TeraGrid ’09 High School Teacher Bridge Day
The TeraGrid is an NSF-funded grid computing endeavor in support of science and engineering research. This week, TeraGrid ’09 took place in Arlington, Virginia and the organizers added on a one day workshop for high school teachers. I was hoping to get some ideas on how to introduce parallel computing concepts early and maybe even get access to some TeraGrid cycles for education but that’s not quite how it panned out. More than anything, it reminded me of CS4HS and provided me with some ideas to pass on to this year’s organizers.
The day started with a quick mention of some videos modeling scientific phenomena from CMIST. We then got a long presentation from Shodor founder Bob Panoff on using their computational modeling tools for teaching math and science topics. Shodor (allegedly named for “Short Dork”) is a really neat non-profit based in North Carolina that provides all kinds of great free tools as well as workshops and internships in technology for high school students. For example, teachers could use their function grapher to get students to explore the effect of constants on trigonometric functions by having them graph 1 * cos(x + 0) + 0 and use the sliders to change the values of the constants. The rabbits and wolves simulation is a great tool for showing population dynamics complete with updating graphs of each species count and parameters to modify the type of world.
These kinds of materials are great “hooks” for math and science teachers to use in support of discovery learning (more on that in a future post). They can also be used to get students to think about building and using abstract models to represent real-world situations, a key part of computer science. A teacher could, Bob suggested, use the histogram activity to make a point about the importance of knowing how to interpret models and the assumptions they make. For example, looking at NBA salary data, a coach might slice the data into three ranges and use the resulting graph to claim that nearly all players are paid the same. By slicing the data into smaller ranges, though, players might claim that salaries are not equitable. The Shodor system makes that kind of “zooming” in and out on data really simple.
Given that we were nearly all computer science teachers, I felt this was the wrong crowd. These are cool, but aren’t there 101 different (and most likely inferior, I’ll admit) simulations like that online? Besides, this seems like a use of technology as a tool rather than an example of building computational thinking abilities. But Bob started his presentation with an interesting statement — he rather casually said something like “in CS, we’re starting with modeling rather than programming because there’s very strong evidence that starting with programming creates barriers that wouldn’t otherwise exist.” No one really blinked and the tone of the day was set. I’m uncomfortable with that position but have to think about it more before I can craft a coherent response. I do believe that using tools like Vensim to describe models in a lightweight way is a good first step but I’m not sure that manipulating a ready-made simulation such as those Shodor provides really is actively building computational thinking abilities. In the best-case scenario, strong students will build some sense of what makes a good model or abstraction by playing with many existing ones. Not all students are strong students. I think that using scientific computation as a hook for algorithm design and computer science is unrealistic for most kids in our urban schools.
Another theme of the day was discovery and exploration as the best teaching/learning strategy — “let’s get out of the way of students’ learning.” Certainly, for self-learners with strong family support and excellent role-models, this is an excellent strategy but I don’t think it works for the majority. We saw an interesting presentation on a great collaboration between a community college, a liberal-arts college and a couple of universities. Charlie Peck and his collaborators had brought their LittleFe cluster — a home-grown machine made of off-the-self parts for under $3000. They run a Linux distribution called Bootable Cluster CD on it and use it to teach parallel computing. This is where they lost me a little bit: from the presentation, they made it sound like their strategy was letting students loose on the machines and having them build cool stuff. Note that this could be a misrepresentation as I haven’t done much exploration to see whether they have more structured content available. Still, I think that for most people, this seems like a wonderful idea! Indeed, when I mentioned the need for structured instructional materials it kind of fell on deaf ears.
All this sounds pretty negative, but I really enjoyed the day. It was a good opportunity to meet some interesting people and to continue to figure out my own ideas on education and where computer science fits in. I’m definitely a minority in a lot of my stances (structured instruction over discovery-based learning, structured assignments rather than open-ended projects, deliberately ordered and linear curriculum pacing, early emphasis on basics, etc) so I have to be particularly careful in what I do to either be open to change when things don’t work or to have data to point to when challenged.
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I enjoyed reading this post. We had a mission on the Teragrid Bridge Day to reach out to learning communities to share the message of computational thinking for all teachera and interested members of formal and informal learning communities.
Some of the teachers in the room were computational science teachers but many were not. I was also reaching for the low hanging fruit. There were teachers who had not been introduced at all to computational thinking , or to the ideas of computational science.
