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$500K NSF Grant Boosted Girls' CS Participation At Obama Daughters' $37K/Yr HS
theodp writes: On Friday, a paper entitled Creative Computation in High School will be presented at SIGCSE '16. "In this paper," explain the paper's authors, "we describe the success of bringing Creative Computation via Processing into two very different high schools...providing a catalyst for significant increases in total enrollment as well as female participation in high school computer science." One of the two schools that participated in the National Science Foundation-supported project — see NSF awards 1323305 & 1323463 for Creative Computation in the Context of Art and Visual Media — was Sidwell Friends School, which a 2013 SMU news release on the three-year, $500K NSF grant noted was best known as the school attended by President Obama's daughters. Interestingly, in a late-2014 interview, the President lamented that his daughters hadn't taken to coding the way he'd like, adding that "part of what's happening is that we are not helping schools and teachers teach it in an interesting way." Hey, nothing that a $4B 'Computer Science For All' K-12 Program can't fix, right?
Why do they call it that?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It may be convenient and tempting to blame Obama for this, but its actually something he benefits from thats existed for more than a hundred years. Namely, how wealth learns and lives as opposed to the rest of us.
While most of us go to public school, eat school lunches and attend public universities when and if possible, the cloistered elite do not. An entire parallel yet grossly superior system of education exists for millionaires and billionaires, and everything from its fundamentals to its lunchtime is radically different. While we are playing gym and learning typing in highschool, the children of wealth learn elocution, policy, and various other traits that help them to accept their future roles as C level management, elite constitutional law attorneys, and even members of world banking organizations. If obamas children are learning programming, its merely as a jovial introduction into the world of directing, managing, or guiding long-term and broad stroke efforts in the field. They will not themselves become a "programmer."
that having been said, the children of the elite will always benefit disproportionately from government grants alongside their already generous foundation and nonprofit donations. they have overwhelming resources to secure and exploit them that public, and many private institutions, do not.
Good people go to bed earlier.
part of what's happening is that we are not helping schools and teachers teach it in an interesting way.
It's a feature, not a bug. Coding isn't interesting unless you have a mind for it. And if you have a mind for it, you don't need a creative teacher and colorful projects to make it interesting for you.
Stop asking yourself how you can stop them from getting it and how we can get it for everybody else. All crap like this story does is get people yelling about govt waste. And all that happens when you try to cut it is your education budget for your kid's school gets cut.
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Just start giving them a lot more vaccinations.
I'm not sure the trend of 'making programming a game' is the best way to go about it....it works fine at the introductory levels, but how do you move beyond drag-and-drop programming blocks and start using text all the time? Are you going learn about NP-complete with pictures? I think at some point, the students need to develop a passion for solving puzzles, otherwise they will not have the desire to keep going.......
In any case, here is the curriculum they used:
1) programming (bouncing ball, kindergarten picture)
2) functions, variables, basic loops, 2D arrays (image processing)
3) fundamentals, control structures (Andy Wharhol, Green Screen)
4) algorithm development (finding the robots ball)
**At this point, the students are given a four-week introduction to Python** 5) OOP: classes, polymorphism, animation (bouncing ball, sea creature)
6) OOP and design (space invaders)
7) Abstraction Strings (data visualization)
8) OOP: interfaces (swimmable object, paint)
9) OOP: inheritance (sea creature inheritance)
10) Recursion (hanoi tower)
11) algorithm development, OOP: encapsulation (robot maze)
Personally I would rather see less emphasis on OOP, and more emphasis on "the proving mindset" (the proving mindset being, when you write code, try to think of everything that can go wrong, every possibility). It's kind of hard to understand when OOP is a good thing without writing bad code first.....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's that way for many things. I never took to writing a great novel either although I took English, writing and literature most of my school years.
Apparently the rich plan to grow up to be code monkeys rather than hedge fund managers, CEOs or anonymous board members these days.
