WCVE has a great story today about Code VA, which was founded by my friends, Rebecca and Chris Dovi. This story explains why the work that Becca and Chris are doing is so important for our teachers and children to master. Check it out ... and please join me in writing a check to help finance this most necessary effort. ~ Carol A.O. Wolf
WCVE News
August 25, 2016
This summer, K-12 educators came together to learn the best techniques for teaching computer science. The trainings by Code VA aim to get more teachers prepared and more students exposed to an area that’s becoming critical to career development. Catherine Komp has more for Virginia Currents.
Learn More: Find out more about Code VA, Code.org and the organiation's online tools and curriculum.
Transcript:
Judy Fitzpatrick: Would you please now everybody stand up?
Judy Fitzpatrick stands before an auditorium of elementary school teachers. The Code VA trainer asks them to follow a cheat sheet showing a series of dance moves.
Fitzpatrick: Ready, we’re going to do this a capella today...
The first three images on the cheat sheet show a person clapping. The next line has four images. Hands behind your head, then on your waist. Repeat. After another series of repeating claps and arm gestures, it ends with a belly laugh.
This activity, called “Getting Loopy” teaches a key computer science principle. Part of Code.org’s “unplugged” curriculum, it introduces looping, used in computer programming to get a process to repeat. Fitzpatrick says the activity appeals to different ways students learn.
Fitzpatrick: So they might not get the loop when they were doing the puzzle on the computer but they might go oh yeah, I get what a loop is, I know what loops are, I know iteration. We got that.
Fitzpatrick says she isn’t a techy person. But the 4th grade teacher at Short Pump Elementary was “on fire” after getting trained herself a few years ago by Code VA. The organization showed her how to integrate computer science ed into existing curriculum.
Fitzpatrick: I so believe that it is important for now, for these kids, for the problem-solving, critical thinking, 21st Century skills, I believe it’s important now and of course it’s no denying it’s important for career development later on.
The average salary for a computing job in Virginia is about $100,000 and the state has about 36,000 unfilled computer jobs, according to data compiled by Code.org. The number of people getting degrees in this field isn’t keeping pace, with just over 1400 computer science graduates in Virginia in 2014. Rebecca Dovi is Director of Education for Code VA. She says even with an emphasis on STEM education or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, computer science has traditionally been left out.
Rebecca Dovi: It’s a really big problem. We’ve been pushing kids toward these careers and saying “there are jobs, there are jobs.” The reality is 70% of jobs in STEM are computing jobs.
Dovi cites biology as an example; she says jobs are slim without an advanced degree. And there’s computer science involved in many of these jobs.
Dovi: A lot of the work that they’re doing is, the modeling and simulation, is actually done through coding. If you think about things like working with DNA that really is a big data problem, you have huge amounts of data and the way you work with that is through coding. It may not be what they do all day, but a lot of working scientists now, coding is a piece of how they do their work. Whether a child decides to pursue pure computer science or a more traditional STEM field, this is a definitely a good tool to have in their back pocket as they’re going forward in their careers.
Through free K-12 teacher trainings, Code VA aims to get more students prepared for careers that involve computer science. The organization was founded by Dovi, a longtime computer science teacher in Hanover County and her husband Chris, a former journalist specializing in education. In just two years, they’ve trained hundreds of teachers from about 25% districts in the state.
Dovi: One of the things, you talk to teachers, their days are very, very dense and so it’s a different way of teaching topics they already have to teach.
That Getting Loopy exercise, says Dovi, also meets an SOL requirement in math for teaching repeated patterns. Other “unplugged” activities use paper airplane making to understand algorithms. Dovi says they show teachers how to use Code.org’s online curriculum, which uses a drag and drop block language to introduce even the youngest students to coding.
Dovi: Course 1 actually really works well for pre-readers, so we find kindergarten and first grade teachers use that pretty heavily but we've also had feedback from our teachers that it works well if you're dealing with an English as a Second Language population or students with more severe disabilities, so it’s a nice tool to have because it means that in terms of equity we’re able to reach students where they are.
Code VA offers K-5 teachers 8 hours of training, curriculum and online resources. Middle School science and math teachers get 25 hours of training and a $500 stipend. At this level, they’re still integrating computer science concepts into core curriculum. For example, says Dovi, in algebra students often have a hard time with functions.
Dovi: It turns out that it’s much easier to teach with coding. So they’re still covering the same topic, it’s just a slightly different way to do it and the kids are coding and making a game so there’s some motivation there in terms of digging in. And oddly if you hand a kid a worksheet of 30 math problems, they may not be super excited but if they’re doing the same thing to get a game, they’re getting engaged on a deeper level and playing with the concepts more.
High School level trainings are the most intensive, 90 hours over a two year period, with a $1500 stipend. Code VA uses a professional development program called Exploring Computer Science, developed at UCLA, that focuses on computer science concepts, inquiry and equity.
Dovi: They do a lot of problem solving, we talk about the internet, there’s coding obviously. But it moves beyond this idea that the only topic in computer science is coding. Coding is the tool that we use do computer science, but it encompasses a lot of different areas. So it exposes them to data, algorithms, all sorts of different pieces as they go through that class.
The second course is AP Computer Science Principles. Dovi says it’s a coding class, but also encompasses what’s known as the “seven big ideas of computing” including creativity, abstraction, data and global impact.
Dovi: It’s almost like a philosophy of computer science class in a lot of ways. It really gets them collaborating, solving problems. And one of the things that’s nice about both classes is that it’s trying to break up model of what we use as computing examples. So trying to pull from different culture and different places around the world in terms of what we think of as a computational problem. So it’s one of the things we’re hoping starts to make the classes a little more interesting to a wider audience of kids.
Code VA emphasizes equity in their programs. They require high school teachers to come up with a recruitment plan to make sure their classes attract females, students of color and other underrepresented groups. Dovi says they’ve trained all types of teachers, from those who specialize in math, science and technical ed to the arts and foreign language.
Dovi: We have worked with a little bit of everybody. I think the main thing is really recognizing, the world our students are going into is changing very, very rapidly in terms of the job market. When we talk to people in the community and in businesses, we hear back consistently that the one thing that they need is the ability to be adaptable and to be able to take responsibility for their learning and their training. The idea that you go into one job for 30 years and you don’t ever have to learn anything is kind of dead. And so in terms of preparing students for marketplace, we really have to model that, we have to show that as a teaching community, we are learning new things, we are updating our skills and that’s part of the professional practice of just being an adult in the workforce and so I think the training itself is also a good opportunity to stretch a little bit and demonstrate to our kids that we’re willing to take some risks and try some new things.
Time and resources are some of the biggest challenges for teachers trying to work computer science education into their classes, says Dovi. Teachers also might be nervous about trying something new or intimidated by students who might know more than them. But she says they’re seeing growing interest and creativity by schools and teachers to expose their students to computer science.
Dovi: A lot of what we’re really hoping to do with the schools we work with is creating a culture where it’s the norm to have computer science have a presence. So if a teacher does retire or move on, then there’s “Oh, we need to get a new computer science teacher in here” and we’re starting to see more and more of that happening.
This summer, a new law went into effect adding computer science to Virginia’s Standards of Learning. Driven by the advocacy of Code VA, this legislation will expand computer science ed and training. The state Board of Education is currently working on the regulations that will guide these new standards. For Virginia Currents, I’m Catherine Komp, WCVE News.
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