1 What (Else) Should CS Educators Know? Author: Gal-Ezer, Judith. & Harel, David (1998). Journal: Communications of the ACM, 41(9), Speaker ：陸虹妙 Date ： 2005/7/16

2 Outline What should CS educators know? Have a thorough background in CS, on a fitting level. Have a bird’s eye view of the CS field. Study and become familiar with the following topics  History of CS  What is CS?  Curricula -- high school level and college/university level  The Problematics of Teaching Programming  Tools and Methods for Teaching Read the professional periodicals in CS education to keep up to date with relevant development. What is the meaning of the title word “Else”?

3 What should CS educators know? Have a thorough background in CS, on a fitting level. (1) College-level teachers: a doctoral degree in CS. High school-level teachers: a Master’s degree in CS. Have a bird’s eye view of the CS field (2) preferably in two parts  the algorithmic side  the systems side.

4 What should CS educators know? Study and become familiar with the following topics (3) History of CS  including that of the theory and that of machines themselves  Why should CS educators study history? Help one appreciate the difficulties that faced the pioneering figures. Provide a deeper understanding of the forces and considerations that helped form it. Learn the lessons from false starts, failures, and misconceptions. Provide global perspective of the field and its structure. Clarify its relationship with other fields. Influence a student ’ s thinking about present and future developments.  What are main reasons of the unique of CS history? The discipline itself is young and is developing amazingly fast. CS itself is an unusually dichotomic subject — one facet is more mathematical and the other is a type of engineering.

5 What should CS educators know? What is CS?  Basically, there is no identical opinion about the substance of CS and no clear agreement on the name of the field.  But you can get an idea of what CS is really about by inspecting the various curricula for university-level study. Curricula -- high school level and college/university level  The three different directions on CS education: Disseminate computer literacy. Use computers in teaching other subjects. Teach CS.

6 What should CS educators know? The Problematics of Teaching Programming  Should everyone have programming skills? Here “ everyone ” includes college-level students in other fields. The pros: most people agree that anyone studying CS ought to know how to program. The cons: Dijkstra, for example, is opposed to teaching actual programming in the first CS course.  The mother-tongue: what is the first programming language one learns? Language categories: procedural, declarational, functional, logical, and object-oriented.  There have always been specific concepts within programming that are hard to teach, especially in precollege levels.

7 What should CS educators know? For example: An algorithm or program is fixed yet is supposed to deal with many different imputs of varying sizes. The very notion of an assignment statement. Control structures: conditionals and repetitions. Recursion. Notions that transcend the programming act itself are relevant to algorithms in general. An upper and lower bounds on the computational complexity.

8 What should CS educators know? Tools and Methods for Teaching  Tools: Pattis ’ Karel the Robot for teaching precollege programming. Turing ’ s World by Barwise and Etchemendy for teaching Turing machines.  Methods: Use visualization and graphic animation in their various guises. Programming based on case studies. Induction-based algorithmic design.

9 What should CS educators know? Read the professional periodicals in CS education to keep up to date with relevant development. (4) Mathematics and Computer Education Computers and education SIGCSE Bulletin Journal of Computer Science Education (JCSE) Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching (JCMST) International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology Journal of Educational Computing Research Journal of Technology and Teacher Education Regular columns on CS education in Communications of the ACM and IEEE’s Computer Newsletter like ACM’s SIGACT News and The bulletin of EATCS

10 What is the meaning of the title word “ Else ” ? Things integrating education and computer but not including core CS knowledge and skills. For example: How to convey and teach this knowledge and skills correctly and reliably, Infuse the students with interest, curiosity, and enthusiasm. Have a bird’s eye view of the CS field Study and become familiar with the following topics: History of C S 、 the nature of CS 、 Curricula 、 The Problematics of Teaching Programming 、 Tools and Methods for Teaching. Read the professional periodicals in CS education