- Welcome, everyone, my name's Deirdre Magnan.
I'm with the American Institute for Research.
Thank you for joining us tonight for our CS for All Teachers
webinar, Closing the Digital Divide:
How Districts Make the Technology They Have Work for CS.
So your host tonight will be Ashley Waring,
she's got a great group of panelists lined up
to discuss this topic.
Before I hand things over to Ashley,
I would just like to mention a few things.
If you haven't already, go ahead and let us know
your role and where you're joining us from
in the audience chat pod.
Also, any technical questions that you have,
you could submit there throughout the webinar,
and the same is true for any content questions that you have
for our panelists.
There will be times when
they're able to address those questions
throughout the webinar,
and also, if you'd like to ask a question verbally,
you can raise your hand in the meeting room,
and when you do that, I will unmute you
so that you can ask that question verbally.
Right now, we've got everyone muted.
To raise your hand if you don't,
if you're not sure how to do that, there's an icon
at the top of the webinar software.
It's a little person with their hand raised,
and you can click on that and we'll see
that you've raised your hand,
and unmute you for a moment to ask your question.
And so, I think without further adieu,
we are just about ready
to get going.
Yeah, looks like we are.
So I'm gonna hand things over to Ashley,
thank you again for joining us.
And Ashley, take it away.
- Alright, so I thought we could start
with getting everybody to introduce themselves,
the panelists.
If you could just take a couple seconds,
or like 15, 30 seconds, to say
where you're from and what your role is
and some fun fact about you.
And Sarah, we'll start with you.
- Great, hi, everybody, my name's Sarah Dunton.
I am the ECEP Alliance manager,
that's the Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance.
We're an NSF-funded project that works with 17 states,
16 states and the territory of Puerto Rico,
to broaden participation in K-12 computing.
Fun fact about me is that I grew up on an island.
- Alright, Matt, do you wanna go?
- Sure, yeah, I'm Matt Kuzmeskas.
I'm from Holyoke Public Schools in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
We are a turnaround district in receivership.
We are the second poorest district in the state,
second lowest performing as well.
So, part of the team brought in to help turn that around.
There, I'm Director of Technology and Systems.
So we do a lot of the back-end stuff,
a lot of the technology, a lot of support for teachers.
One of the fun facts about myself is I've
been a whitewater raft guy for 15 years,
so I do pretty advanced whitewater guides trips,
and people can come out with me and go do that,
so that's pretty fun.
- Very cool.
Alright, Bill.
- Thank you, so my name is Bill Church.
I'm the Director of White Mountain Science, Inc.,
we shorten it to WMSI, in northern New Hampshire.
I'm a former classroom physics and robotics teacher.
Through WMSI, we do STEM outreach,
so afterschool programs, summer camps,
teacher professional development,
and we work with high school and college interns.
So in northern New Hampshire, a fun fact is I enjoy
living in the mountains, so skiing,
hiking, and climbing with family and friends.
I've also, with students, been able to take coding
to the stratosphere, with high-altitude balloons,
so pretty fun stuff there.
- Alright, and Kelli Lane.
- [Kelli] Hi, thanks for having me tonight.
- Yes.
- [Kelli] My name is Kelli Lane,
and I'm with Hoover City Schools.
We are right outside of Birmingham, Alabama.
And I currently serve as the Technology Integration
Coordinator, which means I get to spend time
with teachers and how they're going to integrate
technology in their classrooms everyday.
My fun fact would be that I actually get to work
with Ashley, and she is in my district.
And then also, some of the participants
that have jumped on tonight, Daniel and Benny,
I'll give you a shout-out for joining in.
So thank you so much, and I look forward
to the chat tonight.
- Awesome, thank y'all.
And thank y'all so much for taking the time
to join in on this conversation.
I'm Ashley Waring, I'm a CS for All Teachers
Welcome Ambassador.
I'm currently serving as a K through five STEAM teacher
at Rocky Ridge Elementary School in Hoover.
Yeah, so let's get going.
So, this is the first question that I thought
we could talk about.
And this conversation,
this chat is gonna kind of go
like a natural conversation.
So just feel free to jump in
to give us your answer.
But question one is what does technology access
look like at your school, district, or in your network?
