Not Even in Silicon Valley!

Entrepreneurs Hard at Work

Recently, several friends of mine who run startups in the San Francisco Bay Area and I have been talking about school age kids and computer science education opportunities. My friends are not only dedicated entrepreneurs but dedicated parents of elementary age children and they are highly motivated to see to it that their kids obtain quality exposure to computer science early.

You'd think that in Silicon Valley of all places, there would be no end to the list of CS activities to choose from. Piece of cake? Apparently not. When my friends first told me there was something missing from computer science offerings I was surprised and very curious. I'm hanging out in SV this week and so I started doing some investigation.

Not surprisingly, there is a relative lack of computer science teachers in the public schools here. This is a nationwide problem and here, where rents and mortgages are as sky high as the private sector tech salaries, it's hardly surprising that modestly paid computer science teachers are few and far between.

There are lots of startups in the K-12 coding space - I've written about them here a few times. For the average parent however, working in hi-tech or not, these startups have no impact on their own kids. As one of my friends told me, they can't afford to wait 5 - 10 years to see what pans out because by then their kids will have graduated from high school.

There are science camps; math camps; weekend programs, and clubs. Oodles of them. Some of these have some computing in them. Some, a few, involve some coding. What my friends told me is missing  is something that is broader, deeper and that lasts longer than a day, or even a week. Something with continuity. My next thought was, what about the various national competitions? There are decathlons in math and science, there are several programs with the approach taken by Odyssey of the Mind (OM). What about them? I started reading about these and other programs.

No computer science. Not even close. No computer science in the national science decathlons; no computer science in the math decathlons; no computer science in OM and related programs. They cover just about everything else: many fields of science, wide and creative applications of math, the performing and visual arts, history, literature, engineering, design. 'Technology' usually translates into anything but computer science. Engineering translates into ... engineering.

Parents have a right to be unhappy. You don't have  to be a hi-tech parent to be unhappy. Hi-tech parents are at least aware of the lack of computer science opportunities both in and out of the formal curriculum. How many parents who are not in hi-tech careers are even aware of what is missing? The more I read, the more I dug, the more sure I became that I wasn't going to find computer science embedded in any of these otherwise academically diverse competitions for kids.

What's with that?

Entrepreneurial MOOCs at the ACM Ed Council Meeting

Pardon the sizzling neurons: I'm attending the ACM Education Council meeting this weekend. This afternoon we heard from a panel of 4 tech industry speakers who are innovating in the MOOC realm; all are teaching introductory programming. The 4 were from: Khan Academy, CodeHS, Tynker and Google. Thought provoking to say the least.

There were some striking similarities among the 4 although they had different visions and philosophies. They all shared huge enthusiasm - incredibly dynamic enthusiasm. They were passionate and excited about teaching coding to kids. They focused on engagement; thus there was a lot of talk about "fun" and "cool" and one of the speakers was almost hopping up and down as she spoke - that was Pamela Fox from Khan Academy. With her partially purple hair. I would love to put Pamela in front of a bunch of middle or high school girls - she was technical, personable, enthusiastic and would debunk the idea that coding was blah or anti-social. Pamela spoke of community building, mentioned a concern with working for gender neutrality and incorporating accessibility into online learning; all the while sprinkling the conversation with blurbs that make it clear she was a solid techie. In fact, most of Pamela's talk was detailed info on her approach to designing an effective coding learning platform for kids. Her biggest focus was with creating solid debugging environments. She clearly gets the notion that what happens when we make mistakes is critical - do we come back and want to keep coming back or do we bail in despair?

One thing in particular Krishna Vedati from Tynker said really stuck with me. Like many of the panelists, he talked about asking kids what interested them and then having them code around that thing. While discussing the finer points of their software and approach he mentioned that he has a son and a daughter and his daughter always wants to write stories and his son wants to create games; he doesn't want to make his daughter code to create games (and by implication: he doesn't want to make his son code to write stories). It was a passing comment, but it captured an important piece of messaging embraced by most of the speakers.

