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Comment Intro CS Courses Vary by Majors at Large Schools (Score 1) 307

by theodp (#48593827) Attached to: Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices

University of Illinois CS Courses: CS101 (Engineering & Science), CS102 (Non-Tech), CS125 (CS Majors). What seems to be missing is providing slower on-ramps for those who did not have good early training that may be interested in majoring in CS, perhaps one or two courses for no credit, not unlike what CS undergraduate degree holders seeking an MBA would be required to take to catch up on Business/Finance subjects before they can start coursework that counts towards the MBA degree.

Submission + - How Best to Hold Tablets, Phablets, Phones?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: A photo of the huge Velcro strap gracing a Microsoft Surface produced for the NFL (not unlike that Wham-O catch game you played with as a kid) illustrates that in the still-nascent world of phones, phablets, and tablets we've yet to stumble upon the best way to hold mobile devices. Might a variant of a Chinese finger trap or Ring Pop help you hold your phone? Do you miss having a slide-out keyboard or long for a fixed Blackberry keyboard (or clip-on knockoff) to grab onto? Is the conventional wisdom of a border-to-border screen with touch-only keyboard best, or might a less sleek-looking device be more practical? So, how do you typically hold your tablet, phablet, or phone?

Submission + - Google Suggests Schools Ban Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' from Classrooms 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: To address the challenge of rapidly increasing CS enrollments and increasing diversity, reports the Computing Education Blog, Google in November put out an RFP to universities for its invite-only 3X in 3 Years: CS Capacity Award program, which aims "to support faculty in finding innovative ways to address the capacity problem in their CS courses." In the linked-to RFP document, Google suggests that "students that have some CS background" should not be allowed to attend in-person intro CS courses where they "may be more likely to create a non-welcoming environment," and recommends that they instead be relegated to online courses. According to a recent NSF press release, this recommendation would largely exclude Asian and White boys from classrooms, which seems to be consistent with a Google-CodeCademy award program that offers $1,000 bonuses to teachers who get 10 or more high school kids to take a JavaScript course, but only counts students from "groups traditionally underrepresented in computer science (girls, or boys who identify as African American, Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native)." The project suggested in the Google RFP — which could be worth $1.5 million over 3 years to a large CS department — seems to embrace-and-extend a practice implemented at Harvey Mudd College years ago under President Maria Klawe, which divided the intro CS offering into separate sections based upon prior programming experience to — as the NY Times put it — reduce the intimidation factor of young men, already seasoned programmers, who dominated the class. Google Director of Education and University Relations Maggie Johnson, whose name appears on the CS Capacity RFP, is also on the Board of Code.org (where Klawe is coincidentally an Advisory Board member), the K-12 learn-to-code nonprofit that has received $3+ million from Google and many millions more from other tech giants and their execs. Earlier this week, Code.org received the blessing of the White House and NSF to train 25,000 teachers to teach CS, stirring unease among some educators concerned about the growing influence of corporations in public schools.

Submission + - 2014 Tutorial that 'Taught President Obama to Code' is Straight Out of 2005

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: A decade ago, Washington University prof Caitlin Kelleher, then a student at CMU, figured out how to make introductory computer science engaging for millions of kids. Too bad nobody's giving her credit for it now. On Monday, President Obama kicked off the U.S. Hour of Code by praising Code.org for its "incredible work" before he sat down and 'learned to code' himself by using this year's flagship Disney-Code.org tutorial to make a princess from the blockbuster Disney hit Frozen ice skate forward 100 pixels. Which looks a lot like, one might argue, a dumbed-down version of a learn-to-code Alice tutorial described in Kelleher's 2006 CMU thesis, which used essentially the same paradigm employed in the Disney-Code.org tutorial to make a 3D ice skater move forward 1 meter. Hey, at least the President was spot-on when he later told girls that guys sometimes get credit for women's earlier pioneering CS work. So, perhaps someone should let the President know that some of the credit billionaire-backed Code.org and Disney are getting for 'making computing cool' should rightfully go to Kelleher, whose game-changing work earned her the highest praise in 2007 from late CMU CS prof Randy Pausch, who called it "the best 'head fake' of all time" as he described the novel Alice Project in his Last Lecture. The NY Times also took note of Kelleher's pioneering work in 2011, and Kelleher received the Innovation Award from the Academy of Science of St. Louis earlier this year.

