Reflection

Today I am giving the students a "final quiz". It is not comprehensive, as it covers only programming we've done this semester. Their final project was due on Tuesday; we've been working on it since February.

This semester there have been a chorus of complaints about how awful Python is. I have a number of students who are very far behind - like the one I made stay in at lunch on Tuesday and got her caught up to the end of March. They all miss Flash - which I think is funny, since they hated Flash while we were doing it.

At the end of the quiz, I asked them how the quiz was. The quiz this semester was on paper; last semester it was online. They thought the quiz was straightforward, which was my goal - no trick questions. They told me they thought it was easier because it was on paper instead of online, which I thought was interesting. They're much more practiced at taking quizzes and tests on paper than online, so navigating how to answer the computerized questions was a little challenge. Finally, by a two-to-one margin, they preferred programming in python to working with Flash. They found it much more straightforward.

I also asked them to do a final reflection on "Why study computer science?" They answered the same question at the beginning of the year, so it will be interesting to see how their answers change.

Stories from the Week

1. A student has not handed in the past several assignments. (The beauty/horror of this statement is that it is completely anonymous because so many students are in the same boat.) I let the parents know. The parents e-mail me back and say, "she has uploaded them." I check. She has not uploaded them to the assignment spaces in Moodle for my class. I e-mail the parents back and let them know. They respond "perhaps there is some misunderstanding. She told us she finished the work. Can you show her how to turn the work in correctly?" I write back and say, "yes, I can show her how to turn work in, but we have used the same process all year and she was able to turn work in as recently as five weeks ago, when she last turned in anything."

2. I had a doctor's appointment on Friday, with a doctor whose office annoys me. They are not as flexible as I would like and frequently want me to come in when I need to be teaching. (There are many examples and yes, I realize that their appointment schedule does not revolve around my personal needs.) I convince another teacher to sub. When my sub calls in sick and needs me to cover her classes, I do so and find a substitute sub to cover for both of us. During the appointment, the doctor says, "I'll be quick so you can get back to school." I responded, "no need, my class is going on right now and it's only 50 minutes long." She replied, "oh, so did you just reschedule it?" Seriously? I now understand why they're inflexible if they really don't understand that you can't reschedule eighth grade classes.

3. I got to hang out on Friday night with two friends who are also teachers, and who I haven't seen in a year. Swapping war stories is always entertaining. I miss them and wish it could conspire that we could see each other more frequently.

Masters degree

Jane (of See Jane Compute) and ScienceWoman have both posted stories about pursuing masters degrees that kind of make my hair stand on end. Especially Jane's. I don't have a terrible advisor story, but I thought I'd post about my masters anyway.

My masters experience was just weird. I thought about getting a masters for a long time. After I got two bachelors, I started working for the university. Eventually I moved out of the $7/hour job and into one with benefits, including fee remission. I couldn't decide between nutrition or information science, and for a long time it didn't matter since I was busy planning a wedding.

The week after I got back from my honeymoon, I was at lunch with a group. Our best man announced, "my class starts tonight. I don't want to take it alone. Who will go with me?" I wasn't doing anything that night, so I signed up. It was kind of boring, but kind of fun. I learned about flowcharting the operations of a hamburger stand. It was relevant to my work. The next semester, I took another class with my friend. I couldn't get any more credit after that if I didn't apply to the information science program, so I did. I convinced my boss and a colleague to write me letters of recommendation. I kept taking a class at a time in addition to working full time. It was fun. I learned really interesting things, like how to plan a library building and that it is a warning sign someone is embezzling if they refuse to ever take time off from work. I learned how to program in Perl. I learned about the history of magazines in the US and speculated about how Borders.com, B&N.com, and Amazon.com would work out.

Eventually, I joined some kind of leadership group for my program and started making friends. I found out that other people had researched different programs and chosen mine. It had never occurred to me to think critically about grad school, it was just there. Oh, and did I mention that my program didn't require the GRE? That helped.

If you want gossip, I will let you know that I became friends with my husband's ex-girlfriend. THE ex-girlfriend. The one who practically ruined his life. I became friends with her before I knew who she was. I remember the day I figured it out. "Huh, that's the same name as the ex. And she's from the same place. And has other similar features. What a funny coincidence. Honey, what's the ex's last name?" I was shocked that she didn't have horns, she was really nice. He was all, "um yeah, that's why I loved her so much."

