Whenever we attend a tech conference, we have taken to identifying a winner of what we call the “outside aisle” award. The award is given to a smaller company (or at least one we have not heard of before) that has a very interesting product. The way vendor space is allocated the smaller “booths” tend to be arranged around the outside of the vendor arena.
This year’s winner is the Ozobot (Smart Toy Robot) – the small devices on the iPad.
These are programmable robots that can receive instructions in two ways a) from colored lines (the color of the line conveys the instruction) or b) from the Blockly app.
We are attending FETC and the keynote for today was Reshma Saujani the founder of Girls Who Code. Most edtech types are likely well aware of the gender differential in computer science degrees, enrollment in university computer science courses, AP programming courses, etc. Girls Who Code is an attempt to address this equity issue. Much of Reshma’s presentation addressed culture as a major factor in the gender differential.
Here is one thing I know Computer Science advocates note as an important issue and a second factor I think is an emerging and serious problem.
The Computer Science issue – very few states count a secondary-level computer science course toward a math or science graduation requirement. So even when schools (say larger schools) offer a course in programming many students have less of an incentive to take the course.
The Grabe observation (you will see it is related to the issue above) – it seems that more and more students at all level are being discouraged from exploration. The idea is to be efficient and move on. College costs are high and this discourages college students from taking “extra courses” and colleges are pressured to reduce the credits for a degree. More importantly, many high schools are allowing and encouraging students to take “dual enrollment” or other early college courses. So rather than explore and experiment (say be taking a programming course), a high school senior might find a way to take say Introduction to Psychology as such courses meet a general education requirement at nearly all colleges. It is about the money. All of this runs contrary to what we know about the developmental stage of college students (see Marcia’s work on Ego Identity) much less the maturity of high school students.
This may be one of those foolish things that seems logical to so many. Most college students change their majors. Many change multiple times. The notion that high school juniors know where their lives are going is misguided and assuming you are going to be lawyer, doctor, engineer or whatever is actually a bad bet when you are 16-17. It would actually make more sense to experiment and explore in high school when you are not paying by the credits. Even colleges used to require a diversity of course from multiple categories knowing that students should be exposed to topics they may not take if left to their own decision making. Pressure to do education on the cheap has led to a reversal of some of these assumptions. Get out and get a job while spending as little as possible now seems to be the guiding principle. I have spent time advising too many upper division college students who complain about credits they can’t use to think this is a good idea.
A week or so ago I generated a post questioning the value of an “hour of code”. I was attempting to point out that meaningful commitment to “computational thinking” required much more and those interested should focus on assuring high schools offer a programming course before worrying about whether elementary and middle school students are exposed to rudimentary forms of coding. To me, there is not much value of generating interest without the opportunity to actually become involved.
The U.S. News and World Report recently provided an article that provides some data and details on programming instruction. If you are an administrator or educator interested in this issue, this article explains the reality I think needs to be understood.
One of my motives in moving from a commercial textbook company to writing through Amazon was the desire to write on a continuous basis. My frustration with the commercial approach was that you ignored your work for three years and then worked feverishly for 3-5 months in order to generate the next edition. I saw there were two problems in this approach. First, hard copy textbooks are out of date when first published (at least when addressing technology) and it made sense to me to take an approach that would allow me to continue to offer new content (online) as soon as the content was relevant. Second, the hectic pace of meeting a deadline does not allow for the best analysis and writing. This was particularly the case for me as my academic job means I have the most open time in the summer and this was not the time frame during which the work had to be done. The commercial folks never disagreed with my analysis, they just did not want to pay any amount for a future edition and would not offer an advance.
You may or may not understand how textbooks are financed. After the first edition for which you should be able to secure an advance on sales, the company decides whether or not a future edition will be offered and does not offer an advance. Since you, as the author, do not own the copyright but share it with the company, you are not free to suggest that a different company might be more willing to support the authoring model you propose.
Anyway, we have now exclusively held our copyright for several years and I have been offering resources based on this approach. We have a web site offering “supplemental” content to our book since it was released and I plan to rework the core book based on this content this summer. Since, the release of the latest edition the topic of “computational thinking” (programming or coding to many) has kind of returned to favor among practicing educators. You may be aware of this trend or perhaps interest in the “maker movement” which often incorporates programming skills. I have prepared a chapter and supplemental resources for our the next revision of our book. Rather than wait until this summer to make the “chapter” available, I am offering the draft of this chapter on our web site. This content will be available from the site until the revision of the book is complete. If you are interested in computational thinking and would like to review my take on the topic, access to our web site is available at no cost.
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This year’s winner is the Ozobot (Smart Toy Robot) – the small devices on the iPad.
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