One of the founders of CodeHS was Jeremy Keeshin and he was interesting enough that several of us had a long involved conversation with him at dinner. Grilled him actually. Jeremy put up with us with good cheer. Not only because he was surrounded on all sides and would have had to crawl under the table between us to get away. As part of his work Jeremy travels around the country spending time in classrooms where the rubber hits the road - meeting teachers and learning about what they do, why they do it, what they think and feel. His company works hard to work with teachers and schools rather than going around them. I am going to talk to Jeremy again in the near future because I think he and his company would interest enough of you that I want to write more here. Stay tuned.

Of course there was controversy; members of the Ed Council asked all of the panelists some tough questions. One recurrent theme had to do with how they know what they are doing works. Evaluation (how? what kind? what makes sense? what is practical?) is an ongoing challenge in any pedagogical setting and when you are talking about a startup (as 3 out of the 4 companies on the panel were) in the fast paced world of high tech - it's tricky. Some panelists addressed this question better than others. Needless to say I spent quite a bit of time on this - it was one of the longer topics of discussion over dinner at my table.

Neil Fraser from Google's Blockly project said some things that were unquestionably controversial. The one that really got me was when he said (several times, and with followup detail) that one of the things they had learned was to ignore user feedback. I can't remember his exact words after that but the idea seemed to be that users didn't know what was best for them. Coming on the heels of earlier comments that were less than tactful about computing degree programs and their graduates ... I have to give Neil credit for having the guts to share his views.

My brain is fried, no doubt about it, after a long day of meetings - this panel was just one piece of the long day. Tonight's sharing with you was a blurping of thoughts onto the page and there is a lot I need to process. But I can say right away that I believe we can learn a lot from the panel presentation. There were lots of technical and pedagogical details that I didn't get into here. But it's not that. What we can learn has more to do with - something in the non technical realm that hasn't gelled for me yet. The dialog needs to continue.

STEM, STEAM, Then What?

All the fields are here

The STEAM acronym has been nagging at me for some time. Just in case you aren't familiar with it, STEAM is short for Science Technology Engineering Arts Math. STEAM comes on the heels of STEM: Science Technology Engineering Math. Prior to STEM there was ST/M and other less linguistically smooth relatives.

These acronyms are everywhere in discussions of education. No doubt you have heard STEM a lot - it's hard not to have. You may or may not have heard of STEAM yet (you will) and perhaps you never heard of ST/M. ST/M isn't used much these days, having been supplanted by STEM.

Things (the acronyms) started when people were looking for easy ways to shorthand the content topics that needed greater emphasis in schools. Especially in the US, but in other countries as well. All sorts of wordy discussions were popping up about how to improve student learning in areas necessary for economically competitive citizenry living in highly competitive global economies. See what I mean? Wordy.

Most of you reading this know the ins and outs of these conversations and all the interesting directions they go. The Common Core State Standards, The Next Generation Science Standards, and hey, why is computer science not there anywhere? Because, just in case you didn't realize it, it's not. Computer Science is Noticeably Absent.

But back to those acronyms for a moment and some implications stemming out of how they are used in discussions of education reform. (yeah, ouch)

STEM : education reform with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math. There has been increasing discussion of how to integrate these topics into all aspects of the curriculum. "Interdisciplinary" has taken on buzz-word status in some camps, but one can only hope that this means we are starting to recognize the need for more fluid boundaries in our exploration of the world. It is only in the past few hundred years that we have tried to isolate content matter so rigidly in order to perform controlled experimental studies. We have learned a lot (a LOT) from this approach, but we are often now crashing up against boundaries that require the addition of more holistic integrated perspectives.

STEAM - education reform that values the arts equally to the S T E and M and works to integrate them. Perhaps in part for purely practical reasons, advocates of STEAM appear to be working hard at integration as opposed to simply saying "hey we need Art too". Art is a harder sell in this day and age of economic imperatives and requests for "useful skills".