"part of what's happening is that we are not helping schools and teachers teach it in an interesting way"
It has nothing to do with the teaching technique. You can't force people to become interested in computer science and programming. If you aren't the type of person who is naturally drawn towards this particular type of problem solving, you'll quickly be discouraged by the constant setbacks and frustration that accompany all programming endeavors. Very few people have the natural mathematical talent and abstract thinking abilities necessary to enjoy this work and thus overcome the first 5-10 years of pain and eventually become good.
and down the GOP road soon HS will come to loans. Want to be stuck with 80-100K be for college and to get a good job you need to get the masters or phd for 150-300K more?
We don't teach everyone to be plumbers. We don't teach everyone to be rocket scientists. Different people do different things and that's awesome.
This "everyone should be able to program" initiative makes as much sense as trying to teach everyone calculus.
They would rather throw money at the daughters of the upper end of the 1% than money at the sons of the bottom 50%. Because equality. Because a girl born to a family that can afford $37k/year/kid for K12 tuition is "oppressed" by the "patriarchy" that includes a poor white kid who lives in Appalachia with a dad on Social Security Disability and a mom works as a waitress at a low end restaurant and a minority boy living in a violent ghetto with no father in his life. No siree, those boys have it easy because their penises give them preferential access, should the heavens open up and give them access to an accredited college at some point in their lives. Fight for equality, fight for the daughters of the privileged!
"part of what's happening is that we are not helping schools and teachers teach it in an interesting way."
If someone needs to convince you that CS is interesting, then maybe CS is not for you. I've never known a really good programmer who got into the field because someone coddled and cajoled them into it. On the contrary, they seek out every opportunity they can find to learn more on their own initiative.
For those *not* from the DC area --
Sidwell Friends is the school where the kids of many politicians end up going. Clinton's kid went there, as did Nixon's and Teddy Roosevelt's.
For those congress people that bring their families to DC, many of their kids go there, too. Along with ambassadors' kids, VP's kids, judge's kids, various CEO's kids, etc.
It'd actually be more surprising if a president who had grade school kids *didn't* sent their kids to Sidwell Friends.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Why emphasize just coding when programming jobs may shrink?
While I agree that programming is decent entry-level job into other IT fields, I'm not sure the emphasis of IT teaching should be on coding. Structural factoring (basic normalization, redundancy identification), set theory, logic, general architecture (clients, servers, databases, networks, security) and so forth should also be part of such courses.
Even if you never code on the job, understanding the relationships between data elements and system parts is important for most office workers, from clerks to managers and most cubicle dwellers in-between.
As far as the programming part, one of the best intro teaching projects I've seen is to have students code up their resume and cover letter, and then use a list or database to populate the resume and cover letter template with destination information (company name, company contact, specialty, address, etc.)
Have a condition whereby if the company specialty is not known (blank), then a sentence(s) about interest in the specialty is bypassed from the result. Thus, they learn looping over data, and conditionals. While not intended to actually be used for job-hunting, it gives students a feel for the practical side of programming. (This is kind of like MS's Mail-Merge.)
Table-ized A.I.
Apparently the future CEOs and executives of companies plan to do all the programming themselves? It is just a minor thing to do on the side? Or perhaps the CEOs will only need to know enough to determine which robot to use.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That's computer engineering
Actually, computer programming is a subset of computer science. You cannot design and build computers without thought to how to design applications for and program them.
But by itself, teaching programming is not computer science any more than drivers ed would be automotive engineering.
My arse it is. Computer science is a branch of mathematics.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Half a million to what is probably the most expensive and exclusive school in the US. And, a Private school at that.
Wasn't there some school in the not so nice areas of DC that could have used that money?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Sidwell isn't even the most expensive private school in DC.
Paris Hilton earns millions annually through TV, product endorsements, and her own brands. She has a net worth of over $100 million. Less than $5M of that came from her inheritance.