Vision?
I wanted something for teachers. Not just computer science teachers, we happened to get many CSTA teachers and that was great.
This is what I thought I was organizing. I guess for this teacher I did not hit the mark. But look at the questions at the end, and we can all shape the next outreach event. We have, some of us, gone from the Teragrid Day , to the Computer Science Teacher’s Association Symposium, to the ISTE -NECC Conference and so we have made some small change through conversations, networking and learning about each others ideas.
This was how I shared it with my educational groups.
My name is Bonnie Bracey Sutton. I have been advocating change in education for many years.I was priviledged to work with President Clinton, Virce President Gore, and Ron Brown in an initiative the NIIAC that set the vision for how we in the United States, would use the Internet. We had three documents as a result of our work. The most important document to me was Kickstart which outlined the ways in which we would change education for the 21st Century and our E Rate Initiative. We were all about broadening participation in the use of these new technologies.
More that t years later some of our vision has come true, but in education, use of the Internet, and of emerging technologies has been gated by a number of factors. We have as a nation, not prepared all of our teachers for the use of technology in the most effective ways, nor have we created a learning landscape that is inclusive of all. In computer science we have the mission to Broaden Participation. We? No formal group, but a group of dedicated members of the Teragrid who wanted to make a difference for teachers. Teragrid had created a special day for students.
The National Science Foundation provided funding for 75 high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to participate in TeraGrid ’09
History
A report from NCATE in 1997 shared these observations on teaching in America.
Getting America’s Students Ready for the 21st Century
“Despite the technology changes in society, being a teacher in American Schools too often consists of helping children and youth acquire information from textbooks and acting as an additional source of expertise. Teachers are provided role models of this approach to teaching from kindergarten through graduate school; their teacher education courses provide hints for making text-oriented instruction interesting and productive, and as teaching interns, they both observe and practice instruction based upon mastering information found in books.”
“All of their formal instruction and role models were driven in the past by traditional teaching practices. . Breaking away from traditional approaches to instruction means taking risks and venturing into the unknown. But this is precisely what is needed at the present time.” – National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, U.S.A.
Shaping the Vision? Moving from Analog to Digital?
Jane Margolis says “Today, the world of cyberspace is affecting the way we live, our environment and our culture. There really is very little that is unaffected by the onslaught of technology. The actual products of computer science are affecting how we do business, the pacing we expect from work, life and pleasure, the way we now regard entertainment. It matters if boys make things and girls use things that boys make. Our culture reflects the desires and sensibilities of males, to the exclusion and often denigration of females.”
Stuck in the shallow end is a way in which Jane Margolis, talks about those who have been marginalized . She also talks about broadening participation . We who work in education have a number of initiatives that speak to digital equity. I wanted to share the magic of HPC, the Teragrid and educational resources in the Gateways with teachers. Maybe I failed.
I was so excited about the vision of the Teragrid Bridge Day, I could hardly sleep. It was my idea with the help of the Teragrid community of EOT, to invite teachers to be a part of their special conference. We knew that teachers could not afford the week of Teragrid, and so we decided to create a very special day that was a template for the possibiliites. I put the information out on the lists, and we started our planning. But they let me call the shots and frame the outreach. Here was what we attempted to do.
You would have to be familiar with the Teragrid to know how hard it was to think what it was that we would share with teachers. We had a week of the whole conference and our mission was to take the “best” of what was offered and to create a bridge of understanding for teachers and a synergy group of people to whom the teachers could meet, interact with, query, learn from and to share resources.
Over a number of weeks we did this. We also formed a Facebook community for outreach in the participatoory culture, and we involve people outside of the Teragrid community who would be powerful allies for teachers and who could provide resources. Facebook community is a beginning, Teragrid will have a formal community on Facebook soon. Why?
Jeanette Wing says” People forget that there are fundamental advancements that CS brings that make it possible to have things like MySpace and YouTube and Google. The audacity that we have to automate our abstractions — that is CS and what’s going to be influencing many other disciplines.” We wanted to inspire computational thinking. We wanted to be inclusive in our outreach , but more than that , we wanted to have the teachers at the end of our first dedicated outreach, help us shape the future of bridging to the various teacher groups.
So here we are on Facebook in living color.
