[Edu-sig] Lurking with high school computer science teachers

[Kirby Urner]

Over the weekend, I joined a planning meeting for a state-wide group of high
school computer science teachers.  I went as part of an invited delegation
from FreeGeek, a nonprofit devoted to open source.  The morning hours were
about planning the various tracks of a two week conference this summer -- a
yearly event devoted to the needs of computer science teachers in Oregon.

Thanks to earlier contacts with the conference coordinator, I was able to
get Python on the agenda.  She actually gave me a lab for the entire 2nd
week in order to do a hands-on workshop opposite 'Java AP Topics' (AP =
Advanced Placement).  However, she labeled this as tentative and explicitly
asked for teacher feedback on this idea.  The Programming committee would be
the principal source of this feedback, so that's the one I attended -- my
three peers from FreeGeek went to the Linux and Open Source committee (Linux
has a slot across the whole two weeks).

The Programming committee was facilitated by the teacher who would be
running the Java AP Topics, and his sense was that just about all teachers
would benefit from his workshop.  He didn't know much about Python.  Another
teacher on the committee had been using Scheme and proposed sharing about
that.  If we were going to slot in a whole week on one or the other, the
Java teacher thought he'd go with Scheme, having played with it a little.
At this point, a dissenting opinion was voiced regarding Scheme, by a
teacher who, turns out, is also a big fan of our old friend, the 3d
animations studio named Alice (I hear Arthur grumbling).

The president of the organization was also present in this group, and his
thought was that we probably shouldn't give a whole workshop to any language
teachers weren't currently teaching.  They'd want overview first.  The Java
teacher was certainly open to the idea of doing *something* non-Java, on the
theory that a lot of teachers would already know the basics (the subject of
his first day or two), and these teachers might postpone joining his Java
track until day 2 or 3.

So I proposed splitting the time with the Scheme and Alice advocates, and
just doing a presentation.  I'm not clear whether the Alice advocate will
actually get to present, as he wanted a lab, and whereas FreeGeek could have
provided one for Python (a popular language at FreeGeek), the diskless
workstation + 1 server setup wouldn't have the horsepower to boot Alice on
multiple machines.

I'm sharing this little slice of life to give edu-sig subscribers insight
into one local proceeding, and how my enthusiasm for Python gets me into
some up hill gradients, with mixed success (actually, I think idea of just
doing some overview, versus a week-long workshop, is just fine this time --
could maybe do a full-blown workshop maybe next year, if interest deepens).

A final observation:  in the open source group, the facilitator had already
switched to Python in his high school (I forget from what, Java?), and is a
strong advocate for it.  He sees a lot more sparks of understanding and a
lot less glaze-over stares of incomprehension among his students.  He's
using 'How To Think Like a Computer Scientist' and something else (I mean to
ask him again -- I also mentioned edu-sig and this discussion list, inviting
him to join, which I'll likewise do again by email).

Also:  during our planning meeting, student teams from around the state were
engaged in a programming contest.  Fourteen problems were handed around, and
the competing groups were to complete as many as they could.  This was the
18th such annual event.  My quick survey of the organizers indicated that so
far, none of the teams were using Python.  I got a copy of the contest
problems and went through a few of them using Python after I got home
(including the one they said was hardest -- my solution works, but I don't
know if it'd be considered optimum -- contains a brute force element).  

I'm thinking during my upcoming presentation in August, I could feature some
of these contest problems with Pythonic solutions.  Teachers would see the
relevance because these would be the kinds of problems their students would
be seeing in future contests (maybe not the *best* kind of relevance, but at
least it's close to home).

If Python coders in this group want to solve a few of these (will I have
time to do all fourteen?  -- not likely), maybe we can coordinate.  I'll ask
the contest coordinator if the problems go to a website, now that the
contest is over.

Kirby