And Matt, if you don't mind, let's start with you.
- Sure.
Yeah, so in my district,
we recently used up all of our RD rate money
to basically renovate all of our systems and back-ends.
So we have pretty
great Wi-Fi in all of our buildings.
We've been able to,
so we're in Massachusetts, and we're actually able
to partner with MIT and the Mass Green
High Performance Computing Center
to revolutionize our Internet connection out there,
which is really pretty amazing.
So from there, like actually in the classrooms,
we've been able to, within the past two years,
purchase a little over 2,000 Chromebooks
for 5,500 students, so definitely not one-to-one.
But we're working with,
the primary motivator for that at the time
actually really was for computer-based testing.
But obviously, having them around as a resource
has been really huge for students and teachers.
And so we're actually got a lot of downhill momentum
right now going with just getting more technology
into the rooms, and all those pieces.
So we've also been able to purchase
more purposefully on some of our high school computing.
So we actually have some, we just this year
replaced all the computer labs at our high schools
so that we can run a lot more advanced stuff.
We can do 3-D graphics, and lots of
just much better equipment than they'd ever had in the past.
And then actually, believe it or not, just recently,
last year, too, we just bought,
we were just able to get teachers laptops
for the first time.
So they actually hadn't had laptops,
they'd actually just had desktops in their classrooms.
So right now, like I was saying before,
we're actually in the middle of a whole redesign.
So we're really right now expanding a lot
of the efforts and a lot of the opportunities for students.
So we've actually completely redesigned our high schools.
We're adding a STEM middle school.
And the actual, the high schools have been working
so that we have a traditional path kind of high school,
and then we also have a technical high school.
And so we're actually combining those
into a north-south campus that students will actually
kind of get bused back and forth in between at some point,
so they can experience the shops and the facilities
that the technical high school has,
and kind of have their own personalized pathway through it.
So with that, there's going to be a lot of,
we're kind of laying the groundwork right now
for a lot of the future plans going on for our schools.
So I think that about covers...
- Wow, you have a lot going on.
In a good way.
- [Kelli] I'll jump in and talk about Hoover.
So Hoover City Schools has been a one-to-one
with Chromebooks for the last four years.
Previous to that, we were an iPad one-to-one
in our high school for two years.
Currently, we are a one-to-one for grades three through 12,
and students are able to take those devices home year-round,
in a hope that it provides a device
not only for the student, but for the families
that we serve.
In our K two classrooms, those classrooms
have five Chromebooks plus two Chromeboxes for their use,
and we've just rolled those out this year,
the additional Chromebooks for the K two classrooms,
and we're working through that right now
with the new Android-enabled Chromebook.
So we're excited about that to see where Android's
gonna take us in those environments.
And we still have computer labs at our elementary schools.
And that's like Matt mentioned,
that's basically due to assessments.
And our middle school environment,
we have innovation-type spaces
when it comes to computer labs.
We have digital photography lab,
we have computer science lab,
and in our high school, we have things
such as engineering spaces,
and all the way to, we're about to build
sort of what Matt just said, which is why I wanted
to piggyback off of him.
We're building what used to be called a vocational center,
but now is going to be a career connection center,
that's going to incorporate some academies
such as a computer science academy
all the way to fire college, welding,
building construction.
And so we're trying to make the connections
between computer science in all these different ways.
Our network is pretty robust,
and we have wireless access points throughout,
so we are really rocking and rolling at Hoover,
I'm very proud of our structure that we have in place
for our teachers and students.
- I'll just quickly piggyback there and echo
that in northern New Hampshire,
a lot of our schools have the Chromebooks,
the sort of middle school, high school,
the one-to-one Chromebook access.
It's growing into the upper elementary schools.
So that's, and most of our schools
in northern New Hampshire have good Wi-Fi access
throughout buildings.
Library tech programs, and a growing number
of STEM labs,
and the access to CTE, or career and tech high schools.
So what I'm hearing from our other analysts is,
we could echo that up here in northern
New Hampshire as well.
- Alright.
Alright, so let's go ahead and we're gonna do our first poll
for the audience or participants.
So if you'll just type your answer in the box,
and we'll be able to see everybody's results.
What type of technology do you have at your school,
district, or network?