Because I was just taking a class or two at a time and wasn't on a Quest for Employability, I didn't really interact with my advisor. I took a class from him my last semester and it was great. I went to a party he was at and after I turned in my final paper, he took me (and others) out for a beer. But otherwise, I can't say we really interacted. I was much closer to another professor. My program also didn't require a thesis or research, just classes. I took what I wanted, when I wanted (or more accurately, when classes were offered in the evening and weekends.)

In the end I graduated about two years earlier than I'd hoped. We decided to move across the country for a Great Opportunity and so I stayed in town six months in order to go to school full time so I could get the degree. It was not optimal, especially since I was also working full time since I needed the salary and benefits. The very last month of school, I quit my job. It was GREAT. I would never work full time while I was in school again - the opportunity to think deeply, research more, collaborate with classmates, and just experience school was something I missed. But I couldn't have gotten my degree if I hadn't done it the way I did, so I don't regret my experience either.

I told a friend about this recently. She'd like a masters but isn't sure in what. I told her to just try it! Everyone she knows has a Big Plan for grad school and she doesn't. I'm the poster child for not having a plan doesn't mean you won't have a great experience.

My tech heroine

In honor of Ada Lovelace day, I want to celebrate my tech heroine, Mouse.

Mouse has amazing style. She wears terrific clothes, has a great haircut, and has an eye for design. I think it's because in addition to being an awesome techie, she's also an artist. I love her self-portraits. She is also crafty - she made Mandlebrot the fractal bear! (She's also made a quilt, jewelry, and embroidery.)

Mouse has a long history of technical excellence. She first discovered her love of computer science and engineering in middle school. She was lucky enough to go to a middle school that made both those subjects mandatory, but she discovered a passion for them of her own. When her high school did not offer sufficient (any) computer science classes, Mouse started attending the local community college to learn programming in addition to a full college prep program. She took many and varied courses through the community college, learning Java and other CS topics. Now she's a student at the University of Washington, double-majoring in CS and engineering.

As her senior service project, Mouse needed to design and enact a program for younger children. So she designed and taught a summer Java class at her middle school for then students. The students loved it so much that every year since they have asked whether she will come back and teach again. A high school teacher I know commented that he would never let one of his students do that - he wouldn't trust them to do a good job teaching middle schoolers. I would trust Mouse with any students, any time. I wish she lived closer to me so she could be my substitute. (Though I did find a wonderful new sub this year, so I won't steal her from college yet.)

Mouse has a wonderful sense of humor and is prone to combining her many interests in unique ways. For example, she took math notes in Sierpinski triangles. I would call her a geek, but she's much too adorable.

Mouse was on a panel of students at the Grace Hopper conference in 2006. She is already awesome, but I think she will change the world.

You know what else would be cool?

I use the Nike+ system. It is so cool - I have a chip in my shoe and a chip in my ipod and it keeps track of my running. It tells me how far I've gone, how fast I'm going and even how many calories I burn. Sometimes, Lance Armstrong congratulates me on how great I am. ("This is Lance Armstrong. That was your fastest run yet!")

At the end of the year, the Nike+ website gave me a "rundown" that told me how far I'd gone and all kinds of things. It told me that my "best" running day is Saturday. (I disagree, but it's only a computer.)

I want a "postdown" for my blog. I want to know the most common day I post. (Currently: Wednesday, I think.) I want to know how many posts per year, graphed by month, number of words. Whatever the equivalencies to the Nike+ system are, but for blogging.

I'm sure there's a way to program it myself, but I think the effort of doing so is probably more than calculating it by hand. I don't want to think about what that means, other than 'I have other hobbies than programming.' Actually, I'd be more inclined to figure it out for the Nike+ because I really DO want to play with the raw data and make my own graphs about my running. The blogging is way less important to me.

The zen of experimentation

I own a lot of books. In my heart, I am a frustrated librarian, so they are organized carefully on my bookshelves. No matter how careful I am when I move, it is impossible to pack them in a way that makes it possible to unpack them directly onto the shelves the way they came out. I moved 10 times in 12 years, so I tried a lot of things. It ends up that I'm desperate to get rid of the stacks of boxes so I just throw the books on the shelves and organize them later.

