CT Cafe

This link has been around for a while, and still is poignant. It has a lot to say about how we get young people involved in high-tech areas of interest (in this case, NASA). We can certainly learn from this as we move ahead toward the CPATH II goals, seeking to attract folks to the STEM fields represented by our pipeline model. Let me know what you think!

The latest e-newsletter from the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity in Education Foundation featured this article from The New York Times. It will resonate with our group!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/technology/21nerds.html?_r=3&ref=education


Here is a key point:

"In other words, the nation’s economy is going to need more cool nerds. But not enough young people are embracing computing — often because they are leery of being branded nerds."

Geeks must be "COOL!"

Our marketing plan may be as important as our topical interests. I confess I am somewhat challenged by the difficulty of explaining the big computational thinking concepts to regular folks...people who have not invested themselves in the mission. How to get from where we've been to a more enlightened future is highly dependent on our ability to explain the mission and component concepts. So when Jeannette Wing asks with a straight face why we don't teach the concept "algorithm" in grade school, I immediately cringe and ask myself how many K-8 teachers does she actually know? I don't fault her, I just have reservations about the capacity of the educational pipeline to embrace and deliver new, and in particular, abstract curricular components. We need to concern ourselves with how to make our little cafe appealing. If we want SRO crowds, that menu posted by the door and the accompanying smells wafting out onto the street better be seductive.

It's not exactly as if we haven't been there before. When I was younger, the New Math initiative (interestingly, another NSF project) attempted to deploy widespread understanding of some of the more conceptual domains that academic mathematics employs. Great idea with mixed results. I happened to have New Math delivered by a real mathematics instructor (with a genuine math background...not a PE or History degree) and maybe I was predisposed to math, technology and the AV squad, so it worked for me. But the New Math program failed...in large part because the people in charge of delivery were ill-prepared to convey the subject matter, at least using the packages delivered by the visionaries. Whether teachers were excited, intimidated or ambivalent may not really matter, but the program was eventually reeled in after years of parental confusion and complaints. (Lesson: If the parents are not "getting it" through osmosis and fail to "see the point," resistance will be encountered). So, we need to think long and hard about how to go about this business of "getting the words right" or spicing up the menu as it were.

After listening to Jon Udell's interview of Joan Peckham, I reviewed the Computer Science Unplugged curriculum generated by a team in New Zealand. I like the way they've named their units and lessons. We would do well to learn from their example and, perhaps, use some of their ideas to build a strategy or help explain our quest. I recommend you take a look and start stewing on how we make our mission palatable, even delicious to the customers and the serving staff we will be trying to influence.

Excerpt from Table of Contents of the Computer Science Unplugged curriculum
Data: the raw material—Representing information

• Count the Dots—Binary Numbers
  
• Colour by Numbers—Image Representation
• etc.
  

• Battleships—Searching Algorithms
  
• Lightest and Heaviest—Sorting Algorithms
  
• etc
  

• Treasure Hunt—Finite-State Automata
• Marching Orders—Programming Languages