Pondering the seeming contrast of Art with the others, I realized there was just one more piece needed to find ourselves back to advocating a liberal arts educational foundation. Humanities. Right? In terms of providing a solid, critical thinking based, life long learning supportive education, we often include the need for broad distribution requirements that include Arts and Humanities. Wordy yet again. Hence the usefulness of an acronym. 

Funny how things might be coming full circle. If someone finds a way to effectively advocate for the Humanities, we will be acknowledging the need for a holistic, (hopefully) integrated education.

I'm wondering when someone is going to come up with an acronym that incorporates the H.

I've been playing with how to put in the H but so far I haven't found just the right fit.

HSTEAM     MEATSH    EATSHM    ATSEHM     I see a thematic basis in food (time of day?)
SHTEAM     MEATHS    EATHSM    ATHESM     throat clearing (reaction to allergens?)
STHEAM     MEAHTS    EAHMST    AHMEST     and lisping (sorry code buffs, not LISP)
STEHAM     MAHETS    AHEMTS    HEMATS     and,
STEAMH     HMAETS    MAEHTS    AEHMTS    Things (acronyms) are not looking promising.

What we need is to integrate computing into our acronym.

META-SHC

Rome wasn't built in a day; the Hoover Dam was built in 3 years. I think we're getting somewhere.

Suggestions to a School Considering External STEM

Prepackaged All-In-One Brain Food

I had an opportunity recently to do a little investigation into an organization that is selling its system of STEM learning to K-12 school systems. A friend of mine is the Principal of a K-8 public school that is looking at ways to beef up its technology offerings and STEM in general. I had a meeting with my friend and another of the school administrators to discuss their needs and to hear about a company that has been recommended to them.

I did my due diligence prior to the meeting and reviewed the Common Core State Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and of course, the CSTA recommendations for computing in K-8. I also reviewed PARCC, and existing state standards in their state.

For those of you not intimately familiar with all of the above, here are a few items to set the context: The Common Core is sweeping the nation; most states are on board and at some stage of planning and implementation. The Common Core covers English/Language Arts (ELA) and Math. Science is not included, and technology merits a mere mention under "Media and Technology" where it is suggested that technology be integrated throughout as a support tool for other subjects. The NGSS covers science, but explicitly omits computing, suggesting that it belongs under math (for more details see my post on the K-12 Computing Hot Potato).

It was painful to look at the department of education's STEM guidelines web  pages in my friend's state. Practically nothing was there. Sparse would be putting it mildly. Especially compared to the finely detailed descriptions for other areas of study. Oddly enough, for Primary School the STEM listings indicate STEM as Physical Science, Math and Art (Art?). In Middle School it is the same with the addition of some mention of technology under Career Technical Education (CTE for short, and commonly known as vocational education).

Now it became clear to me why there was such an appeal to a slickly developed set of web pages promising to provide a full STEM curriculum, complete with detailed learning goals, class lectures, exercises, assessments, materials, and professional teacher training and support.

The selling organization knows how to do its PR. They use all the right lingo. I was intrigued. I was curious. Of course none of this comes free; there is a hefty price tag. Not necessarily unreasonable - after all, someone put in a lot of work developing this educational system. I sure wish we paid our teachers commensurately with the work they do! I decided to investigate further.

Once I got past the glossy print and graphics, I realized there were very few substantive details. Transparency was not the goal here. Not in the least deterred, I donned full archeological gear and went website digging. This was fun.

[dig...dig...dig...]

If you know what you are looking for you can glean some interesting things from such digging. You read the bios of the leadership team, and the board of directors. What is their educational background, professional education career experience, non-academic experience, affiliations, interests? What is the legal status of the organization? Who is likely to benefit from sales of this system? It's often all there if you look hard enough, in this case about 7 levels down the site tree.

What wasn't there were any examples of syllabi, curriculum, assessments, detailed learning goals. One has to buy their system, and ... here is the kicker: you have to commit to teaching their two base classes.