Over time, I began to appreciate the zen of disorganization. It's impossible to find any particular book, since it could be almost anywhere (and often behind something else). Thus, when desiring to read, one must have an open mind. One must stand and look at the shelves until something interesting appears, as it always does. It usually goes something like, "oh, I'd forgotten about this one" with that sigh of having found an old friend. (All my books are old friends. There is a special shelf for the potential new friends that I'm still getting to know.) (I sound like a freak.)

This morning, I talked to another middle school computer science teacher, specifically about how he teaches Scratch. Mostly he lets the students experiment and play, while he walks around supporting and guiding them gently. The assignments are very open-ended

This has pros and cons. Frequently, students will shy away from what Steve Cooper calls "algorithmically interesting" problems and solutions. They're more interested in the story they're building than in implementing loops, conditionals, functions, whatever. But they are very engaged, open to new ideas, and ready for "just in time" learning.

This is different from a more traditional approach, where there's a particular outcome, using particular skills, with one right answer. The students still might experiment some, but mostly it is experimentation to see if they can get the right answer, not experimentation in the form of wandering around and seeing where they get. (There's an analogy to science here.)

Letting them wander around, play, and be zen is so engaging compared to wanting them to find the One Right Answer. It makes them use lots of parts of their brains. It makes them think in different, creative ways.

The trick - and what the other teacher and I agreed to think about - is how to combine both. We need to think about structuring assignments so that they are open-ended and encourage creativity and experimentation while also improving the likelihood that students will use algorithmically interesting solutions.

Netbooks and Disruptive technologies

And to prove how tired and distracted I am, I didn't even remember the whole reason I started the last post, which was to share this very interesting article about Netbooks. Happy reading!

At SIGCSE

Already seeing many friends, though so far I have not run into one of the two most important people I want to see. (I had dinner with one.) I think these two people would be surprised to find themselves in the top two. If this were my other blog, I would go on a tangent about friendship and whether or not you can replace people whom you miss.

I spent quite a bit of time talking about grammar today, which reinforces to me that I don't know when to use who and when to use whom.

There are at least three half-written, time-sensitive blog posts here. I don't know why last week I hypothesized that things would be quieter once I got here. I will nevertheless endeavor to at least twitter about the conference and possibly even post. But my greatest endeavor is really to finish the two things I'm supposed to have done for a meeting at 1:30 tomorrow. Then if I have time, I will finish any of those posts.

Finally, I'm reminded of a post by NonaKnits. She went to a conference and blogged about it. (It might have been Olema.) When she got back, one of her real-life friends found out she'd been there and said, "Nona was there too! Did you meet her?" I wonder if any people who read this don't know who I am. Of course, it's easier to realize that "Wicked Teacher" isn't my real name than to realize that "Nona" is a pseudonym. 

CS is everywhere

I have encountered a couple of stories lately where computer science was underneath the story in a way that was easy to overlook. I don't really think it should have been called out in either story, and yet I want people to see it. 

The first story is about Shane Battier, The No-Stats All Star. 

"We now have all this data," [Houston Rockets' owner, Leslie] Alexander told me, "And we have computers that can analyze that data. And I wanted to use that data in a progressive way..."

The virus that infected professional baseball in the 1990s, the use of statistics to find new and better ways to value players and strategies, has found its way into every major sport. Not just basketball and football, but also soccer and cricket and rugby and, for all I know, snooker and darts - each one now supports a subculture of smart people who view it not just as a game to be played but as a problem to be solved.

I'm not completely sure that counts as computer science. But computing literacy is required to do the kind of creative algorithm generation required to crunch the statistics. And at its core, that's computer science. Of course it isn't only computer science, but to me that's the beauty - computer science underlies many of the cool things that are happening in different disciplines. You don't have to be a nerd working in high tech to use computer science in your career.

I was accused of being self-absorbed the last time I mentioned the second story, but I'll put it out there anyway. I was listening to an interview with Chesley Sullenberger where he talked about all the things he had to do to land the plane safely in the Hudson - nose up, wings level, not too fast, not too slow... simultaneously. Now Sullenberger is truly a hero, his reflexes, calm, and creativity are amazing. But I don't think he could have done it if he hadn't practiced it using a flight simulator. Flight simulators are one of the most obvious implementations of computer science that exist. Computer science is like the unsung hero of the story! (Yes, I'm being deliberately over the top there.) 

Just like other sciences - especially physics and chemistry - computer science is all around us, but we accept it without even noticing it. 

Inclusiveness

In cleaning out my bookmarks, I came across a link to Joel Spolsky's column at Inc, "How Hard Could It Be?" His latest article is about rewarding employees for great ideas.