Presuming that is true then good for her doing so well prostituting herself. I find it amazing that anyone gives a damn about anything she is involved in but good for her for making something of her opportunities.
She manages and invests her money well.
No, she has people that manage her money well for her. I guaran-damn-tee you she isn't managing her money herself. She as agents, investment advisers, family connections, etc.
I don't think she is as dumb as you think she is.
I don't think she is some brilliant business woman either. She comes from a family with money. Along with that tends to come some really smart advisers.
In keeping with Quaker tenets, Sidwell Friends School seeks a student body that represents varied economic backgrounds. In 2015-2016, 23% of our students will receive approximately $6,700,000 of financial aid support with an average aid award of $25,708, which covers two-thirds of the average tuition cost.
Financial Aid
All students must acquire at least 20 credits before graduating. Students are required to take four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of history, two years of one foreign language, two years of science, and two years of art. In addition to this, all freshmen must take a full year Freshman Studies course. Sidwell is a member school of School Year Abroad.
Notable alumni
Ann Brashares, author, "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants"
Margaret Edison, playwright, Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Walter Gilbert, Nobel Prize chemist
Hannah Gray, later President of the University of Chicago
Davis Guggenheim, director, "An Inconvenient Truth"
Campbell McGrath, poet, MacArthur Foundation "Genius" award winner
Bill Nye, "Science Guy"
Robert Watson, computer science and network security, FreeBSD
Sidwell Friends School/A?
Who do you think is behind all this 'women are the same as men and therefore must be given men's jobs' bullshit? You'll notice that women aren't being given DANGEROUS jobs that men die while doing, like construction, foundry work, oil rig work, mining, you name it. More JEWISH nation-wrecking.
In 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 9,813,000 people working in the construction industry. Of these, 872,000 of them, or 8.9 percent, were women.
Women in the U.S. earn on average 82.1 percent what men make. The gender pay gap is much narrower in the construction industry. In construction, women earn on average 93.4 percent what men make
Statistics of Women in Construction [National Association of Women in Construction
Actually, tons of schools get grants for all sorts of things all the time. The only reason you're hearing about this one is that it just happened to involve the school Obama's daughters go to. You don't hear anything about the hundreds of other grants given to other schools they don't go to, because talking about them wouldn't fit the political narrative.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Saying Sidwell Friends is best known because President Obama's kids go there is something like saying that the White House is best known because JFK lived there. The school has been regarded as one of the premier schools in the DC area for over a century; Theodore Roosevelt's son Archibald, Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia, Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore's son, Albert Gore III, all graduated from Sidwell Friends.
It's an introductory course for computer science.
When my parents learnt French they started by learning the theory, vocabulary and grammar. Putting it to practical use only came later. When I learned French we started by learning to converse. That's just how modern teaching works. Teach the practical stuff first and then expand it with theory later.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I agree, language arts are best taught by learning the vocabulary and then the rules. This mimics how a child learns a language. However, that doesn't work with computer languages, to well, which really are not a true language and instead are a descriptive algorithm. The other difference is that languages are taught are taught conversationally today whereas programming is written out. You need the proper "grammatical" rules in the programming language or it won't compile and run. That is not the case with a spoken language.
As for teaching the practical stuff first and expanding it with theory later, is nice in theory (no pun intended), but when the practical builds on the theory you really need both. Maybe that is why teaching language is considered an art versus a science.
I don't learn well that way. I learn best from learning the 80/20 of theory, then going on to practice. Then revisit the last 20% of the theory. When I was young I had to learn about 25 new words per week in school and I typically got a C or D. Now that I'm in my 30s, I am self-teaching Japanese with about 50 words per week in a language I had no prior background in.
Theory gives me a framework in which to place what I'm learning from practice. Without theory, I am forced to use my memory for everything. With theory, I can at least create some rules to reduce the amount of rote memorization.
When it comes to programming, the first thing I do is go read up on best practice, then I read up on theory, then I dive into the details.