And I wanted to leave this kind of an open short answer,
because everybody has such different things,
I didn't want to limit it to just a few options.
Alright.
Have laptops.
- [Kelli] Ashley, while those questions are coming in,
I would be remiss if I did not mention that also,
we have some STEAM labs in our elementary schools,
and I say that because Ashley is the teacher
of one of those, and so, I would definitely like
to point out that we have those
in over half of our elementary schools.
Every elementary school has the opportunity to have a space,
and six of the 10 have a full-time teacher.
- And I see that doing nothing but growing.
And that's exciting.
Alright, so computer lab.
21st century flipped classroom.
Alright, I'm gonna give everybody
just a couple, like one more minute
to respond to our poll.
Windows continue forward.
And I'm not sure I know what Swivl is.
- So I'm looking at this wondering how well
a 13 year old Linux desktop compares to a raspberry pie.
- Yep.
- I'm guessing the pie might win. (chuckling)
- Alright.
Projectors, Doc Cams.
Alright, thanks everybody for responding.
We're gonna go to our second poll,
about actual student access to all of these
different types of technology.
Yeah, how often that happens.
Alright, so looks like four people, five people
have throughout the school day.
There's one that's weekly, biweekly, monthly.
Oh, wow.
It's just so interesting to see
the people we have here, and everybody's different
access levels.
Alright, so thank you, everybody, for responding.
That's really interesting information going forward.
Now we're gonna go back to the slides.
Alright, so we're gonna move to question two.
So we talked about the access that you have,
and I wanted to talk about the challenges
faced in building that access.
I know that Sarah and Matt, y'all are ready to answer.
So do either of you wanna jump in here?
- Well, I'll get us started.
My view is more of the national policy view,
and the last polls were really interesting,
when there was a real mix of actual access
during the school day.
So when you're thinking about being a teacher voice
in policy work, that really needs to be
an amplified voice, because we're talking about expanding
computer science for all, but you're making curriculum
decisions, and the reality is that your classrooms
might only have access once a month.
What is that gonna mean if a policy comes down
that says now you're teaching CS?
So we really work with states and state leadership,
which is everybody from the teachers
to building administrators to departments of education,
to focus on a landscape which is not just,
who's taking computer science now,
but what is the reality of your hardware,
what is the reality of training,
what is the reality of your bandwidth?
As I'm watching my little orange button tell me
that my bandwidth isn't great right now.
So what would that mean for actual
implementation in the schools?
And I don't have the answers, just something
to be aware of, as you all know,
the complexities actually in the school day.
- Alright,
and I don't know if y'all noticed that Tom said
that in New York, they have extreme network challenges.
Which I mean, I can think back to Hoover
beginning everything,
and we started with Nooks,
in third, fourth, and fifth grade,
and I just remember those running pretty slowly, too.
Does anybody else wanna jump in, answer,
or talk about the challenges faced?
- Yeah, sure.
So there are kind of three
challenges, one we've overcome.
So I would actually say we've pretty successfully
done over the bandwidth issues.
We actually have a full 10-gig network, wire-in network,
and then we have a three-gig connection out
that we can ramp up if we need to,
and we've been able to kind of invest and work on it.
But biggest thing and then, kind of this goes
to the last question, which is the advice.
But the biggest thing we were able to do is use
partnerships, and use as much
leverage elsewhere as we possibly could,
and really made sure that we overbuilt the network.
And we were, it's actually really worked out at this point.
So I would actually say we're pretty far ahead
for such a, in all other ways,
kinda low performing district.
So we're actually pretty proud of that one.
But it definitely was not the case even a couple years ago,
and we were actually, it was actually a long time
we were just riddled with D-DOS attacks as well.
So we've actually successfully been able to tackle
that problem, too, which is a whole 'nother thing
that I wouldn't wish upon anybody.
One of the other things that I wanna bring up
and kind of in a different way, but funding has actually
been a really big issue in Holyoke.
And not just the same kind of complaint
like there isn't enough money, but when money does come
to a poorer district like Holyoke,
it actually tends to be just in a grant.
So it's just one lump-sum type of money
that people just see, and their eyes light up,
and they go, "Oh my god, let's buy
"all this stuff for everybody."
