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PAUSD
Palo Alto Unified School District PK-12 Computer Science Curriculum Design Advisory Committee
AKA
PAUSD PK-12 CS CDAC
AGENDA Date: 13 Feb 2017 Place: District Office*, Room SDC (BOE Room) Time: 8:30 am – 3:00 pm
*District Office Address: 25 Churchill Avenue, Palo Alto, 94306; (Suz’ cell: 650-906-5165)
January to June 2017 Committee Make-Up: [34 to 36 people] DESCRIPTION PEOPLE PRESENT
COMPUTER SCIENCE
TEACHER EXPERTS
SUB CODE: 40-503
(10 PEOPLE)
Katie Bramlett, Addison ES; [email protected] X
Will Friebel, Paly HS; [email protected] X
Teri Gilbert, Jordan MS; [email protected] X
Jessica Hexsel, Gunn HS; [email protected] X
Laura Hull , Palo Verde ES; [email protected]
Smita Kolhatkar, Barron Park ES; [email protected] X
Chris Kuszmaul, Paly HS; [email protected] X
Josh Paley, Gunn HS; [email protected] X
David Rosenblatt, Terman MS; [email protected] X
Jeanie Smith, Jordan MS; [email protected] X
PARENT REPRESENTATIVES
TWO FROM EACH LEVEL
(7 PEOPLE)
Matali Dhar; Upper ES Parent; [email protected]
Shuchi Grover; HS Parent; [email protected] X
Vikas Gupta; Early ES Parent; [email protected] X
Patricia Kellison; HS Parent; [email protected] X
Araceli Ramirez; Upper ES Parent; [email protected]
Max Rayner; MS Parent; [email protected]
Paolo Werbrouck; MS Parent; [email protected] X
SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS
(3 PEOPLE)
Kim Diorio; Paly HS Principal; [email protected] X
Tom Jacoubowsky; Briones ES Principal; [email protected] X
Katie Kinnaman; Jordan MS Principal; [email protected] X
STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES
MAXIMUM OF THREE
FROM EACH SITE
(6 PEOPLE)
John Guibas; Gunn HS Student; [email protected] X
Arjan Mobin; Paly HS Student; [email protected] X
Avanika Narayan; Paly HS Student; [email protected] X
Mallika Parulekar; Gunn HS Student; [email protected] X
Robbie Selwyn; Paly HS Student; [email protected] X
Maggie Wang; Gunn HS Student; [email protected] X
USDPA
PK- -12Curriculum
DesignCS
Advisory Committee
SPECIAL EDUCATION
TEACHER REPRESENTATIVE SUB CODE: 40-503
(0 PEOPLE)
TBD
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
LEARNER TEACHER
REPRESENTATIVE SUB CODE: 40-503
Adjunct: Shirley Jou, El Carmelo ES; [email protected]
Adjunct Erica Ng, Jordan MS; [email protected]
PAUSD
SUPPORT
Suz Antink, CCSS-M/CS Secondary TOSA; [email protected] X
Amanda Gantley, Elementary TOSA, Math Specialist; [email protected] X
Emily Garrison, Coordinator of Education and Information Technologies; [email protected]
X
PAUSD
LEADERSHIP
Barbara Harris, Chief Academic Officer Elementary Education; [email protected]
X
Sharon Ofek, Chief Academic Officer Secondary Education; [email protected]
X
AGENDA Note: Continental Breakfast provided; Lunch provided
Item #
Timing Facilitator or Leader
Topic Notes
1 8:15 am – 8:35 am
Suz Antink Settle in; get some food; get your nametag; get your notebook; stake out your seat.
2 8:35 am—9:00 am
Suz Antink Introductions Your name
Your role in the district
Why you want to serve on this committee
3 9:00 am—9:30 am
Suz Antink The Goal/Outcome of the Spring 2017 Work of the committee
Spring 2017 Work
expected 2017-18 year’s work (next fall and next spring)
expected 2018-19 Work
4 9:30 am –9:45 am Break
5 9:45 am—
10:30 am Suz Antink Team Building We’re going to work together for a year and a
half. We want to learn about each other so we can get our work done efficiently as well as effectively.
6 10:30 am—11:00 am
Suz Antink Set the Committee Norms Sample Norms: (From textbook committees) 1. Begin and end on time.
