Embedding a CS & E Curriculum
Finding Engineers in your Colleagues
Classrooms
Michael Chabin
The Holton-Arms School
The Problem
The number of women receiving Bachelors
degrees in computer science peaked at
about 38% in the early 1990s.
Only 9% of professional engineers and 20%
of engineering undergraduates are women.
The Holton-Arms School
• School for Girls Founded 1901
• 660 students grades 3 - 12
• Class of 2004 (75 students):
– 2 National Merit Scholars (9 finalists, and 31
commended)
– SAT-1 means: Verbal 704, Math 692
– 4 Admitted to Princeton
The Holton school motto is: Inveniam viam
aut faciam. ( I will find a way or make
one.)
With a motto like that, and students like
ours, we should be producing engineers!
Some Reasons Girls Don’t Explore CS&E
• They don’t know what Computer
Scientists and Engineers do (few people
do).
– Bioengineering
– Adaptive Optics
– Nano-scale machines
• Problem-solving activities like Legos, HO
trains, race cars, model rockets, and even
computer programming are less available to
girls for social reasons. (This is mitigated in
a girl’s school.)
• Despite our best efforts schools still tend to
“teach by telling” rather than allowing
students to create genuinely original solutions
- perhaps especially in the critical middleschool years and earlier.
• There are few, if any, convincing role models.
• Technical opportunities in K-12 tend to be limited by
what classroom teachers know.
Goals:
• Ensure that every girl understands technology well
enough to exploit it as students and, eventually, to
govern it as voters.
• Ensure that any girl who has an interest in
engineering discovers it, and having discovered it,
goes to college prepared to pursue it.
Assets
• Excellent Students
• Parents in strategic locations (NIH, AAAS, U of
MD Engineering & etc.)
• A Head of School who is committed to an
engineering program.
• Adequate funding
Challenges
Faculty and students are already over subscribed.
• No new required courses,
• Cannot add to student workload,
• Cannot require teachers to master new
technology.
Current Offerings
•
•
An introduction to Object-oriented
Programming with Java.
AP Java (two semesters).
In terms of encouraging girls to consider CS&E majors, results have been
disappointing. Last year five of Holton’s 660 students took AP Java.
One of those decided her interest in Computer Science was misplaced.
“Too much vocabulary,” she complained.
So, with apologies to the College Board . . .
. . . we expect to abandon AP Java.
Parts of AP Java will be obsolete by the time our students
graduate from college. Sun Microsystems may not survive
that long. Can Java survive alone? Is it really the best of all
possible languages?
It is, after all, the third AP language in 11 years.
The most important concepts of programming can be learned
in a variety of languages - often more efficiently than in AP
Java.
AP Java places too much emphasis on rote learning
(many texts include vocabulary lists).
Expertise is the ability to learn what one needs to
solve a problem. Our students have to make effective
use of tools they haven’t been introduced to.
- Swapping disk drives
- Taking a drill apart and putting it back
together
- Figure out what Fireworks is on their own
AP Java conveys too much material, sacrificing key
concepts and the time required to develop them.
We are delighted to sacrifice completeness for depth.
The key element in all of engineering is play,
something for which there is no time in the AP
curriculum.
We hope to build a CS&E curriculum in which play
is a key component.
AP Java is focused on a test.
We hope to focus on helping students solve problems.
AP Java is about programming.
There is much more to Computer Science &
Engineering than programming. There are
languages besides Java.
AP Java is a year-long course.
We hope to make the engineer’s attitude a Holton
cultural value. We need to provide children with
regular challenges from grades 3 through 12.
Traditional teaching structures exclude girls from
CS&E.
We hope to give our students direct experience with
real problems and partner them with scientists,
graduate students, and other accomplished women.
We hope to construct a CS&E curriculum that:
Is less vulnerable to obsolescence
Emphasizes learning to learn
Permits freedom for in-depth exploration
Embodies engineering-as-productive-play
Helps students solve real problems
Involves students from grades 3-12
Provides role models
The question is . . . How?