And then what happens even two years later
or three years later or five years later?
And so, it even happened with, and I know it's not really CS
but even our copiers, like they all started dying
around the same time, and it's about five years
after they were all bought, and there's no plan
for doing that.
So similarly, we had a lot of problems
where all the original desktops were purchased
all at the same time with this giant grant
they got like 10 years ago, to upgrade,
and then they all are dying at the same time.
And so it's kind of scrambling to figure out
what we're doing, and so then we moved,
so now we've really moved to a leasing structure,
where any of the equipment that we're getting,
we're working on making sure that we're getting a lease.
And the really important part here is that we're getting
the leases that match the expected lifespan
of the equipment.
It sounds kind of obvious, but before I got here,
there was a five-year lease on Chromebooks and laptops
for teachers that I just,
it's killing me right now.
Because I kind of expect a Chromebook
for what I think is really a maximum
of like a three-year span on those,
and maybe you can stretch them to four.
But we just can't get rid of them, or can't replace them,
because we're still paying that lease.
So that's pretty interesting, but that's,
the funding and the way that comes in
has been a struggle.
And then the other, the last one is kinda
just the mindset in the district.
I think teachers have,
it's either you really have a really interested teacher
that then moves on, or you have teachers
that think computer science just happens elsewhere.
And so I've actually been really working on
kind of changing that mindset, and trying to,
as much as I can, not dismantle, but replace the structures
of old computer labs that kind of give that simple
of like, oh, computers happen there
and not so much in the classroom.
So we're really trying to bring the technology
to the classroom and help work with teachers,
even in small ways, like it's not really,
we're really trying to not just take that really interested
teacher, we're trying to just let little steps
grow into bigger steps and kind of use
people in the classrooms to inspire other teachers.
And we've been able to do some,
we've actually started a Holyoke University
where teachers can take classes from other teachers.
So it's actually been pretty interesting
to be able to expand that, so yeah.
- Yeah, what Matt mentions about leasing,
I think that's a solution where schools,
the schools in our area, northern New Hampshire,
that have found that solution, are very happy.
They've worked hard to put it in the budget,
and then that's a flat number that they can continue
in the budget.
And again, as Matt said, finding that right
lease time period is really important,
because Chromebooks, and other computers at that price
and quantity level, don't last as...
And kids, students at a one-to-one scenario,
some of them are gonna be very hard on those devices.
So for schools to plan for their maintenance and upkeep,
that's critical, a lot of forward thinking is required.
And then, when we have schools that are filled
with these Internet machines,
and we look at our high schools,
and what does coding look like at the high school level,
and does an Internet-only machine work?
Or, if all I do is write code for the screen
but I don't write codes for devices,
whether they be robotics or Internet of things devices,
or 3-D printing, is that a dead end
that we're throwing our high school students into?
So that's something we're seeing in northern New Hampshire
is a lot of access to Chromebooks,
but at the high school level, not a lot of access
to machines that can take it further,
for students who wanna really go there.
- Alright, and Kelli, do you have any input
on the challenges faced, building our access in Hoover?
- We did have some challenges, of course,
when we first started,
and we still have many today.
But I think that just the speed in which we move
is very difficult.
What today looks like is not what tomorrow's
gonna look like, and that's hard.
It's hard on teachers, it's hard on administration.
Some of the challenges we face have just,
in a one-to-one has been things like,
the students have access 24/7.
And when they have access 24/7,
sometimes that lends itself to decisions
that happen off-campus that we then deal with on-campus.
And even though we predicted that,
those scenarios change so often,
those are just challenges that we face as a team every day.
And we were talking about funding, certainly,
finding a sustainable model,
that would be a challenge that we revisit frequently.
And I just think, in general, buy-in.
Right now, we have it, so I think we're over that hump.
But if I can look back, that was a big challenge in general.
We kinda did it through finding a team of influencers.
If you are a big follower of anything on Instagram,
if they wanna sell flat-body tees,
they go and find the popular person on reality TV,
and they send them the free tee,
and they take their picture, and now all of a sudden,
everybody buys the tee.
So we tried to find the influencers in our school district,
and promote them,
and really say hey, you're a rock star,
and put all of our eggs in that basket.
And we called them the Engage learning facilitators,
that's just the name of our one-to-one.