2. Listen actively and participate in the meeting
(inclusion); make room for others to participate.
3. Assume that all of us have the best interests of
students at the center of our work.
4. Seek to understand.
5. Disagree respectfully.
6. Watch your air time (hands are helpful).
7. Avoid side conversations.
8. Maintain a healthy humor. Celebrate and laugh
together.
9. Competing values: inclusion—transparency (show
what we did)—discretion—urgency & efficiency
10. Use thumbs up, down, side to indicate agreement
6.5 History Last year’s work o TOSA position o BOE approved the plan to approve the
committee to lay the foundation
History of CS in PAUSD o 2002: Average AP CS A and AB was under
3 (College Boards) o 2002: assigned a project—Arrays? FILO?
(A year of pre-req—not comfortable) o Computer Math (C++) = Intro to Java for
the first 9 weeks
o Overhauled to match UC Berkeley (Functional Programming) 2003 looked different from 2002
o Matched UC Berkeley’s program b’c that was Josh’s experience
o Note: AP CS A curriculum: MC of AP A test—code tracing—not as necessary in the current time. On the FR: most important topics is “Can you use arrays?”
o Students are capable of doing so much more!
o Compared Foothill curriculum vs Gunn curriculum (UC Berkeley)—different pacing and topics—Gunn was more advanced
o Competitive nature of CS departments o 2006--# of girls reached double-digits;
now about 300 to 700 students (off the cuff)
o Brought in additional CS languages –to encourage students who were concerned about the math wrt CS and needed a safer class.
o Challenge to make the value of CS high for folks (reading, math and CS…)
o Arguing that it should be mandatory for graduation is hard… Already have too many requirements, … Political barriers still exist…
o The hard part will be if something is taken off the table (Records committee) for graduation requirements
o Exploring CS—maybe MS o AP CSP (CS Principles)—does not line up
with any course in the universities;
freshmen are “allowed” to take this course. Maybe it’s appropriate for 8th graders.
o AP CS A is largely a sophomore course o We advise student who take CS
according to what math course they have.
o We should be doing something special here.
o In PAUSD we kind of make hardness and rigor as being “forward.” These statements who want to do CS may feel shut out by that—ramping up rigor doesn’t make us more advanced. My brother took CS in HS and in college avoided it.
o We do want to be inclusive. Maybe I should rephrase it, then. We are still using the “factory model”—the main competency in taking a course is the student’s age.
Palantir o Local chapter of CS Teachers meets there
once/month o Invited historically under-represented
(HUR) students to Palantir to do some coding—(they also write their resume’s and practice interviewing).
o Does this mean that students are uncomfortable taking the courses at the HS? The idea of Stereotype threat comes up b’c of the few numbers of HUR students in the HS courses.
o HUR students may associate CS with being in high lanes in math—sort of nerdiness.
o It may also be that there is a level of maturity, and there may not be experiences coming from home. Exploring CS (ECS) may be the class for students—the societal impact of computing, as well as coding. It may be necessary for students to be mature to understand all of it. Designed for students who have no CS experiences.
o Equity issue here—opportunity and access to CS. Hard to talk about the problems. Such as: Jobs and opportunity may be a good reason to have a course—something beyond ECS.
o There’s a distinction between what we offer in PAUSD and statewide.
Competition between PAUSD and the rest of the world is challenging.
o We want a class where they don’t feel the pressure from mathematics achievement. I want all student to have access to UC Berkeley.
Two thoughts: success tied to specific college (shift the conversation)?; Lens—let’s look at PR and build forward…
2012—at Paly o Created a CS Principles course—to
attract students who were dancers and martial artists—however, we attracted people who liked to code. Lots of resistance when we got to dancing and martial arts—we had resistance.
o Step out of the class and take a job at Palantir—you would be frustrated if I asked you to dance. It created difficult conversations—and it was traumatic—the students who signed up were not who I was targeting. Whatever mechanism exists, the bias for CS was there beforehand.
o If we change the class to AP CSP instead of CSP, would you take it? No, I’m not an “AP kind of guy.”
o AP CS Capstone class—AP CS A is a prereq. One student did it in the reverse order—nearly failed AP CS A. Take what you will from there—what prereq’s predict success?
o When I arrived, I went to the SV CST meeting—hoping for support, and ended up as president for two years. It’s a special place, but those who teach CS give up a fortune to teach CS.
