Success in AP Computer Science A leads toward declining rate?
Jul 9th, 2007 by Mr. Higgins
First things first…
I could basically do a cartwheel right now after seeing my APCS A students AP Examination scores. Scores will remain anonymous; however, I will say that the average score was 4.8. I hope you (”you” know who you are out there) learned a great deal from the course. I guarantee I learned a lot more though as a first year teacher. Congratulations to the 2007 Norwalk High School AP Computer Science A students and I wish continued success.
Anyhow, back to business
I am currently attending the 2007 Summer Java Workshop for APCS teachers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. There are a lot of great people involved with this workshop including Don Slater (CMU Faculty), Judy Hromcik (APCS consultant), and Mark Stehlik (CMU faculty). There are a lot of great pedagogical and/or programming discussions which really engage fellow teachers. One of the topics of interest at the workshop is Alice. Don Slater proceeded to introduce the topic of Alice by first talking about Computer Science as a whole and female enrollment. it really got me thinking about a few different topics
- At my high school, we may have trouble “fielding” an APCS A course in the next couple of years unless student enrollment really increases. I will concede that the notion of a declining enrollment in Computer Science being a good thing ONLY from the status of “reenvisioning computer science education” as stated by Chris Stephenson. APCS is the type of class which will keep my interest in the field of education for sure. Can I convince 10 extra students to join the Computer Science track? I just don’t know at this point.
- Obviously, the enrollment of females in Computer Science from top to bottom is horendous. As an undergrad in a Data Structures course (Discrete Math & APCS AB Topics) I remember wondering about this as the professor muddled about “p implies q” in front of a class of probably 70 students. I’m fairly certain that there wasn’t more than 7 females in the entire room. Throughout the years of APCS at my high school, there have been very very few females to even attempt the course.
- Alice as a introductory programming tool seems to be very logical and allows students to “play” around enough to engage students from Elementary to College; however, does a program like this, not necessarily Alice, provide a false sense of security. After all, there will have to be a time where writing the program HelloWorld.java is a priority. I just wonder if I could transition from Alice to a regular IDE environment. This bridge has yet to be crossed by the computer science educator as a whole in my opinion.
- Certification….don’t get me started. I will just refer you to my previous blog titled “Teacher Training and Computer Science.”
- I have seen many of the different stats showing that demand will not nearly match the supply of Computer Science majors in the future. At first, I thought, that is a problem for those who are at the college level. Then a thought finally popped into my head that software innovations are fueled by competition and/or deep thinkers. If I don’t have any student to become “deep thinkers” than what will my favorite software titles still be my favorite software titles in 20 years?
I’d like to pass on the word to your blog about this summer’s workshops for Alice / Alice and Media Computation. Please have any interested teachers contact me for registration:
We are holding two larger Alice/Alice & Media Computation workshops in Las Vegas (July 25-30th) and Orlando (August 9-13). The Alice / Alice & Media Computation workshops are sponsored by a grant from the NSF. The cost of the workshop and materials will be free. We will be asking for a check to cover registration/ hotel cost ($500)– which will be returned if the participant attends all four days of the workshop. The reasoning behind this is, since this is a sponsored workshop, we must gather data from the participants on what they learn, how they understand the material, etc. This, of course, cannot be done if the participant does not stay for the entire workshop. Therefore, should you decide to join one of these workshops, the only cost to you would be transportation - and the grant refunds you $100 toward that cost, as well. And, since these are being run at destination resort locations, we invite your family to join you, and you can extend your visit at the hotel on either end of the workshop at the workshop rate.
The Alice portion of this workshop will be held on two levels: 1) for more beginners and 2) for more advanced users. Because Media Comp deals with more advanced topics and Java, prior knowledge of Java is necessary.
Please contact Barbara at bconover@sju.edu for registration and questions.
Thanks!