And so teachers like learning from teachers,
and I hope that we see that same movement
with computer science, so if we can build up
those teachers and influencers,
and take some of the worry away,
that's really our goal in Hoover.
- Alright, awesome.
So let's move on to question three.
What does computer science look like
in your school, district, or network?
And Matt, if you don't mind,
we're gonna start with you.
- Alright, cool.
Yeah, so we're,
it's pretty interesting, so like I've probably said it
each time now, but we're in a state of receivership,
and so one of the things is,
we're really looking at pushing innovation in the district.
And so our superintendent is really gung-ho
on computer science, but I don't really even think he,
I don't know if he's watching or whatever.
But I really don't even think he knows
quite what that looks like.
So we're really trying to figure it out.
But one of the biggest things that I've come to know,
just from being a teacher is just that
computers in the classroom, and technology in general,
are kind of like a magnifying glass for teachers.
Like it's either, if they're really not a good teacher
to begin with, it's gonna really show that.
But if they're a good teacher and they're using it well,
it's gonna have a huge impact there.
So really where we, across the district,
we actually have two dedicated computer science teachers
at the middle school level,
and that's actually cut back from four last year,
there were actually two let go.
And so it's just kind of those hard decisions
that people are making.
So we're really having to go and kinda look at,
alright, so now we're gonna have a STEM school,
and we're gonna make sure that that's gonna be
kind of put in throughout their curriculum.
We have worked with our, and I saw the commentary
about the Chromebooks for K through eight,
and I really agree, except the budget
is really tough on there.
So one of the things we're really worked on,
and I'm really working on, is making sure the high schools,
as we redesign them, really have the equipment they need.
So we've, like I said, we've been replacing computer labs
with really high horsepower desktops.
We even have built a full graphics lab
with some great computers in there.
There's only 12 of them but they're,
my technicians are envious of those computers.
And so, we also have a really great partnership,
we actually have a community partnership with Holyoke Codes,
who actually comes in and does opportunities
for all of our seventh graders.
So it started last year with all of our seventh graders,
and they actually did a coding project
that basically was started in all the classrooms,
and then they'd be able to go,
we have a computing center in our town,
that we are very fortunate to have.
And so basically, we bus every single middle schooler
through there and they do a coding project.
And then we actually expanded that this year,
so now it's a, there's a seventh grade experience,
there's an eighth grade followup experience.
And we're hoping to just kinda keep on expanding that,
but we're really using the expertise of them.
And so with all this, it all sound pretty cool,
but really in the end, it's pretty disjointed
across our district, and we're really working
and trying to figure these things out,
but we're also figuring out a lot of problems all at once.
And so this is one of those things
where we're really, we know this is a priority
and we know that this is something we need to get into.
But we're also trying to thoughtfully design it in
in the future, so that what we have now,
we can kinda keep that growing, so.
- Yeah, I would echo the sentiment that it's
sort of a mixed scenario for CS
in the schools in northern New Hampshire.
And our schools, granted, are small schools,
well under 1,000 students, you know, even K-12,
well under 1,000 students in the towns.
And it's likely then in elementary or middle or high school,
there's one teacher that's trying to push things,
and is that early adopter and that influencer.
And those are terrific, and at White Mountain Science,
we get to work with that group of teachers,
and engage them through professional development.
So it is spotty what computer science looks like.
And boy, code.org and Hour of Code, they did an amazing job
of marketing that program, so that the word code
and computer science is becoming relevant again,
it's in our conversations, and I hope that continues.
So I'm really excited for this next phase,
where schools start to look at some scope and sequence K-12.
Those conversations are just
at the very beginning right now.
So I'm anxious to help those conversations move forward,
so we go from a couple of influencers
to some more widespread adoption of coding curriculum.
- Alright, and I know for us, I think it's
just getting started,
really it's just kind of voluntary integration
for K through five.
Mostly digital literacy, digital citizenship,
things like that.
Anybody else?
- I would say that, in our middle schools,
we do have dedicated teachers.
And that's something that we worked for,
and a couple years ago we put them together,
and they kinda came up with some commonalities
of what they were going to teach,
because as you kind of mentioned,
there wasn't an exact structure the way that,
if you're a math teacher, you're handed,
here's your standards, here's your curriculum.