MS CS o a little coding with an HTML project (at
the beginning) in the wheel—5.5 weeks now—and an elective.
o In the “wheel” it’s word processing, cyber safety and some web design.
o All three MS include a variety of electives: a smorgasbord of technological tools, and might include some coding, but may not.
o Computer Creation has “morphed” quite a bit—it used to be a lot of flash, and now we’re all brainstorming quite a bit—a lot of coding, virtual reality, animation—a great class for keeping up
whatever is cutting edge.. a lot more coding over the years.
o Beginning and advanced web design—HTML, more advanced javascript, then wizzywig … designing projects that are challenging and give them something to learn.
o Video production has been thrown into IT classes—and is now in communications.
o One MS teacher did not believe in teaching coding to students—that has changed now. All three MS talk about transitioning block coding to text coding—the curriculum has a probability to coding.
o The only required CS is in the wheel—everything else is electives. Advanced exposure is hit or miss—if we required it, would it be a different class or would it be included in a class?
o I don’t think that three weeks in MS is sufficient exposure for HS. I think there needs to be ramping up from Elementary to MS to HS.
o I think that the things that being done in Wheel are good—when I talk to the kids in Wheel are a good foundation—I want us to funnel it into more advanced experience. Coding is fun and I had so much fun doing it in Wheel.
o In two or three CS classes, we would see two or three females—in the MS.
o Girls’ Tech club was forced to disband. There are issues along these lines—
o Inclusion—in the process it may undermine the intent.
o At Gunn—although it’s called Girls Tech, boys can attend. Historically, we want to make people being uncomfortable in an environment.
o At Paly—the Robotics Team—we go to measures of skills that produce diversity—the single best resource is the book called the other side of the report card. When I measure those skills—I come up with Gender Diversity. I suggest that it may be possible to come up with a tech club based on such skills.
Elem CS o The gender bias, the whole HUR bias has
to be caught when we have the kids
when we can “mold” them—before 3rd grade.
o I have taught CS for many years from K through 5—I can see when it happens.
o It’s the whole notion of taking risks and trying new ideas—rather than follow rules.
o I was the sole elementary CS teacher—I would hold teacher workshops for the whole district—I would have 3 teachers—we used SCRATCH. When I moved to this role, a lot more materials came on board for younger students.
o Every school has some flavor of CS. o When I moved to my school, I helped
with integration of technology, and I started a CS Club—I didn’t want it to be after school—so it’s a lunch time club so that the opportunity is for all students.
o We have a whole range of robotics along with screen coding.
o Now we have quite a few apps on iPADs that we didn’t have a few years ago.
o A 6-year-old student explained how he discovered the infinite loop.
o Students are dissecting computers—so they can learn what’s inside.
o This is how the program has evolved—you’re all welcome to visit. It looks very different even from where it was two years ago.
o All students from age 5 can have CS experiences.
Code Fest o Moved to the district level in the last few
years. o Last year—Maggie, drove the initiative—
the Girls Tech Club helped the event last year and this year.
o It’s a family event, a community event—500 last year, 800 students this year
o You have to inform the parents as well as the students.
Identity Safety in Elementary o 20 girls out of 30 students—the boys
have self-selected out because they have to play outside.
o They do coding and green-screen— o Some Low SES students participating—
it’s very female dominated. o The shift is happening.
Lots going on that is not communicated across the district.
7 11:00 am—11:45 am
Suz Antink Explore CSTA (Interim) Standards 1. We may give feedback in
our teams (a teacher will need to be on each team)
2. Explore the document 3. Think about the after-lunch
team.
Information –history and how to give feedback https://docs.google.com/a/pausd.org/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdbNoh56gnfOk7AawCOYwrcKbuFrnZUrSD46N_mb_-xWA40bw/viewform
CSTA Standards (Interim)—the document http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.csteachers.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/Standards/2016StandardsRevision/INTERIM_StandardsFINAL_07222.pdf
8 11:45 am—12: 20 pm Lunch
(provided)
9 12:20 pm – 1:00 pm
Suz Antink Choose your level of interest or expertise and read 1. Read and discuss as a team.