The article touches on intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, which is always something to keep in mind as a teacher. At my school (as in many K-12 schools), we're very aware of wanting to develop life-long learners. That means developing intrinsic motivation. Yet our effect on the children is inherently extrinsic. A dilemma, for sure. 

The very interesting part of the article for me was on page 2:

Human beings, by their nature, tend to think of themselves as, how can I put this politely, a bit more wonderful than they really are. All of your B performers think they are A performers. The C performers think they are B performers. (A couple of your A performers think they are F performers, because they are crazy perfectionists or just clinically depressed. But they are the exceptions.)

My first reaction to this was, "I wonder how many women Joel has working at Fog Creek." My second thought was, "I bet not that many." It completely ignores imposter syndrome and all the studies showing that women with higher grades will drop out. In CS, for women, B performers tend to think they're not good enough. 

Now, it's also possible that the difference is I'm looking at education while he's looking at the post-education working world. That the skills which make you get through and get hired increase your self-confidence out of proportion to your performance and that the people who drop out as described wouldn't ever get hired by Fog Creek. 

I see the low-self-esteem side of the curve all the time. All my students are capable of programming. Many, many of them think they're not. It's hard, it's unfamiliar, they aren't sure they're doing it right, they get syntax errors they can't interpret... they think they're not good enough. On the first assignment, which happened on the second day of programming, one of the students was very, very worried that she didn't understand it well enough. She wrote a perfectly good program, but relied on the class notes and example program to do it. She didn't think she really understood it since she couldn't have done it without the notes and examples. On the second day. 

I don't disagree with Spolsky's idea of human nature and I'm sure he's an excellent manager. But not everyone has an overinflated sense of self-worth. 

---

On a related tangent, I heard a thought-provoking story last week. A group at a high tech company had a meeting. The engineers were talking about a Spolsky article. The manager had never heard of Joel Spolsky. "Who is this Joel guy?" One of the engineers actually looked at the manager in disbelief and said, "You've never heard of Joel Spolsky??" The engineers reportedly felt this was further proof that their manager is out of touch. (The manager did rise through the technical ranks, not that it's relevant.)

The story made me angry. Sure, Joel is well known in certain circles. Knowing about his blog is a cultural marker. Not knowing about his blog probably means you have a different set of cultural references. Not knowing the "right" cultural markers means you don't fit in. And the response isn't to try to help you acclimate and learn the markers of the group you're in, it's to ridicule you and use that lack of knowledge as proof that you don't belong and ought to go somewhere else and do something else. After all, you can't possibly be a competent programmer or good manager if you don't know who Joel Spolsky is. 

It might be different if the person didn't know something that was directly relevant to the job at hand. Yet I frequently see or hear stories where someone who is up on the culture doesn't know required information and isn't shunned for it. Either the lack of knowledge is ignored or the idea is explained to the person who needs to know, informal mentoring. "Oh, you need to use a McKenzie-Shlimit algorithm here. It will make the fizzits go into the slobnots efficiently."

I think this kind of thing happens more frequently in high tech than it does in other professions. It's one of the reasons why we have the leaky pipeline problem. It reminds me of middle school girls - if you don't already know how to be popular, the popular group certainly isn't going to tell you! And they're going to laugh at you and tell you your epidermis is showing, too.

All or Nothing (or: Moderation in All Things)

I've been thinking a lot lately about moderation and abstinence, ever since reading this post at the Happiness Project. I'm usually a moderator - I get panicky if I try to give something up forever, but I can put it off indefinitely by thinking, "later". (This may not apply in the case of apple crisp. Apple crisp is always better NOW.)

This has been true with my workflow lately, too. I had to switch to a loaner computer while mine is being repaired. The loaner has a much smaller hard drive, so I had to move things to an external drive. I've done that a few times in the past and things are a big mess. So I'm using this opportunity to try to clean things up, including my bookmarks. 

The problem is that it's a huge job and I don't really have time to sit down for the hours it would take to do the whole thing all at once. Also, boring. So I've been doing it in chunks, making sure it is clear where I left off. Very moderate. 

Now I just have to apply this to the rest of my life, particularly the part where it's easy to maintain. I tend to get stuck feeling like if I don't get all the way organized then there's just no point, when for me that isn't true at all. 

