So, welcome to one of our first videos in our series on issues of equity in computer science education. Why is that an entire special thing that we need to focus on? Well, maybe it's something we need to focus on in our entire lives, but in particular, how I came to be involved in computing education in K-12, and how a lot of work in the United States at least started around this. One was with a focus on equity. We recognize that not only do we have a lack of people who were prepared and trained to be in the computing field, but in fact, we had a huge problem and that we can have adequate representation from all areas of society. This had a lot to do with the fact that there weren't required standards and requirements to teach computer science and therefore, a lot of times the only students who had access to and therefore then thoughts to go into computer science were students of high socioeconomic status, maybe in the majority etc. So, this may be similar to an image you've seen about equity and equality before. This was new to me. I only saw it a week or two ago, with a slight different. Let me point out something that might be different from images you've seen, and that's this. Here what we see is that the ground level that people are standing on is in fact different. Some of the images I've seen the people themselves are maybe of different size which might seem to indicate that the difficulties are sort of intrinsic to the individual and that's therefore sort of their responsibility. Whereas this represents the fact that it's external forces that often are causing the lack of equality that people have to start from. So, this I think is a really great image to share around, and to think about that if each of these would represent students that we have, that are coming to our classes in computing, what are the ways that we're going to need to support them in order to have an equitable classroom? Okay. K-12 Computer Science in the United States at least, we might just start with the fact that even though I just spoke about computing as a discipline and the fact that maybe we needed more diversity in the field of computer science, I really truly do believe that in the same way that reading, writing, and arithmetic are core skills that all citizens, all people on the planet need to be fluent with in order to reach their full potential, in order to contribute in whatever ways they want to, that here in the 21st century, now computing is being added onto that as something that is really important for every human being, to have some basic knowledge of in terms of how computation works, how data is used to solve problems, etc. Because it's just going to be critical to not only daily life of maybe making a web page if you're going to be a programmer, but also to new advances in our knowledge for up society. So, but the thing I want to point out about is reading writing arithmetic. How long have we been teaching people writing for example. Well, the first known recorded writing is about from 3200 BC and this is from Mesopotamia I think, and I think it's called cuneiform. Could be wrong about that, but relatively speaking, writing has been around a while and so therefore I imagine you can just imagine guys with chisels and things teaching other guys with chisels like how do you do writing? How do we do it? There's been quite a bit of time where we've been having to teach other people how to write, and so we've had some time to gain some knowledge about the challenges in doing that. Similarly with math, may have also started by the way around 3000 BC but here we've got Egyptian numerals and it's a PowerPoint slide so obviously not from that time, but you know this idea of teaching people arithmetic, it's been around for a really long time and we've had a lot of opportunities to try to figure out how to teach people math and yet we still sometimes struggle with it. Right? All right. The first computer. This is a picture of the Eniac. This was at the University- was it Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? I can't remember. Well, we can look it up on Wikipedia. It was finished, completed being built in 1946 and of course, you know really computers more ubiquitously in society and more in the 60s, 70s, 80s, obviously the growth of the Internet, push things in all new ways, but didn't just play out. 3200 BC versus 1946. We haven't had a whole lot of time and experience to learn how people learn computing. To learn how do people struggle to learn computing. So, while we do have some things that we can share and some things that we can adopt and learn from other disciplines whether it's physics, or math, or writing, we really are still very much in a nursing state. So there's not going to be- if anybody tells you there's one right way to teach kids how to learn repeats, then they're wrong. There's just- we don't even have- even if that were ever to be true, we don't have much research at all on how people learn computing and the grand majority of it has been focused in university. But don't worry, even though we're in our infancy when it comes to computing education, we are enthusiastic. We're getting ready to stand up. Sometimes we might be a little surprised or scared as this one is, but we are really making big strides. Secondly, just know that as a computing educator, you have joined a what I would say is an incredibly supportive community, because we're all new to this. Because we're in it together, there is a lot of support for each other and we're really focused on sharing and helping each other and not have to reinvent the wheel etc. So, we may be still figuring things out but we have a lot of fun doing it together and we're a very supportive community. So let me tell you a little more about that. Okay. So, let's start with standards. Obviously if we think that computer science should be for all students, and it needs to be in all of K-12, then we need to define what are the standards on what should students be learning and doing at each of those levels. Luckily, there's an organization, the CSTA, Computer Science Teachers Association which hopefully you enjoyed seeing video about, that realized a couple of years ago that they really needed to take the lead and bring together experts from all sorts of arenas to really create a set of standards that different states in the United States could then use or not use to guide development of state-wide standards. So here by the way is a nice visual image. This is not the entire set of standards. This is actually it prints out as like a placemat. There's two sides to, it but you can sort of see the different levels in the rows or the columns. So I'm starting in the first kindergarten through second grade and then third grade through fifth grades, six through eighth, eighth through 10 and there's actually another set of 11 through 12 that didn't sit on here. But, anyway, when we get the California version done, they will all fit on there. We're working on that. We'll go into these in more depth. So you can see also that I want to point out on the rows that we have these color codes and it's not just about programming, right? We've got data and analysis in green. We've got networks and the Internet in yellow etc. So another really important thing to know is how in the United States or more importantly how in your state standards are coming along. This literally I think I saw this poster dumpies put two days ago, something like that. So I went and grabbed it again. So this is as of August 2018. Only 21 states have created computer science standards. However, there's a lot going on and I think you'll be seeing this change a lot. So, for example, I happened to know that September 5th and 6th, these standards in California should be approved, so really, really soon now. But it's really important to understand if you're