As you read create a graphic/list flip chart to inform the committee of the standards.
2. Decide if your group wishes to give feedback on the document.
Levels of Expertise or Interest (about 7 people in each group)
Level 1A – Grade Levels K-2 (Page 9-11) Level 1B – Grade Levels 3-5 (Page 12-14) Level 2 – Grade Levels 6-8 (Page 15-18) Level 3A – Grade Levels 9-10 (Page 19-24) Level 3B – Grade Level 11-12 (Page 25-29)
10 1:00 pm—1:30 pm
Each Group Groups report out as a tour of their summaries
Docent tour of the graphics by each group.
Collect feedback from the rest of the team, answer questions, share insights.
11 1:30 pm— 2:00 pm
Each Group Give feedback to CSTA on the document
Information on how to do that https://docs.google.com/a/pausd.org/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdbNoh56gnfOk7AawCOYwrcKbuFrnZUrSD46N_mb_-xWA40bw/viewform
Elementary o “Awareness,” “Implemented”, “Not Yet” o In the document—a lot of the standards
taught are not explicitly taught in terms of computer science. (Not translating it today –that needs to happen)
o The numbers of the standards—implementing 9, aware of 3, not yet 5 in K-2
o …here are the broad buckets that we’re not implementing yet
o computing systems, binary, networks and internet…
o Digital Citizenship—there’s a lot being taught in these grade bands.
o The focus is not just as “consumers” of tech—now this is tech—computer science for computer science’s sake
Middle School o Five basic concepts: Algorithms &
programming…
o What is being taught and what is not— o Unless it’s happening in Wheel, it’s not
reaching all students---we said, that’s a wheel thing, or it’s not.
o We’re touching on a lot of vocabulary—in Algorithms and programming
o What we’re using to solve what problem in Computing systems
o Data & analysis—maybe more in other courses like science
o Impacts of computing & Networks/Internet happens a lot in the Wheel and in the electives
o Challenges for MS, in particular? o B’c the structure doesn’t have required
courses beyond the wheel, it raises the red flag—if it’s going to be taught—who will teach it and how will it be taught—
o If we are the Bridge from Elem to HS, we need to figure out who is going to teach it, will it be a STEM teacher? is it a stand-alone CS teacher? …digital portfolio along the same line…? What is the place of the wheel within the solution? It’s tiny—
o If we think of CS like language acquisition—then maybe stand-alone classes are not the way to best do what we want to do. Maybe we want to talk about immersion of CS across the board.
o We would be looking at retraining or co-teaching—all of it comes back to the first question.
o Really what we’re wanting students to know and be able to do—and has an understanding of the place of the computational thinking.
o We had a discussion about scheduling—block scheduling in the MS—to bring CS in MS
High School o Process we went through—we got a lot
of traction toward the end—so you had to wait for us.
o Talked about what classes we offered—at both High Schools—included robotics
o Broke down the standards: Concepts by Practices
o What do we care about--? o Deep thinking—Design, decomposition,
generalization, Calisthentics (exercises
that you need to be “good” at programming)
o I. Decomposition, paired programming, fishbowl design, diversity, experiment (real world apps, design for products, grit zest, wrt CS, English, Event processing—is this CS?)
o People were arguing with each other— o II. 3+ member teams, math integration,
unit tests… specific goals… o Development environment to code—
details of the above abstraction relation of the above to other fields.
o I hope that this committee can talk about abstraction … when are they important? Require them, offer them…
o Standards—essential or not essential? If essential—for example, security… connections to Biology or Sociology—Making the connections for the essential skills needed for CS—not just following the CS curriculum. To look at the cool connections from a different subject to CS.
o This is exactly what an elementary teacher would do—connect the CS to the curriculum that they are teaching at the time. You have to think about what is integrated in each subject---
o Essential vs. non-essential—if CS was a requirement in a year or semester course—essential is what they should know before they graduate
o When we get to talking about the details, are we going to require them or offer them?
o Case study—concerned citizen—how are my taxes being spent? They cannot tell you b’c it’s on paper and on a variety
What do we want our students to have at the end of the day?
Maybe we should talk more about computational thinking and keep it connected to other things—rather than Computer Science.