Submission + - Seeking Coders, Tech Titans Turn to K-12 Schools

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Politico reports on how a tech PR blitz on the importance of coding in K-12 schools has won over President Obama, who's now been dubbed the 'coder-in-chief' after sitting down Monday to 'write' a few lines of computer code with middle school students as part of a PR campaign for the Hour of Code, which has earned bipartisan support in Washington. From the article: The $30 million campaign to promote computer science education has been financed by the tech industry, led by Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, with corporate contributions from Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other giants. It’s been a smash success: So many students opened up a free coding tutorial on Monday that the host website crashed. But the campaign has also stirred unease from some educators concerned about the growing influence of corporations in public schools. And it’s raised questions about the motives of tech companies, which are sounding an alarm about the lack of computer training in American schools even as they lobby Congress for more H-1B visas to bring in foreign programmers. Much of the marketing for the campaign, run by the nonprofit Code.org, explicitly touts the need to train more employees for the industry. “Nowhere else in education do we start by saying ‘We have a need for this in the K-5 curriculum because there are good industry jobs at Google,’” said Joanna Goode, an associate professor at the University of Oregon who works on computer science education. “I’m not doing this work to train Google employees.” Such skepticism hasn’t slowed the industry’s momentum. Founded just last year, Code.org created three introductory programming courses for students in elementary and middle school in a matter of months. The curriculum has not been formally tested — but already, about 60,000 classrooms nationwide already have committed to using it. The group is also promoting two courses for high school students that were developed before Code.org was formed, under grants from the National Science Foundation. The NSF had been rolling the courses out slowly to research their effectiveness. Now, with NSF’s blessing, Code.org is racing full-speed ahead: Industry funds will be used to train 25,000 teachers in 60 public school districts from New York to Los Angeles.

Submission + - Obama Administration Counting on Wealthy to Train 35,000 K-12 CS Teachers

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On the first day of Computer Science Education Week 2014, the Obama Administration announced that it was relying on over $20 million in philanthropic contributions to train 35,000 teachers to teach computer science by Fall 2016. A separate White House Fact Sheet notes that the Administration is counting on the generosity of deep-pocketed Code.org backers Google, Microsoft, the Omidyar Network, Salesforce.com, Ballmer Family Giving, John and Anne Doerr, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Drew Houston, Sean Parker, Ali and Hadi Partovi, Diane Tang and Ben Smith, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Later in the day, the President joined middle schoolers to celebrate the nation's Hour of Code, working through a new Disney Blockly tutorial exercise featuring Frozen princesses Elsa and Anna (WH video) before moving on to advance Elsa 100 pixels with one line of Javascript. "We have a Coding President!" declared new U.S. CTO and former Google VP Megan Smith. In the past, the President told the kids, women sometimes did groundbreaking CS work, but weren't given the credit. Hey, kind of like how Disney is taking the credit for coming up with a way to 'make computing cool' for millions of kids and teaching the President to code with its 2014 ice-skating themed learn-to-code tutorial, while Caitlin Kelleher gets no mention for a groundbreaking, similarly-themed circa-2005 tutorial she constructed as a student for the Alice Project, right? If it's any consolation, Kelleher at least earned the highest praise from her PhD adviser, the late Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture.

Submission + - Should Disney Credit the Late Randy Pausch for its Hour of Code Tutorial?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Tens of millions of kids across the nation will take to school computers this week to participate in the 2014 Hour of Code. In this year's signature tutorial, kids will be introduced to coding concepts through exercises like using Google's Blockly to make Disney Frozen Princess Anna ice skate in a square. If this strikes you as familiar, it could be that you've seen this Disney movie before. In The Last Lecture, the late CMU CS professor Randy Pausch displays a programmable cartoon ice skater from an Alice Project tutorial as he explains how the project's novel approach to programming could stealthily teach tens of millions of kids to code (YouTube) [by making characters skate in a square, for example]. "To the extent that you can live on in something," said Pausch, "I will live on in Alice." He added, "I, like Moses, get to see the promised land, but I won’t get to set foot in it. And that’s OK, because I can see it. And the vision is clear. Millions of kids having fun while learning something hard. That’s pretty cool. I can deal with that as a legacy." So considering the similarities, and that Pausch spent sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering (Disney even sells The Last Lecture ), isn't it kind of surprising that neither Disney nor Code.org mentioned Pausch or Alice in their announcements of the flagship Hour of Code tutorial? Is this a case of the left Disney hand not knowing what the right is doing?

