1. CS Principles Panel Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Associate Professor Amber Wagner – Ph.D. student (former AP CS teacher) K-12 Colleague: Bill Cowles, Booker T. Washington HS University of Alabama Department of Computer Science gray@cs.ua.edu http://www.cs.ua.edu/~gray SIGCSE 2012 Raleigh, NC - March 2, 2012

2. Observation: Teaching CS – 1980s style Typical example was text-based, trivial, and uninspiring

3. Motivation: New and Exciting Contexts Media Computation  Programming in a more exciting context by manipulating multimedia artifacts Robots  Lego NXT 2D/3D Animation Environments  Alice, Scratch, AgentSheets

4. Motivation: Newest Context Teen smartphone penetration around 62% 1 Novel ways to engage through the “creative hook” and tinkering “I wish I had an app for that” Social networking and crowd sourcing a daily activity among teens Increasing adoption of smartphones in science and medical applications 1 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/168085/nielsen-smartphone-penetration-reaches-48.html

5. Summary of Alabama Principles Course Split between BYOB (Snap!) and App Inventor Readings  Books: Hal’s Blown to Bits, Wolber et al. App Inventor book  Papers: Wing’s Computational Thinking, Kramer’s Is Abstraction the Key to Computing? Grades:  Six individual assignments (two short essays)  Two team projects (presentation, implementation)  Three exams and 7 very short quizzes

6. Sample Projects Homework Examples  Hangman App  Essays: Reflective essay on student major and CS; research and analyze a computer simulation model Team Projects  BYOB Almost all were game variations (Example)  App Inventor Rendezvous planner Tornado damage assessment app for Civil Engineers Textbook buying broker

7. Collaboration with High School Peer Bill Cowles, Booker T. Washington HS Montgomery, AL  Almost exactly a 2 hour drive from Tuscaloosa Shared syllabus, homework ideas, various lectures Restriction on meeting times  Visit and talk to Bill’s class  Initial planning during CS4HS summer workshop in 2011  Weekend AP training session  Bi-weekly email

8. Things that we felt were a success Creativity Soared Team Projects Highly Collaborative Diversity  17 different majors across 29 students (first essay)  Broad interest from Freshman to Seniors  13 of 29 students were women or males from underrepresented populations Sustainability  Strong interest on campus to offer again in Fall ’12  11 High School teachers in Alabama want help in pursuing an early adopter Pilot for 2012-2013

9. Things that did not work so well Rushed to cover all CS Principles topics in a 3-hour course Recruiting issues (temporary) Big Data idea never finalized (but almost ready) Four students dropped the course before midterm Some team project ideas were unrealistic 1 case of cheating