I organized a bunch of files at work this fall. Now I can't remember the system I used. It was even color coded! The colors are still there, but the meaning is lost. I think this time I will paste the key on the front of the filing cabinet. And no, you may NOT come visit me and laugh. 

Are we all too busy?

I went to a meeting tonight where one person lamented the lack of interest in the group. We have a dedicated, passionate core of members, but we believe there are many others out there who are not participating and we don't know why. 

This person told a story: he went to a meeting earlier in the week with three people who would be great members of our group. He encouraged them to come to our meeting. Two had (what he thought of as) legitimate conflicts. One just declined. She works in a school and said, "by 3:15 I'm just tired. I want to go home and spend evenings with my husband and dog. I don't go out in the evening."

This member was clearly disappointed in her choice to stay home. His feeling is that we're all busy, we all have other commitments, and yet we make the time to show up for these meetings and try to make this group work. He is frustrated that others don't. 

Ultimately, I'm pragmatic. We can't make people care about things we wish they would care about. We can't make them prioritize the way we want them to (unless we hold some kind of power over them.) Who knows why this woman feels that way - she's an introvert, she's a morning person, she just doesn't like us. It only matters in so far as we can arrange ourselves to meet her needs - or the needs of others who would participate if we could lower the barriers to participation. 

I think there's a huge parallel here to teaching. We can teach, we can amuse, we can inspire, but we can't make students passionate about our subject if they won't be. Some kids will be captured. Other kids won't. I don't know a teacher who doesn't want to reach ALL their students and have the students see the beauty and magic in the subject that caused the teacher to dedicate his/her life to it. But not all kids will see the beauty and magic of the subject - no matter what the subject is. Good teachers are more inspiring than bad teachers, of course, but even good teachers miss some. Think back - aren't there subjects that you just plain didn't like?

I guess my conclusion is that it reminded me that we have to pull people in - educationally, professionally, and personally. You can't force people to be where you want. You have to convince the unsure and coax the reluctant. In other words, you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. (Though someone tell me there's a more appealing cliche than that. Who wants a bunch of flies around??)

Textbooks

I don't use a textbook.

This seems to be heresy for most teachers. It is true that my school supports some really weird practices - project-based learning, no grades (narrative reports - which is what I should be working on right now!), and groupwork to name a few. So not using textbooks fits right in here. But I think (like the other practices, really) that it's fully justifiable.

I have a double-whammy: there are no texts that both cover what I want to cover and are appropriate for middle school. Most middle school "computer science" textbooks are heavy on applications and light on the things I'd like to cover. The books that cover the actual topics I'd like to cover are far, far above the reading level of my students. This year I tried an experiment (covered under educational fair use): I photocopied an exercise out of a Flash book I have. It was 20 steps, clearly explained. Half of the students were able to complete it at all, fewer than half of them were able to successfully follow the directions to get a working product. The language was above them, the writing was small, it didn't explain itself in a way they could understand... it was awful.

So I am left creating handouts, making podcasts (another thing I should be doing rather than posting!), and demoing while the students follow along and take notes. I am hoping to write the textbook I would want to use, one of these days.

I will say that I have a few favorite books I use. For Python, I rely heavily on Zelle's Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science and Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner. I use Zelle's graphics library rather than the built-in turtle graphics because they're easy to use and high-impact. In fact, the hangman game the students will make as their first big project is built with Zelle's graphics. I love that PPftAB has a game in each chapter - so much fun! I am hoping to move fast enough to have the students make the Mad Libs project as their second big project. It's OO and uses GUI windows. In Flash, I like the Lynda books a lot and this year I got the Missing Manual book which I like. But mostly I've got the Flash stuff down and really don't use a book. Someday I have to pull all my stuff into a website so other people can steal it if they need it.

Python begins

Tomorrow I start teaching programming with python to the 8th graders. I have been thinking about what approach to use since this summer. My options were:

• The imperative approach I used last year
• Objects almost-first, the approach I used this summer with a mixed group of AP-graduates and novices
• The media computation approach

I discarded the media comp approach pretty quickly. Media comp doesn't feel like my students are making things, only that they're manipulating something that already exists. I want them to make things. It's not totally rational. 

Then I worried back and forth between imperative and objects. I think people are warped by the programming style they learn first, so I might be ruining them by going imperative. But I'm not very good at OO design and I think OO is really hard and has a lot of unnecessary overhead, so I might be ruining them by going OO, by driving them away from programming entirely.