In the spirit of being open minded, I concede that the company wouldn't want to give away their methodology enough that someone else could scoop them.

It just felt a bit weird, considering all the brough-ha-ha about the need for transparency and accountability in public education.

All of which leads to fascinating speculation about the role and potential contribution from corporate education. Any given system and materials might be of high quality. On the other hand they might not.

What is a school, feeling perhaps left in the dust by the less than transparent maneuvers of their various state agencies and politicians, to do?

After sharing all the interesting specifics I learned about the company in question with my friend and her colleague, I recommended a few things:

- Ask the organization to supply their curricula for examination. The school could offer to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement. This happens all the time in industry, so although perhaps strange to a small school, it shouldn't come as a novel idea to the educational company. There is no reason I can think of why this offer shouldn't result in a "yes".

- If that fails to produce the desired result, and you are still determined to check out this curricula, track down some current users and interview them. In fact, I'd recommend doing that anyway. The organization should be more than willing to supply names as references. Ask those adopter schools the questions that matter to your school and see what they have to say. Also, ask them to share some of their curricular materials with you. Again, this is common, smart, strategy in the business world; same thing when interviewing for a job! Check out the company before you commit!

- One last thing. If, as in this case, the company requires you to commit to using a significant portion of their system, thus locking you in, ask to what extent the required curricular materials can be customized to fit your local situation. You don't want to be forced to teach in a way that conflicts with your mission, culture, students in any substantive way.

Wouldn't it be interesting to do an in-depth comparison of industrial K-8 educational models with traditional public education models? 

Challenges to STEM Education: Is it About Sex?

I am disturbed by what I read today in the book "Nerds - How Dorks, Dweebs, Techies and Trekkies Can Save America* and Why They Might Be Our Last Hope". If you have a background in education, or simply opinions about the current state of STEM education (who doesn't?) the author's beliefs about where "reform" is needed are eye opening. (Hint: we need to pay attention to kids thinking about sex)

Anderegg (the author) builds a convincing argument that kids start learning at a very young age that "nerds" are social misfits, unattractive and bound to be sexual failures. Agreeing with this thesis leads to the conclusion that all the emphasis in the world on testing and assessment, all the attempts to show the economic benefits (good job, high pay) of a career in STEM will fall on mostly deaf ears, because: kids aren't making their decisions based on our adult logic. Kids make their decisions about what to study and feel proud of based upon social cues and a driving desire to fit in. By the time they are old enough to realize the innacurracies of the nerd stereotype it is too late.

Unless we are heaping criticism on a public figure, we don't like talking publicly about things like sex. (Does the idea of discussing sex and computing education bother you at all?) 

American cultural anti-intellectualism  is looking very guilty right now with regard to our problem attracting students into, and into doing well in, STEM classes. 

If you buy this argument, it is no wonder we have such difficulty making computing careers attractive. Worse, because computing is everywhere we have a looming national crisis when large numbers of students turn away from computing education.

Although Anderegg does not (so far; I am still reading) separate computing out from science and math, I think we should do so for purposes of problem solving. For example,  he writes that biology is as shunned as other sciences. He bases his arguments in great part on his clinicial practice as a developmental psychologist. 

Computing educators and researchers see another set of data. Computing educators have amassed significant evidence that certain populations of students (e.g. women) are frequently drawn to biology. Showcasing the role of computer science in biological  careers can put CS in a better light (from a student's perspective).  I have written in the past about educators who are making connections between computing and the arts, music, social sciences (and other sciences) too. Students like these connections and revise their perceptions of computing because of them.

So on the one hand I am incredibly disturbed to see the evidence pile-up in "Nerds" telling us that we are approaching STEM education with blinders on.

On the other hand, and you really should read the book "Nerds" yourself to decide, I am incredibly relieved to read something that not only sheds new light on how serious the computing education challenge is, but provides a way forward.