We propose to replace the the AP with . . .
. . . the Digital Portfolio.
Imagine that each year, every student
converts her best work to digital format.
Essays and short-stories are converted to HTML
Art is scanned
Sculpture and ceramics are photographed with a
digital camera - perhaps in VR 3D.
PowerPoints from class would be included
So would computer programs and spreadsheets
Digital images and video could record everything
from science experiments to class trips.
Imagine that highlights from concert recordings
are included
Videos from sporting events, speeches, and
performances
Even guest-shot videos from friends.
It would be a durable archive of a student’s year.
It would be a profoundly effective way to
communicate the student experience to parents.
It would be a treasure for grandparents.
It would also be a significant technical
achievement for the student who created it.
Most important, from a CS&E perspective, it
would be a vehicle for implementing an
“embedded” or “virtual” CS&E curriculum.
Each year, students will be required to include
specific kinds of artifacts.
We might require a robot . . ,
. . . but no class in robotics.
Students who are working on a project can arrange for
individual or group help directly with CS&E faculty - or
from each other.
The important notion is this: it is up to the
students to arrange for the help they need. They
can get it from CS&E faculty, from parents, or
from each other.
Think of it as just in time education.
We are still working on the specific grade-bygrade requirements.
The nice thing is we don’t have to get it right the
first time. Nothing is easier to change than a list
of requirements.
Third Grade:
Fourth grade:
Fifth Grade:
Sixth Grade:
Seventh Grade
Eighth Grade:
Ninth Grade:
A Squeakland Program
Lego Movies, digital images
PowerPoint, Go-cart,
Lego Robot, video interview
Flash animation
Flash with ActionScript
Java - Scientific formulae
Java - Sum 1 to 1000000
Stella - Predator-prey
ArcGis- Poverty map
Tenth graders might build a simple digital control
system, produce reasonably sophisticated Flash
Movies, be responsible for the videos of school
plays and recordings of school concerts.
Juniors and seniors might focus on mastering
skills to qualify for a summer internship:
IRAF - astrophysics (1 already)
GIS - epidemiology, geophysics, etc.
Stella - decision support
Maya - 3D modeling
Flash - Museum kiosks
To help with such complex projects, we hope to
recruit experts, ideally women who are graduate
students in a related discipline.
Unlike other elements of the curriculum, these are
dynamic. They can be changed in response to:
Student interest
Changing technology
Current themes, like elections or weather
Special opportunities
Once a particular competence is required for the
Digital Portfolio teachers can make assignments
that use that particular skill.
If seventh graders are required to produce a Flash
animation then any teacher from grade 7 up can
assign one, even if the teacher has no experience
with Flash and no intention of getting it.
Digital Portfolio offers
Parents:
a better idea of the school experience
Students: a broader audience
experience with a variety of tools
Teachers: the ability to assign technology
they haven’t mastered.
freedom from having to teach
technical skills.
The School: a profoundly flexible CS&E
and technology curriculum
a visible archive of excellence
Why not Digital Portfolios and AP Java?
Because people know what they are, APs tend to co-opt
the curriculum. Parents and students alike tend to think
of them as a pinnacle of High School academics.
In fact, they are not.
The critical accomplishments of a student’s K-12 career
are highly individual. Digital Portfolios can capture that
in a way that APs never will.
Students can still take the AP.
Our students regularly get 5s on the AP English exam
and we have no AP English.
We’ll keep three CS&E electives, but they’ll be:
- Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
will be half Flash and half digital
electronics
- One semester Scientific Programming
- One semester half Stella and GIS
For now, however, our focus will remain on Digital
Portfolios as the best way to develop CS&E interest and
competence in our students, and the best way to
demonstrate student achievements to parents and
colleges.
You should know, though, this is a work in progress.
Much will change before we are finished.