Teragrid Teacher Day
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=133869&id=593996326&l=42cc89ab14
Who were the most important people on that day? Our teachers. Some coming from as far away as Seattle, Houston, Florida. Our teachers were some CSTA teachers, or not, some teachers from the local Virginia and Maryland areas, and lots of special people extending their knowledge from other groups like ITEST, Internet2 , NCWIT, and NCSA.
If we are to build a globally competitive 21st century workforce and maintain our leadership in IT innovation there is no stage in the academic pipeline more crucial than high school. It is true that students begin to lose interest in computing much earlier, probably in grades 4-5. Yet engagement programs for middle school students will not be effective if those students have no further opportunities during their four years of high school.
My added contention is that therefore we need to train the teachers and stop asking for the few who have already chosen CS in high school as an interest.
I am not a computational science teacher. Actually I started out as an elementary school teacher passionate about involving students at an early age in hard learning, hard fun, as Seymour Papert would have put it. I was not stuck in the shallow end of the pool on the fence looking in. No science in my Catholic school, little science in my high school. Computer science had not been invented and so I taught myself and spent my own funds to involve students.
, I was not even a part of the group included and so my advocacy is for digital equity, to conquer the knowledge divide, the information divide and the infrastructure divide and the K-12 divide in thinking about education for the future.
Sorry for any mistakes , this is my 4th conference in a row.
I have a K-12 Advocacy Group for Superomputing on Facebook.
We would like to form the day for next year to include broad outreach ,
we are open to ideas, and types of scaffolding for the inclusion of teachers. Should we include the Gateways? CMist? Jumpstart?
Bonnie
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks so much for your comments! Please, please don’t apologize — I really enjoyed the day and as I said in my post, I did find it worthwhile. Just because it wasn’t quite what I expected or quite aligned with my philosophy doesn’t mean a whole lot! Please keep doing this kind of event. I definitely look forward to spreading the word to other high school instructors.
Thanks again for organizing.
Today, the world of cyberspace is affecting the way we live, our environment and our culture. There really is very little that is unaffected by the onslaught of technology. The actual products of computer science are affecting how we do business, the pacing we expect from work, life and pleasure, the way we now regard entertainment. It matters if boys make things and girls use things that boys make. Our culture reflects the desires and sensibilities of males, to the exclusion and often denigration of females.
Helene, I was one who sat beside of you and I’ve got to tell you that I can relate to the observations that you shared about what you as a teacher want. I too had similar thoughts and issues when I was a novice teacher. However, now years later, I would and do teach in a completely different manner. I try to plan a semester based on where I want student thinking to be by the time we reach the end of the semester. I don’t expect right or wrong answers because getting there is more of a process. I also monitor what works and what does not and make changes each semester. I’m not afraid to be wrong or make mistakes in front of my students because I think that is informative to my students about how I react to learning. It’s feedback pure and simple. It sets the learning environment and makes them learn that they will not be punished for being wrong. Anyhow, I’ve provided some more info that you can use or not but these are just basic ideas of pedagogy that fit well with computational thinkng and with thinking about the process of becoming an expert teacher.
Next, I want to be sure I have a handle on your observations. So here is what I saw:
1. Tools for discovery learning were good but unrealistic
2. “Technology as a tool but that doesn’t build computational thinking
3. Not sure that simulation actively builds computational thinking
4. Not all students are strong therefore computational thinking is not a good hook (I’ll come back to hook)
5. Discovery and exploration do not help slower students
You support:
1. Structured instructional materials
2. Assignments not projects
3. Emphasis on basics
4. Must be careful to avoid being challenged because you feel that you lack the experience and background to refute.
Thus, you are looking for resources that will motivate and gain the interest for all students. You are looking for resources that are already developed and that you can offer as lessons and assignments. So this implies that you are not know what is good or not and are looking for some resources with a stamp of excellence from authorities that you respect.
In 2000, the national academies published a report that has since been published as a book called, How People Learn or HPL.
Here are several key features from that information about teaching that impact your observations/perceived needs in resources.
Here are some thoughts:
1. Experts are able to solve problems quickly because they easily recognize patterns of information that help them diagnose then apply solutions. Novices lack the experience that provides the ability to see patterns of information and instead only see surface features of a problem which often leads to errors. Our job is to provide the experiences where they are able to learn from trial and error what works or not and slowly build a foundation.
