - both of which provide some of the info.  Also,  the CSforALL curriculum portal for a searchable directory of curricula that teacher's have done independent verification of what they cover.

Texas data showed that much CS in HS participation – and other academic success metrics - was tied to taking Algebra 1 in 8^th grade.  So Texas worked on fixing inequities there especially with switch to opt-out policy there.   Also minimizing requirement of Algebra 1 as a pre-req for CS

The American Education system was never designed to ensure all student's success in STEM

CS as an onramp for success in math. "Stop using math as a gatekeeper to CS - use CS as a way to find success in advanced math"

CSTA Town Hall

Key new thought was that there is a need for a shared definition, used by NSF and other funders, to articulate what equity in CS is, and how it can be achieved.  Current proposal is:

A justice-centered, equitable K-12 computer science education purposefully leverages the necessary resources, content, and pedagogy to create full access and meaningful outcomes for students of all identities and abilities, with a focus on designing programs that meet the needs of students underrepresented as well as those that sit at the identity intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and socioeconomic status in computing education.

 Many equity stats and resources in slide deck shared at shared folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/148dkJ55ht1Hr5A8ukcghSdVCwwuUvw7a?usp=sharing

Also dropped in on Data Literacy and Elementary CS is everywhere presentations.   Did not see Jacqueline's Intro to Data Science presentation.

Building the Bench: How to Grow CS Teacher Capacity

Presented by 3 staff members of Gwinnett County Public Schools – all in a department of "AI and Computer Science".  Gwinnett County is a suburb of Atlanta with only 18% White – the 3 presenters were all White women.  Has 182,865 students.   All of their non-specialty schools offer CS with 150+ CS teachers actively teaching CS Classes K-12.   By contrast, Seattle Public Schools has about 54,000 students.

Over the last 5-6 years, Gwinnett has developed several models to grow their CS Teacher Capacity:   Teacher Leader Models, Learning Cohorts and Communities, Modeling and Workshops, Certification and Endorsement Programs, One-on-one Coaching Formats, Resource Development.

Toward the end, I asked how much of this work has been shared throughout Georgia.   But need to follow up to get an answer.   Unfortunately, as this was an afternoon session, I ended up falling asleep for a few minutes.

Social Justice in CS

While a previous session focused on the definition of the word "equity" in CS education, this session provided a definition of "social justice" that somewhat surprised me:

"Equity addresses imbalanced systems.

Social justice takes equity one step further by offering solutions and action steps that work towards long-term, sustainable, equitable access for generations to come."

And promoted the idea of 4 dimensions of equity: Access, Success, Identity, and Power.   And even some of the definitions of these I found interesting. 

------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)

Original Message:
Sent: 07-11-2023 10:48
From: Lawrence Tanimoto
Subject: CSTA Virtual Conference 2023 Reflection

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)
------------------------------

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

Slide decks collected at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/148dkJ55ht1Hr5A8ukcghSdVCwwuUvw7a?usp=sharing

 
------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)
------------------------------

I'll take your socks! 

This thread is for members to reflect on their experience at the CSTA 2023 Virtual Conference.

First off, I very pleased with the SWAG box - almost everything I can keep and use - except perhaps the socks.

Slide decks collected at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/148dkJ55ht1Hr5A8ukcghSdVCwwuUvw7a?usp=sharing

 
------------------------------
Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher (retired)
------------------------------