In the end, I decided to go imperative. I don't have time to prepare adequately to do OO well, I want to re-try the imperative approach I used last year to see if I can make it better, and if I can get through the imperative stuff fast enough, there will be time to do OO after we program hangman. I'm crossing my fingers that it will go well.

Web 2.0

I found some notes that are undated and un-contexted, but interesting. So I am posting them here that we might all be able to think about them and find them and I can delete them from my desktop.

Tinkering: Web 2.0 is digital tinkering. Kids don't just know how - they need instruction and practice. 

The teacher says: Tinkering is important for promoting certain kinds of thinking and certain interests; both engineers and computer scientists frequently cite it as important for children. But at some point people have to move past tinkering and be guided to a deeper understanding. Assuming that the "digital natives" will just figure it out on their own is as foolhardy as assuming that a 10-year-old who can take apart a toaster can therefore build a car.

Culture: We are culture-bound in how we think and in inventing the future. E.g. Indians (from India) would not have invented the desktop model because they don't use desks, they would have done bookshelves. [Really? Interesting.] At the lower level there are similarities in how humans think about things that are pervasive across cultures. The interface needs to merely not get in the way. Alan tried using the theory of instruction. 

The teacher says: OH. These must be notes from a lecture by Alan Kay and Andy Van Dam at the Engelbart thing. The first half resonates with me - this is why diversity in design teams is so important! The second half confounds me. What were they talking about?

Instant gratification: in the Bible, Esau sold his birthright for a cup of porridge. Americans may be doing that now. Romans: bread and circus.

The teacher says: I can't respond intelligently because I don't remember the context well enough to know why I found this striking. Partly because I think biblical references are cool, partly because I didn't remember that about Esau, and certainly for some other greater reason. But the lecture is online, so you can go listen and think for yourself!

It isn't the language

A mailing list is on the edge of having the language debate again. Ironically, I'm going through old e-mail from September and this exact list had this debate then too. 

Every time we have the language debate, we get closer to the idea that the language doesn't matter, that what matters is the ideas. We want students to solve problems and we want them to understand some of the important concepts in our discipline. Thus any language should do, as long as it allows them to solve problems and understand the important concepts in our discipline.

Some languages are better choices than others. We want students to focus on the "right" problems. That is, they should spend time solving problems like "which algorithm is more efficient" or "write a program that demonstrates good use of stacks as compared to queues" and not problems like "it doesn't compile."

I think about chemistry, as I so often do in these situations. When we want students to learn about the types of reactions, we (a) teach them about the types of reactions, (b) give them examples on paper, and (c) have them do a few reactions, such as a precipitation reaction. Does it matter which precipitation reaction? No, except that we choose one that is likely to have low experimental error and high yield, since we want the focus to be on the reaction and the products, not on the error. 

I'm not going to vote, but I do think we don't need to worry about articulation or workforce readiness or how many languages students should learn. We need to focus on the important concepts and skills. If they can do it in one language, they can learn another, just like if you can do one titration you can do another - it doesn't matter very much what the specifics were since you can apply the big skills. 

Progress report help

We don't have grades at my school, we have narrative reports. These include a rubric section. My department (now that I have one!) has re-written our rubric. The sections we have that I'm happy with are Application of Computer Science (vocabulary, concept application), Algorithmic thinking (use a logical process, follow directions), and Communication (listen, read, communicate ideas clearly). I'm really struggling with one section: computer science concepts.

In the seventh grade, they do three units and each unit has one rubric line for computer science concepts. So the database unit gets a line for "create a well-designed relational database" and students are evaluated on that. Those are straightforward. 

In eighth grade, we have done a semester-long unit on Flash. Well, not necessarily ON Flash, but USING Flash. Students learned how to control animation (i.e. create an object, use instances, make tweens), sequencing in terms of controlling what happens and the timeline, VERY basic Actionscript, and certainly some other things too like sound and shape tweens.

I need to articulate clearly no more than three things that I can assess students on in terms of what computer science concepts they should have learned from this. So far I have two, and I don't really like how the second one is worded:

• Create complex computer animations utilizing multiple objects, creating methods, and changing parameters
• Plan and implement projects that correctly sequence instructions for the computer to follow

Any ideas? 

Close to you

Because Alfred requested me to, I've been Twittering a lot more this week; it was a way to keep him up with with was going on at Rebooting Computing. Until this week, I didn't get it. I pretty much only Twittered when someone new started following me, I wondered why some of those people were following me, and I really didn't see the potential for education.

