Cross-disciplinary computing
In 2022, we hosted a series of seminars to engage in questions of how computing and other school subjects can be taught together. Watch recordings, read our summary blogs, and download speakers' slides.
Computing education in non-formal settings (8 November 2022)
Speakers: Tracy Gardner and Rebecca Franks (Raspberry Pi Foundation)
Computing education research often focuses on the formal curriculum and how computing is taught in school, either discretely in CS lessons or across the curriculum. In this seminar, Tracy and Rebecca discussed how non-formal computing provision makes a contribution to the computing eco-system and enables children to learn CS skills and knowledge regardless of whether it is available in the curriculum in their country or setting. They shared with you the results of a literature review recently conducted focusing on non-formal learning and then described the 321 Make! Framework being adopted at the Raspberry Pi Foundation and its evaluation to date.
Dr Tracy Gardner has a Computer Science PhD, has worked in academia and industry as a computer scientist and has taught primary school computing. She has extensive experience as a mentor for Code Club, CoderDojo, and hack events for young people. Tracy is the co-author of micro:bit in Wonderland, and the co-creator of the picozero beginner Python library for programming Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers. Tracy currently works for the Raspberry Pi Foundation creating content for use in our clubs and for creators at home. Tracy entered computing through outreach activities targeting those who wouldn’t otherwise have had access and is keen to ensure that others have such opportunities.
Rebecca Franks has over 15 years’ experience teaching computing. She has been a faculty director and was part of the leadership team working on the Pupil Premium initiative in her school. She has a keen interest in diversity and inclusion and has volunteered for CAS Include for the last 10 years. CAS Include is a working group with a mission to increase diversity in computing by making the subject more inclusive. Rebecca joined the Raspberry Pi Foundation to work on creating classroom resources for the Teach Computing Curriculum, Oak National Academy, and Isaac Computer Science. She now works to create non-formal learning resources for the coding clubs and home learners the Foundation supports.
Building tomorrow’s core computational curriculum (4 October 2022)
Speaker: Conrad Wolfram (Wolfram)
Coding in schools is a welcome addition to the curriculum. It is one part of delivering modern STEM and computational understanding, but traditional maths remains the stalwart computational subject in terms of time allocation, age-range, and importance attached to assessments in it. Is this what’s required for the core computational subject, fit for the AI age? And how does what we have at the moment between coding, maths and other STEM subjects match up? Does maths and coding empower computational literacy for all and enhanced computational thinking for a larger cohort in society? Can we parallel the benefits of mass literacy from the 19th century with a rise in mass computational literacy in the 21st? In this talk, Conrad outlined his team’s decade of work to map-out the solution: the first to build a core computational curriculum from scratch that assumes computers exist. He gave live examples of the results, explained the journey so far for this transformation, why he published The Math(s) Fix in 2020, and how action on delivering its proposal is urgent for society’s wellbeing.
Conrad Wolfram, physicist, mathematician and technologist, is Strategic Director and European Co-Founder/CEO of Wolfram – the “math company” behind Mathematica, Wolfram Language and Wolfram|Alpha (which powers knowledge answers for Apple’s Siri) for over 30 years. He is recognised as a thought leader in AI, data science and computation, pioneering a multiparadigm data science approach. Conrad is also a leading advocate for a fundamental shift of math education to become computer-based or alternatively introduce a new core subject of computational thinking. He founded computerbasedmath.org and computationalthinking.org to fundamentally fix math education for the AI age – rebuilding the curriculum assuming computers exist. The movement is now a worldwide force in re-engineering the STEM curriculum. In 2020, Conrad released his groundbreaking book, TheMathsFix.org, to lay out, as a readable but comprehensive proposal, this reformation: from identifying the problem to a detailing solution and suggesting some of the ways we might get there.
ME++: Data ethics for the computing classroom through biometrics, ballet, and AR (6 September 2022)
Speaker: Genevieve Smith-Nunes (University of Cambridge)
Exploring data ethics through creative immersive tools with brainwave and motion capture data. Is there a difference in sense of self (identity) between the human and the virtual? How does sharing your personal biometric data make you feel? How can biometric and immersive development tools be used in the computing classroom to raise awareness of data ethics?
Genevieve Smith-Nunes is a 3rd-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge and a lecturer at the University of Roehampton. In 2013, she set up ReadySaltedCode, an organisation providing innovative digital computing STEAM-focussed education. The organisation provides workshops and training and produces DataDrivenDance performances: large scale technology-enhanced classical ballet performances designed to highlight, engage and encourage people to love computing. DataDrivenDance looks to explore the ethical and social justice implications of future technologies, including biometrics and XR, and aims to reimagine how we could potentially deliver a creative computing education.
