Presentation before the Culturally Responsive Teaching Learning and counseling symposium, Jan. 23, 2010

1. Using computer science education methods to enhance teaching across the disciplines Kim Pearson The College of New Jersey Fifth Annual Culturally Responsive Teaching, Learning and Counseling Symposium

3. Not just for science and math class

4. IJIMS research

5. Scratch as a tool for teaching computational thinking across disciplines]

6. Swing dancing and scavenger hunts

7. Your turn to play

9. What is computational thinking? “Computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just computer scientists. To reading, writing and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability.” Dr. Jeannette Wing An approach to problem solving that includes (but isn’t limited to): Abstracting and modeling processes and phenomena Creating rules and procedures, ie algorithms Collaboration Structuring ideas and information in ways that both machines and people can process Not just for science and math class

10. Exhibit A: IJIMS We used the parallels in the processes of creating news stories to teach fundamental computer science principles and skills, including: collaboratively specifying a problem, developing and implementing solutions, error checking, and iteration.

11. But it wasn’t just about writing Abstracting a problem What is the story? Thinking procedurally Rules for finding credible sources Rules for conducting interviews Abstracting a problem Judgments about best media for each part of a story (text, video, Scratch, image) Collaborative problem solving and project management And real programming

12. What is Scratch? Created by MIT Media Lab Designed to teach programming to novices Exposes students to real programming concepts: control structures, commands, loops, strings Ability to use, create and modify media makes programming play Supportive online community supports collaboration

13. Your turn to play Open Scratch on your desktop Getting started in Scratch Now that you have created a sample Scratch program, can you think of how students might use Scratch to create stories, games or animations using topics in: Science Math Social Studies Language Arts

14. CS Unplugged Teaching computer science without a computer Journalism scavenger hunt Swing dancing (8-count correspondents to bits and bytes, steps are algorithms Let’s play, shall we?

15. Next steps Pending funding, we will create a playbook with curricula and assessment tools that will allow IJIMS to be replicated in other school districts. We will also standardize our custom-designed content management system, CAFÉ, so that it will be an open-source product. Your thoughts, questions?