I still don't see great potential for education, but reading "I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You" might have changed my whole relationship with Twitter. Clive Thompson addresses why people use Facebook and Twitter and what it's doing to our society, and he says they're doing some really good things.

He begins by describing when Facebook implemented the news feed, that page that tells you what your friends have been doing lately. "Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it 'ambient awareness.' It is, they say, very much like being physcially near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does - body language, sighs, stray comments - out of the corner of your eye." 

He says it is hard to understand the appeal, especially if you don't do it. "For many people - particularly anyone over the age of 30 - the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae? And conversely, how much of their trivia can you absorb?" But it doesn't take a lot of energy to absorb their minutia. If you get an e-mail from a friend, you feel obligated to read it carefully. Looking at a twitter stream or the friends page on Facebook only requires skimming. It's much closer to glancing around the room and sensing how people feel by looking at their body language than it is like having an intimate conversation. It's called ambient awareness - when you're in the room with someone and you smile at them occasionally or share a funny thing you see. "This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update - each individual bit of social information - is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting." [How much do I love that this article references pointillist paintings? Very much.] I have seen this myself - in October I had a Terrible Week at work, expressed through increasingly desperate Facebook updates, and several people who were not near me at the time expressed their concern for me. I felt cared for.

Thompson addresses the question "what kinds of friends are these?" Remember the Dunbar number? That's the theoretical limit of friends a human can have - how many close relationships our brains can handle. The number is 150. What does that mean for people with hundreds of Facebook friends? 

The answer is two-fold. First, these tools enable us to have richer close relationships. Our close friends and family members can start in the middle of the conversation - they already know that the water heater broke and the plumber had to come three times, even before we meet for dinner.  Heck, they knew to call and offer a hot shower. Second, they increase our number of "weak ties." People you aren't close friends with and never will be, but their status popping up occasionally on your news feed reminds you of them. I would never think of the lovely young woman I sat next to at Rebooting Computing again if I hadn't friended her. Now she's part of my extended network. Weak ties help you solve problems - they won't offer you a shower, but they will offer the name of a great plumber. You didn't already have the name of the plumber because you called your close ties for a recommendation.

On the downside, online tools promote the growth of parasocial relationships - people who read a blog or follow you on Twitter and they feel like they know you, but you don't have any awareness of them. This has been around for years, ever since online tools started. I participated in Salon.com's Table Talk in 1998 and there were a handful of well known talkers and probably hundreds of lurkers who felt that they "knew" those people. Parasocial relationships have happened to celebrities for years, but now they can happen to regular people too. 

Finally is the issue of identity maintenance, but I think that needs to be the subject of another post.

Storycorps for computer science

If you listen to NPR regularly, you're probably aware of StoryCorps (tagline: listening is the greatest gift). It is an interview project. In its most simple version, it is a booth that two people go into and one interviews the other. The interview is recorded and the two people get a copy of the recording; another copy goes to the Library of Congress. The larger goal is in recording the life stories of regular people throughout the US. (I have wanted to interview my dad for a long time - I know he has interesting stories about growing up Jewish in the forties and fifties.)

At Rebooting Computing, I went into a breakout about problem-based learning grades 7-14. We spent some time talking about projects like the University of Washington's "Why choose CSE" videos, that try to bust the negative image of computing as a geeky pursuit for white boys. 

This lead to the idea of having Storycorps for CS. I think some of it was interviewing people - famous, regular, anyone - to hear their stories. I would be even more excited if we had videos or writings that were stories of things that happened. In terms of project-based learning, they would be more like case studies. Owen Astrachan told a story about someone faking the Amazon security certificate by using PS3s (or something like that... this is why I need videos or writings!) 

As a K-12 teacher, if I had a video of (for example) Owen talking energetically about the security certificate hack, I could use it as a case study, as a sub lesson, or just as a pointer for my interested students. We have a lot of videos about people in CS and how they're not all geeks. They're nice videos but I have a hard time really using them in a meaningful way. I'd love to have a lot of different kinds of videos so different teachers could use them in different ways. And I'd LOVE to have case studies around things in CS so I could have my students study them in addition to the other great teaching methods I have. 

Is programming "what we're about"?

I think computer scientists use programming to do the things CS is about (e.g. algorithms) not that CS is "about" programming. I do believe I feel strongly about this.