Building new clubhouses of computing: Introductory equity-oriented computer science with electronic textiles for high school students (12 July 2022)
Speakers: Yasmin B. Kafai (University of Pennsylvania) and Elaine Griggs (Pembroke High School, Massachusetts)
Addressing the longstanding disparities in computer science learning opportunities for students from historically marginalised communities has been a central challenge in K-12 CS education. While many efforts have focused on unlocking the doors to existing clubhouses, an alternative strategy is to “build new clubhouses” of computing by promoting culturally-relevant contexts in computing, bringing in new materials and activities. In this talk, Yasmin and Elaine presented findings and insights gained from implementing a novel eight-week, electronic textiles unit within the Exploring Computer Science curriculum, where students designed wearable electronic textile projects with microcontrollers, sensors, and LEDs. They also shared teachers’ emergent practices in transforming their CS classrooms, including valuing student expertise and promoting connections in personalised work. In the discussion, they addressed (1) the ways these practices succeeded in broadening access while deepening participation in computing and establishing home-school connections and (2) what lessons were learned from moving these hands-on computing classroom activities online during the pandemic for teaching and online professional development.
Yasmin B. Kafai is Lori and Michael Milken President’s Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, with a courtesy appointment in Computer and Information Science. She is a learning designer and researcher of online tools, projects and communities to promote coding, crafting, and creativity. With colleagues at MIT, she developed the programming language Scratch and researched applications and participation in clubs, classrooms, and online communities. More recently, she has developed and researched the use of electronic textiles to introduce computing, crafting, and engineering to high school students and teachers as part of the nationwide “Exploring Computer Science” curriculum. She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the International Society for the Learning Sciences.
Elaine Griggs is a Computer Science teacher at Pembroke High School in Pembroke, Massachusetts, United States. She is also a veteran teacher and facilitator for the Exploring Computer Science curriculum. In 2019, she received the National Educator Award in Computer Science from the CSTA.
Computational heterogeneity in STEM education (7 June 2022)
Speaker: Pratim Sengupta (University of Calgary)
Technocentrism is a recurrent and recursive phenomenon in computing education. In this talk, Pratim offered images of computational heterogeneity in K-12 STEM education as a way to counter technocentric myopia. Drawing upon modelling escapades in computational science as well as studies conducted both in classrooms and informal spaces, he argued how attending to context, difference, ambiguity and postponement – rather than the immediacy of control – can centre voices from the margins of discipline and society through honouring the complexities of language and experience.
Dr Pratim Sengupta is a Professor of Learning Sciences and STEM education at the University of Calgary, where he has also served as the Research Chair of STEM Education. His interests include heterogeneous approaches to making computing and complexity open and public, both in classrooms and informal spaces. He directs the Mind, Matter & Media Lab (www.M3lab.org) and has recently co-authored Voicing Code in STEM: A Dialogical Imagination, available open access from MIT Press.
Adding a teaspoon of computing to history and mathematics classes (3 May 2022)
Speaker: Mark Guzdial (University of Michigan)
Participation in computer science classes is disappointing if our goal is “CS for All”. In both the US and the UK, evidence suggests that computer science classes are under-subscribed. We might now suspect that the “All” are unlikely to ever take a “CS” class. If we want more students to experience and learn about CS, we may have to take the “CS” to where the “All” are. Task-specific programming (TSP) languages are designed to be highly usable, rapidly learned (less than 10 minutes, typically), and matched specifically to learning activities that non-CS teachers want in their classrooms. These are “Teaspoon languages” (playing off the TSP abbreviation) because they add a teaspoon of computing into other subjects. Mark's team have developed prototype Teaspoon languages now for social studies, language arts, and mathematics classes. The strategy is complementary to approaches to grow CS recruitment and enrolment. Their design approach is novel for involving non-CS teachers in the participatory design of new languages with a high degree of usability. They talked with non-CS teachers about what they might want with computing, build prototype tools for them, and expect withering criticism. In this talk, Mark demonstrated multiple Teaspoon languages and invited participants to play with them.
Mark Guzdial is a Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan. He studies how people learn computing and how to improve that learning. He was one of the founders of the International Computing Education Research conference. He worked for a dozen years in public policy as one of the leads on the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, helping 16 US states and Puerto Rico to improve and broaden their computing education. He is a Fellow of the ACM.