going to be teaching computer science whether or not there are standards in your state and if not, when will it be? So we'll give you an activity later that you can go and find out more about what's going on in your state. The other thing and that last image was from code.org. This is also from code.org, and we'll give you a reference to this site too. There's important things that each of our states needs to do to make computer science fundamental to K-12 education. I'm going to give you a minute to just read over these nine recommendations that they have. Then I'm going to have you vote on which one you find most interesting or important in your particular setting. All right, hopefully you've enjoyed a little bit of chance to think about what is most important to you. Let me point out another resource available through code.org, and that is a state-by-state listing of what's going on in each of the states in terms of how things are moving along. Let me show you an example of what one of the entries looks like. Here's California. It tells you about the state plan that they have. They've began the development process for computer science and implementing it in schools. They tell you a little bit about the steps on the standards and indicate that in September we're supposed to have them finalized. They tell you about certification or licensure for teachers in the state. We have a supplementary authorization that is required only for some teachers. Don't need to know the details about that, but they talked about, are they going to have a dedicated computer science position in the state? Are they going to make CS count for credit in high school usually? Then they give you some names or links to places that are involved in implementation in that state. So, again, we think you probably care mostly about your own state. So we're going to have an activity where you can go and find out a little bit about what's going on in your state. This also then let us directly into another key thing that you'll want to know about and that is what is required in terms of certification or licensure in your state? The reality is I can't really talk about this because it's all over the map. I think even more so then the standard stuff, it seems to be changing very much. So, again, we'll have an activity where you can dive in and find out what's going on in your situation. But I will return to the fact that, in addition to having standards, maybe kind of a lower bar is saying, ''Well, can computer science even count for graduation in your state?'' because as a teacher at the university, computer science has not counted in California for quite some time, and that has meant that most of the students who I have coming into my computer science classes have no idea what it really is because their parents wouldn't even let them take a computer science class in high school because gosh darn it didn't count toward graduation, and it didn't count toward getting into the University of California system. I think that really restricts the variation and the sort of even just the personalities of the kind of people who are willing to try something as a major when they really have no idea what it is. It also means that if your parents were wanted to put you in a summer camp where you learned about it, maybe you're more likely to do it. So this is a big issue for us as teachers to understand in terms of an equity standpoint. But what that also means is, as all of these things are changing and as maybe your state allows it to come for graduation, maybe it doesn't, maybe you have standards, maybe you don't, no matter what the situation is in your particular state, I can almost guarantee you that in the near future, where that's at least 5-10 years, you will have students in your course with diverse prior experiences, diverse coursework and diverse skills and knowledge around computer science. So you're going to have an immensely diverse classroom even if we're just talking about prior experience, coursework and skills. That's going to be a challenge in teaching your class, but it's also potentially an opportunity, and we'll talk about different ways that you can take advantage of the opportunities. So, what couple of key things I want you to think about with regards to this diversity of experiences and the fact that kids won't be having standard experiences before they shift to our class. That is that the knowledge that even some of your students may have from prior courses etc is really going to potentially be very piecemeal. They might have had a little bit here or a couple of weeks there or maybe they had something in scratch or maybe somebody else had some HTML. But the general knowledge that they bring around computer science might be quite fragmented in pieces. The other thing is that this diversity of background often can lead to really difficult issues around students feeling whether they belong in computer science. So, they may not feel like, "I can be a computer science person," especially if some of the other people in the class have had experience and they're kind of talking about it or able to bring those skills with them. Then somebody for whom this may be as one of their first classes ever, they may really not feel like they fit in. So it's going to be really important for you to manage these issues of identity and fitting in and what does it mean to computers. I think the most valuable thing is just to be honest with your students and help them understand that people come with diverse backgrounds and that will impact how they may feel about a student in the class. Then, finally, let's talk about your view as an identity. Maybe if you're taking this course, you haven't had any background in computer science. We kind of expect that actually, by the way. It makes you normal. You're not going to know everything about the field of computing. You didn't have a bachelor's degree likely in computer science but that's okay. All right. I'm going to grab a phrase that's used by a lot of different groups but most notably in computer science and code.org and talk to about being a lead learner. In the computing classroom, we all will be learning about whatever it is we're doing, whether that's scratch programming, snap programming, something about the Internet, who knows? But computing field is always changing and we are just getting started maybe learning and in fact we're very much just getting started in learning how to teach it. So the most important skill that you need to have is to keep calm and be a lead learner. You can be a lead learner with your students in terms of knowing the actual content, and you could be a lead learner in terms of observing your classroom and trying to understand what things are working and what things are not working so that you can help contribute to what we know about computer science education, and you can help continue to improve the experience of students in your classroom. So, we'll just go back briefly to the images of equity and equality. I just wanted to point out that some of you might have felt less than completely satisfied with this equity pictures like, ''Oh, is it the only thing we can do when people are given these different starting points in the world?" All we can do is provide extra support and boxes. There are other options too. Maybe you feel like you just should be taking that whole fence down and radically changing the system. This may be something that you sort of have to come across as a computing educator. You might run into some resistance in your school or your district with your counselors, which we'll talk about later, about should computer science really be there? So it's probably important for you to think for yourself about why you feel that computing education is critically important and important for you to offer for students in your school.
