[Edu-sig] Significant drop in CS interest in high schools

[kirby urner]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Helene Martin<lognaturel at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think members of the K-12 CS education community were entirely
> comfortable with the way the article you quote interpreted the
> research or even the research itself.  For example, the survey is of
> self-identified CS teachers rather than of schools.  Mark Guzdial had
> a good post on the subject with a response by Alan Kay:
> http://computinged.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/questioning-the-report-that-high-school-cs-is-declining/
>
> I'll be starting a CS program in a Seattle school in a couple of
> weeks.  I continue to be amazed at how little programming/computer
> science/technology is available to students in the district.  After
> all, we have Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc at our doorstep.  But
> administrators don't understand what programming is, knowledgeable
> teachers are hard to retain, curriculum is pretty spotty and students
> are scared of being labeled as nerds.   And then as Kirby mentions,
> there are a million and a half bureaucratic hurdle to go through.
> Restrictive graduation requirements is a good example, teacher
> certification is another.

Thank you Hélène, useful to get reality checks from a close neighbor.

Our user group PPUG has kept bringing up Sage (the free Python
product) and the Sage community as one to get work with.  But our
ranks include mostly family guys or up and coming private sector,
precious few in the teaching professions.

As you say, there's a big cultural disconnect between what goes on in
the classroom and what goes on in a Python user group -- and that's
wrong, why waste so much time on a wild goose chase (chasing the
specter of maths gone by).

It's the same scene of being surrounded by high tech, kids full of
hope, and schools in the dark ages.

Our Hillsboro Police Department (next to Intel) was really tired of
getting asked to bust kids chops for software piracy, ripping off
music (this was Napster's golden year) and when they found about about
FOSS they went apeshit, going "why do we have to play the mean guy
enforcer when we could be having fun watching these kids develop
cyberspace skills and not end up career criminals?"

So HPD opened a Linux Lab right there in West Precinct (hand-me-down
Compaqs running Red Hat).

Me 'n Jerritt (with linuxfund.org back then) were two of the teachers,
contracted through saturdayacademy.org.

But guess what:  teenagers don't really think of a police station as
being congenial to their way of life, so the marketing was a real up
hill battle.

Also the premise was born or desperation:  schools so not doing their
jobs that the police needed to step in as digital math teachers, when
they're supposed to be running forensics labs.  Like how twisted is
that?  George Heuston, the brains behind this project, along with his
chief, was unusually ahead of the pack in his thinking (quite a
resume, FBI, NORAD... I don't know the half of it I'm sure).

>
> If anyone is interested in taking a look and maybe providing feedback,
> two of my courses -- Exploring Computer Science and Creative Computing
> -- will use Python quite a bit.  Right now http://garfieldcs.com/ only
> has marketing materials but I'll be posting assignments, etc as the
> school year starts.
>

Garfield High in Seattle?  Where my mom went as a kid?  And Jimi Hendrix?

> A number of us K-12 computer science instructors have been trying to
> put together a social network (http://csteachers.ning.com/) that
> hopefully will one day be taken over by CSTA.  The idea is to get
> teachers talking about policy issues affecting them, share curriculum
> resources and just be aware of who is out there interested in K-12
> CS/programming education.  There's already a vibrant AP CS
> mailing-list-based community but there isn't such a thing for those of
> us teaching Python or other languages/tools/courses.  It would be
> wonderful to get some Python experts involved and starting some
> conversation.  Please join us!
>
> Best,
>
> Hélène.
>

Sounds excellent.

Your meeting at Sherwood High ended on a note of collaboration between
high school math teachers and high school computer science teachers as
we think both are holding some of the puzzle pieces.

My approach has been to jump ahead to where we already have flatscreen
monitors in front of most high school math students, and now want to
get into ray tracing, simulations, geometry, and yes, turtle graphics
(also VRML aka x3D etc.).  This isn't just a superficial tour of
various gee whiz applications though, it's serious-enough programming
in a computer language, expressing "math objects" (such as Vectors,
Polynomials) in Python, much as the Litvins text does.

http://www.python.org/community/sigs/current/edu-sig/ links to Sage,
which you likely already know about, whereas here's the Litvins text
home page (not yet linked):

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Digital-Age-Programming-Python/dp/0972705589

There's a PDF version, not sure what else, and a print on demand
philosophy that's better than most mass publishing policies in my
estimation, although I'm not connected to the publisher in any
business capacity, have had no contact with the authors to date.
Chris Brooks introduced me to this text.  He's with Software
Association of Oregon etc., seems well connected in Ruby world (given
the latter's tight integration with OpenGL, Arthur Siegel used to
wonder if our window had gone by (Vpython was moribund at the time,
looking much stronger today -- Dr. Bob Fuller my contact with that
group)).

Kirby

> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Jeff Rush<jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
>> wesley chun wrote:
>>> AP CS Courses (and Students) on the Decline, CSTA Survey Finds
>>>
>>> This spring, the 2009 CSTA National Secondary Computer Science Survey
>>> collected responses from some 1,100 high school Computer Science
>>> teachers. The results: only 65 percent reported that their schools
>>> offer introductory or pre-AP Computer Science classes, as compared
>>> with 73 percent in 2007 and 78 percent in 2005. Only 27 percent
>>> reported that their schools offer AP CS, as compared with 32 percent
>>> in 2007 and 40 percent in 2005. And 74 percent offer CS content in
>>> courses other than introductory or AP CS, down from 85 percent in
>>> 2007.
>>>
>>> "The continuing drop in students taking AP CS is a serious
>>> warning sign about the state of computing in this country, as a
>>> student taking AP typically indicates his or her interest in majoring
>>> in that field in college or pursuing a career in that area," said
>>> Chris Stephenson, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers
>>> Association.
>>
>> I'm not involved in the education industry so I'm having a slight logic
>> disconnect with this article.
>>
>> The title implies that students are not -choosing- to major in CS but
>> the body talks about fewer schools -offering- the classes.  I'm not
>> clear to what degree students influence the offering of classes versus
>> school leadership deciding that.  Is this more a perception of viability
>> issue among management or students?  Or perhaps a problem with schools
>> not being able to supply teachers that can teach it, and thereby
>> dropping classes?
>>
>> Maybe CS needs a good PR campaign, showing how fun it is, how it
>> directly impacts the qualify of life for society and how empowering it
>> is to understand and be able to take control of the technology around
>> us.  It also is one of the cheapest fields in which to get started as
>> everything you need is free - software tools, online books, video
>> classes.  You don't need organizational permission to participate like
>> you do with many majors like nuclear physics (my original major) or
>> medicine and it doesn't even require expensive/messy raw materials like
>> electronics, chemistry or biology.  Instead you work with the stuff of
>> dreams, in an air-conditioned clean environment!
>>
>> I didn't know about the Computer Science Teachers Association and I see
>> they have a very nice website.  Thanks for the tip -- I'll be checking
>> it out as I feel for the democratization of society we definitely need
>> more people working on computers.  Computers (being amplifiers of
>> thought mostly for those who program them) are the only tool developed
>> by Mankind that has such immense power to enslave society if left in the
>> hands of a few.  Just look at the information sieving and social
>> monitoring facilities springing up around us.
>>
>> -Jeff
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