2. Learning for understanding requires, deep foundations of factual knowledge, understanding of those facts “in context”, and organized knowledge. If we offer factual information then it is decontextualized for learners and they cannot make the connection to real life thus its useless facts. The curriculum you refers to offers information that is organized thus the learner never learns the process of organizing the information then applying it to real world situations.
3. Instruction must involve metacognitive strategies. Predict outcomes, be able to explain the content to others, recognize when they do not understand and have the ability to apply their prior knowledge. The curriculum content, activities, and assignments do not engage this.
4. Instruction must involve mentoring strategies to help students to take control of their learning. This is accomplished through inquiry learning, providing means of reflective assessment or making thinking visible, comparing and contrasting solutions, group discussion or collaboration.
5. Students preconceptions must be engaged in the learning process. Instructionally this is done through activities that make student thinking visible which allows teachers to see what they don’t understand or what they do. It allows formative assessment in the form of coaching to take place. It allows students to see and learn from mistakes. This is also engaged by offering multiple perspectives which can be implemented by sharing experts points of view, collaboration with other students, discussions, etc.
Computational Thinking involves:
1. Knowing data and ideas then using them to combine resources to solve problems
2. Use of tools and resources
3. Development of models and simulations based on personal understandings
4. Requires mathematical representation of problems
5. Abilty of mental modeling with symbols and other processes from other disciplines
6. Knowledge creation and activities that support this
7. Analysis of data, use of technology, integration with other disciplines to manipulate the data and thus to solve problems.
8. Ability to think analgously, interpret, use right = wrong answer plus corrections
In summary, structured instructional materials, assignments not projects, emphasis on basics and being careful not to make mistakes does not offer the instruction, the curricula, etc. to achieve the principles of computational thinking. If any level of expertise is reached is only routine based meaning that learners are unable to solve anything but the generic common problems and cannot do the novel problem solving needed in computational thinking thus they are never more than technicians and never achieve expertise since that has been taken away from them based on instructional choice of materials and assignments.
Learning is social and a process done not in isolation but in context. You and I both learned things in that conference. However, from our point of view of trying to meet teachers needs and trying to draw connections among STEM disciplines and computational thinking for the future, you observations are very helpful. So we must also think of where teachers are in their own process of learning to be teachers whether in cs or in other STEM subject. We must be able to help you easily see the connections from where you are to where computational thinking and instruction needs to be. I hope you find this useful.
Hi Bob,
Thanks a lot for your comments — much appreciated.
I do like the ideas you have shared and thank you for them. I respectfully disagree with some, though! =) I of course agree that at some point students need to get the opportunity to experiment and make mistakes. That’s how I’ve gain expertise in the domains I feel confident in. Certainly, projects are critically important for gaining these kinds of deep understandings, but structured assignments are an ideal way to model approaching a free-form problem. Students’ ability to explore productively is dependent on them having baseline knowledge. Students strong in math and science have plenty of background knowledge for exploring within the realm of computational thinking and being successful at it. As far as I’ve observed, weaker students do not and quickly become frustrated and discouraged when left to their own devices. Recent NMAP reports on mathematics education and books such as The Academic Achievement Challenge provide further evidence of this. Structure is a springboard for future confidence and innovation, not an end state.
I’d like to make a couple of clarifications. Regarding your paraphrased observations 4 and 5, it’s not that I don’t think computational thinking is not a good hook, it’s that I don’t think math and science are good hooks for computational thinking. Many students feel entirely alienated in their math and science classes and I see computational thinking and computer science specifically as a possible way to reengage students in math and science. Also, it’s not that I don’t believe that discovery and exploration never work for slower students it’s that I feel it’s particularly important to make sure weaker students have guidance and know where they’re going and why.
I’m also a little puzzled by this statement: “must be careful to avoid being challenged because you feel that you lack the experience and background to refute.” Absolutely not. I always encourage students to challenge me and have absolute confidence in my background and ability to find answers to questions I can’t answer off the top of my head. My goal is to get students asking hard questions as quickly as possible. In my experience, early structure is the way to go. My original statement on being able to answer challenges refers to educational philosophy. I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to support my stances but not a lot of data. Over the next couple of years I want to be careful to collect more robust evidence of the effectiveness (or not) of what I do.
Thanks!