Submission + - 2014 Hour of Code Frozen Tutorial: Disney Remake of CMU's 2005 Alice Ice Skater?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Thanks to the backing of some of tech's wealthiest corporations and individuals, tens of millions of kids across the nation will take to school computers next week to participate in the 2014 Hour of Code. In this year's signature tutorial, kids will be introduced to some basic computer science concepts for the first time by using Google's Blockly to advance Disney Frozen Princess Anna a specified number of units, turning her 90 degrees, and repeating the steps 4 times to skate in a square. While neither Disney nor Code.org mentioned it in their announcements, their 2014 Hour of Code tutorial looks very similar to a circa-2005 ice-skater based learn-to-code tutorial from the Alice software research group at CMU that was once led by the late Randy Pausch (Pausch mentions the Alice project in The Last Lecture). A quick Google search even turns up a 2009 Alice homework assignment that asks kids to make their animated 3D ice skater skate in a square. Commenting on Duke's recent CS 201 cheating scandal, CS Prof Owen Astrachan (coincidentally, a Code.org advisor) noted that there is a fine line between collaboration and cheating in computer science. So, could the flagship tutorial for this year's Hour of Code — touted as 'the largest learning event in history' by its organizers — be one of those cases?

Submission + - All I Really Need to Know About Coding I Learned in Monopoly

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Thanks to the backing of some of tech's wealthiest corporations and individuals, tens of millions of kids across the nation will take to school computers with high-speed internet connections next week to participate in the 2014 Hour of Code. In this year's signature tutorial, kids will be exposed to important computer science concepts for the first time by advancing Disney Frozen Princess Anna a specified number of units, turning her 90 degrees, and repeating the steps 4 times to skate in a square. Yep, kind of like what one might learn by playing the board game Monopoly, which also exposes one to other coding concepts like IF and GOTO statements! By the way, while neither Disney nor Code.org mentioned it in their announcements, their 2014 Hour of Code tutorial looks like it has roots in a circa-2005 ice-skater based learn-to-code tutorial (associated skate-in-a-square HW assignment) from the Alice software research group that was once led by the late Randy Pausch.

Comment Order 537 more for Congress+Biden+Obama? (Score 3, Interesting) 262

by theodp (#48503793) Attached to: Obama Offers Funding For 50,000 Police Body Cameras

The Circle: Meanwhile, the Circle continues to develop a range of sophisticated technologies, including SeeChange, light, portable cameras that can provide real-time video with minimal efforts. Eventually, SeeChange cameras are worn all day long by politicians wishing to be 'transparent', allowing the public to see what they are seeing at all times.

Submission + - Google, National Parks Partner to Let Girls Program White House Xmas Tree Lights

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The Washington Post reports the White House holiday decor is going digital this year, with dog-bots and crowdsourced tree lights. "Thanks to Google's Made with Code initiative," reports a National Park Foundation press release, "girls across the country will experience the beauty of code by lighting up holiday trees in President’s Park, one of America’s 401 national parks and home to the White House." Beginning on December 2, explains the press release, girls can head over to Google's madewithcode.com (launched last June by U.S. CTO Megan Smith, then a Google X VP), to code a design for one of the 56 state and territory trees. Girls can select the shape, size, and color of the lights, and animate different patterns using introductory programming language and their designs will appear live on the trees. "Made with Code is a fun and easy way for millions of girls to try introductory code and see Computer Science as a foundation for their futures. We're thrilled that this holiday season families across the country will be able to try their hands at a fun programming project," said former Rep. Susan Molinari, who now heads Google's lobbying and policy office in Washington, DC.

Submission + - '94 Harvard Crimson: Require CS or Grads of 'Much Shittier Schools' Get Jobs

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Produced by Code.org, Computer Science Education Week kicks off on Dec. 8th, which its organizers explain is all about extending CS beyond 'the lucky few'. It's quite a pivot from more than 20 years ago, when the Harvard Crimson reported on a call from a Code.org co-founder for mandatory CS coursework to essentially extend Computer Science to 'the lucky few' in an effort to prevent people from 'much shittier schools' than Harvard from getting hired for computer-related jobs. From the 1994 Crimson article: "It would not be bad if there was some sort of simple math or science or statistic or computer science course required," says Ali Partovi '94. "It is really going to be a big thing in the future. People from much shittier schools will get jobs because they know more about computers." It's nice to see things are pivoting towards computer-science-for-all — heck, Codecademy notes that Asian and White boys are now the only students Google says don't count towards the $1,000 funding bonuses Google's offering to public school teachers who get 10 students to take a JavaScript course!

Submission + - A Programmer's Life 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: If you're a programmer who's put a few miles on your life, be sure to check out Stephen Hazel's Bout Steve which may just be the most poignant 'About Me' you'll ever read. Tucked away behind his PianoCheetah piano practice software website, Hazel covers the ups and downs of his journey from being born into a family headed by a manic depressive missionary father to his current life as a (young) grandfather, and he frames it all within the context of an illustrated timeline of family, music, electronics, computers, and software. This is Parenthood for the Slashdot set, kids!

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Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein

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