Ideas for Badges

This year I tried flipping in my AP Computer Science class. Overall the results were pretty good - of course I wont know for sure until the scores come in next week. (Post from last summer on flipping)

One of the core pieces this year was mastery. I had several students that were weaker than normal with the basics of programming. It really doesnt matter how well you understand inheritance, if you cannot write an if-then statement you are toast on the free response section.

So as a part of flipping I started doing mastery quizzes. I started them at the beginning of second semester. The quizzes are short and sweet. Fast to take and easy to grade. It gave me a quick picture of who needed to review the basics.

If the student got a 90 or above they had demonstrated mastery. If not they had to come in to review before retaking the quiz.

If you are interested you can use the quizzes posted here. They are not complete (is anything ever). My retakes for ifs/loops happened on the board not on worksheets. As I finish them I will post them.

I have thought about designing badges to cover these basic skills. Rather than making this a graded assignment they retest until they earn their "badge".

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Today we are going to review the keyboard.  We really havent practiced much in the last 2 weeks, so this will be a good day for reacquainting ourselves with the keys.

After a review we are going to start learning the numbers.  Today we are going to learn the 8 (R2) and the 1 (L4).

Also, ANYONE CAUGHT CHATTING IN GOOGLE DURING CLASS WILL BE GIVEN A REFERRAL - NO EXCEPTIONS!

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Two words: Discovery Education!

First through fifth grade will be logging into DiscoveryEducation.com to view three of the many different resources available within discoveryeducation.com: ebooks, interactive glossary, and video segments. We will be using DE as a tool to locate information (NETS 3: research and information fluency).

Kindergarten will be exploring shapes with Carnival Countdown and Zoo Zillions. These two programs are available in the main lab on all 30 computers and provide practice and application of kindergarten through second grade math skills. (Teachers, Calculating Crew is another program available in the lab that provides skill practice for grades 3-6. If youd like to know more, just email!)

http://discoveryeducation.com/

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I am home for about 5 days before my next trek up to New York to work on the AP Computer Science MOOC.

In the past week I traveled from NYC to Boston for the CSTA annual conference, then on to Las Vegas for the APCS Principles Pilot II training and the AP National Conference.

Vector River Map From Flowing Data

In other words, my brain is full, but full of good things.

Unless you have been wilderness camping for the last 6 months you may have noticed a few things going on in computer science education.

Ill be posting more details about all of these projects soon, but some highlights:

• Code.org - http://www.code.org/  - Theres the video, which everyone should see. They are also building up some great advocacy resources, worth a look. Plus, I got to have dinner with Hadi and Pat. So exciting to have incredible people committed to computer science education. They are a huge part of the interest in computer science education right now. 

• Computer Science Education Week -  http://www.csedweek.org/ - Do you have your plans yet? Dec 8 - 14th, better get on it.

• Expanding Computing Education Pathways - http://expandingcomputing.cs.umass.edu/ - "Alliance seeks to increase the number and diversity of students in the pipeline to computing and computing-intensive degrees by supporting state-level computing education reforms." I got to attend a great workshop from ECEP at CSTA National lest week - really exciting momentum. I am especially glad to hear more about the role of community colleges in preparing our kids.

• Exploring Computer Science -  http://www.exploringcs.org/ - They are coming to Washington DC, and I am really hoping to attend a training in the next year. I got to do a PD workshop with them at CSTA, and hands down the best PD I have attended. One of those where you walk away going "Well, the last 16 years of my career have been nice, but now I know how to make it better."

• Hour of Code -  http://www.csedweek.org/ - they are asking folks to organize to give beginners 1 hour of code for every one of the countrys 55 million school children...ideas? Let me know!

• http://sitwithme.org/ - "Sometimes you have to sit to take a stand. Sit With Me invites you to validate and recognize the important role women play in creating future technology by taking a small but symbolic action: sit in a red chair and share your story." 

Whew! I know I am forgetting things. It has been a jam-packed summer. Please drop me a line to tell me what is going on in your neck of the woods for computer science education. 

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This is a vocab week, so if you have definitions to post on the Wiki spaces page you will need to get that done by tomorrow night.  Remember that tomorrow is a half day of school, so getting that done tonight may be to your advantage.

Some people were unable to complete FA5 on Friday, so if you are one of those people you will have time today in class to get that done.  As a reminder make sure that you have your speed skin on your keyboard while you are working.  This formatting activity should be printed and signed before you hand it in.

Once you have completed FA5 you need to complete the green handout that has the drills we type in Excel.  You need to complete all 6 drills in Excel just as we have done in the past.  Once you have completed all of the drills then you can go to the Free Typing Games website and complete at least 3 of the speed tests - today you should use the #26 or #27 classic tales as your speed test.  When you complete the speed test write your score on the poster sheet on the wall next to your name (Sharpies are on my desk).

When you get done with the speed tests there is a handout on my desk that you need to type in Microsoft Word.  This is for practice but you should try to get as much done as you can.

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In CS Principles we are starting to look at how computers have changed society and their overall cultural impact. Computer History Project PDF

For this project I assigned the pairs. I try not to pair students that are more than 8 points away from each other grade wise. This really helps cut down on the whole one partner that does nothing thing.

When they are done we present the projects, in order by era. In between we stop and discuss how the project fits into the bigger picture.

I took a slightly different path in the presentations this year. Just like it is easy to fall back into teaching and assessing code, it is also easy to fall back into just testing facts and dates about computer science topics.
The goal here is for them to demonstrate a broad understanding of computer science and how computing devices have changed through time.

We will eventually connect this content to the broader idea of how computers have fundamentally changed our society and culture.

So during the presentations I asked them to take notes, not on the names and dates, but on the broad themes covered.

The themes were:
* Digital vs Analog
* Memory
* Storable Programs
* Heat issues
* Speed

They will use this to answer several essay questions on their test next week.

Some sample questions:
--> How did the analog storage of information impact what early computers could do?
--> What changes in computer hardware over the past century have allowed computers to change from devices used only by governments and universities to the personal devices we all use today?
--> How did the development of the Internet change the types of devices developed?
--> How does conflict impact technological development?

Overall the presentations were great. The groups worked well together and really did some nice visuals. Half chose Prezi and half did Poewer Points.

My favorite part of the whole thing is when a student answer the question "What is the difference between analog and digitial" and she said "analog means a human operator made it work".  I love this explination.

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Today we are going to start with learning about Excel.  In that vein, we will also begin working on FA11, which is embedded below.


Activity 11.pdf

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