Computational Thinking: Think about using a computer to solve a problem or not….
The student who connected the mapping of neurons to CS—why couldn’t you do that in your class?
Expose students to applications?
12 2:00 pm—2:30 pm
Suz Antink Plan next Steps We have to get back to kids—do we want to support a req’t for graduation?
Should we have the sequence of decision-making start with the high school? If I ask the MS Teacher to teach one topic or another, I don’t know if I’m extracting the best from that teacher.
What we’re missing… talking about the “how” afterwards is almost like talking about the tactics and strategies after. We have to think about the line items.
What might be developmentally appropriate for the Elementary students—and do something similar for Middle School students—and say what we can send to the High Schools. The how is
Do want to require a grad requirement? Thumbs up and middle…
Do we know what we’re doing in the Elementary classrooms now? What’s the awareness of what we want to do in CS? What’s the desire of wanting them to do CS in an integrated way? How do we move teachers to enjoy CS in their classrooms? Should we be doing a focus group or survey to find out more? What is the awareness “out there?” Awareness? Desire? and Knowledge? … Although we’re rushing to do this, what should we be doing simultaneously to open this up to everyone?
Building that desire is the “tricky piece.” It’s like the mandate to use schoology.
We are doing a good job to build NGSS. I’m just thinking of how to prepare people.
We will also need some parent sessions—about CS and coding.
SFU has asked us to create a survey—for all teachers to create awareness…
Let’s learn it as we go along—you have content specialists and we have generalists—so we have a different kind of expertise—how does this become a positive change and not a negative change?
Your points are very right—and there will be those and it’s just one more thing…
There’s a lot of opportunity to learn from other districts, too—looking in our local area—to see what
Los Altos—K-8;
SFU—scope and sequence K-12 (PLC, monthly meetings, additional support, etc.)
Maybe we could bring on parent volunteers…
These are all structures that could be built and brought on board.
TEALS—Kevin Wang (maybe)—lots of HSs want CS but don’t—in one or two years, the engineers
teach the teachers as well as the students. It has some successes. Around here we have a jillion engineers—maybe it would work for elementary and middle schools.
Let the PTSA get involved—and
HS can go to MS and Elementary schools—to coach.
We have a model at Barron Park—
Different states around the country—New York State—NY City project… We work with Elementary and MSs there… (mostly private funding)
Generation gap for older teachers—might they be intimidated?
There may be other systemic challenges—
HS students has put a lot energy into creating teaching units for MS, but have been unsuccessful in taking it into the MSs.
Adding something new—in Elementary—their days are quite scheduled—it’s a pretty extensive subject.
We also have the TOSA model… might be less expensive…
Revisit our goals
Goal 1—needs more chat
Goal 2—might pop out
MS challenge
How to prepare teachers for CS.
13 2:30 pm- 3:00 pm
Suz Antink Set time for next meeting Agenda? Tasks?
14 Other materials needed NGSS standards alignment with CS
CTE standards alignment with CS (Jeanie)
A to G requirements
Political Information (State)
Other considerations Ergonomics—classroom environments
Create a “binder” on Schoology
Next Meeting: Date: Mon, Feb 27, 2017 Time: 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm Place: TBD—Suz will email you
Tasks:
1. Look at practices around the country
2. Revisit our goals
3. Goal 1—needs more chat
4. Goal 2—might pop out
5. MS challenge
6. How to prepare teachers for CS—elementary focus group or survey—Go to Chris Kolar’s office for a
sample…Three to five questions. –support the implementation of the standards
7. Ask HS students—see Chris Kolar’s office for a sample…
Thanks so much for this important work.
Meeting dates are below. Meeting times are largely yet to be determined. Locations of the meetings will
be announced in due course. All meetings are public.
Mon, Feb 13, 2017; 8:30 am to 3:00 pm; SDC (aka, the Board Room); introduction; beginning work on the task
Mon, Feb 27, 2017; Times are 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm; Whole Group Mon, Mar 13, 2017; Times are 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm; Subgroups Mon, Mar 27, 2017; Times are TBD Mon, April 17, 2017; Times are TBD; draft of BOE presentation Mon, May 8, 2017; Times are TBD; finalization of BOE presentation