So they had to work together, and they did,
and it was very successful.
And we also are a partner, of course, with Code,
so we're able to use those resources in our classrooms.
I think that, like Ashley mentioned,
we do have kind of a teacher buy-in.
The teachers that have bought in
have already started on this.
We have tech coaches in our school districts,
so they've been able to model for the last few years
how this could integrate into a general teacher's classroom.
And so we see that happening, as well.
Our state is adopting a course of study
that has standards for K-12, that's digital literacy,
computer science, so I think that we will see
that grow over the next few years,
because that's gonna radically change how computer science
happens in Alabama for our students.
So maybe this time next year,
we'll do a check-in and tell you how it's going.
- Sounds good.
Alright, so let's go to question four.
What kind of support system is in place for teachers?
I know we kinda touched on a little bit of this.
And I thought we could address,
I know we have one question about what PD
looks like in districts.
So what kind of support system is in place
for teachers implementing CS and computational thinking?
Sarah, if you wanna jump in, you can start us off.
- Yeah, you know, just as,
I keep hearing stories, or we all hear the stories
about the student that got lucky
that got into computer science
and sort of followed that pathway on.
I feel like I hear the stories of the teacher got lucky
and found their professional learning community.
And I think that that's tricky when we're still talking
about teacher isolation, but we have this
call for computer science for all.
So my plug, and I think I'm preaching to the choir here,
I'm gonna assume because I recognize so many names
that many of you are the early adopters,
and the ones that find your hashtags and your Twitter chat.
But in the sense of often being the owned teacher
in an elementary school, or middle or high school,
teaching computer science, looking to what national
organizations are online to just build out
a more robust community of resources.
And I'm sure that you could all make a longer list
than I can list off, but you know,
what are the unique communities?
Where can you get additional training, like through Code,
we've talked a lot about.
But what is Google offering, what is Microsoft offering?
With CS for All Teachers, just joining calls
and Twitter chats or I know Vicky was on here
who runs the K eight CS chat.
Sometimes it's a great way to get some just in time support
when you're facing classroom challenges,
whether it be around advocacy or pedagogy in this classroom.
- Alright, anybody... - We are actually,
we are actually partners with several
of our local universities.
And so one of the very first trainers for Code.org
in our state is a computer science professor
from the University of Alabama.
So he too came to our district and started
the training years ago.
We are also in talks with UAB,
University of Alabama at Birmingham,
and how they are going to partner
with the education department
and the computer science department
to send out teachers who are ready and prepared
with those skill sets, as we know that can sometimes be,
not difficult, but that's a journey
that those teachers go on.
And so, we look to partner with these universities, as well.
And I think that we will see some regional
professional development that happens,
based off of those partnerships.
- Yeah, so for us in northern New Hampshire,
we represent, that's one reason
I joined White Mountain Science is that,
we don't have universities in northern New Hampshire
that can do that support.
There's a gap to fill, so there's a couple
education organizations that I work with.
And we try to leverage state grants and foundation grants
to get more teacher professional development out there.
And it's still at that level of Hour of Code.
What's that, going from pre-awareness to awareness.
So we're still trying to spread the word
about online resources, of which there are many.
And I've seen in the chat, links and references
to resources here in the conversation.
We live in a time when you can go online and find free,
a lot of great resources.
But it does take those early adopter teachers,
those influencers,
to build out that network.
So for us, it's the lucky teacher that finds something
and shares it with their colleagues.
It's the early PD opportunities that really,
and then it's the school grant that some folks are writing.
That's the landscape of support now
in northern New Hampshire.
- Alright.
Sorry, I'm just trying to catch up on all the chat.
There's a lot of information going on down there,
and that's one great thing I love about this community,
is I kind of lucked in,
and went to a Code.org training that was offered
through my district, and that was my buy-in right there,
just that one-day training.
I was done.
And then I've just continued to grow that,
and I know this is just.
Yeah, Code.org.
But also, places like CS for All Teachers.
I'm gonna do a plug here, because we're a virtual community.
It's free, you sign up, and you can find your pod
of experience level,
and resources, and ask questions,
and that's been really helpful, too,
just finding your tribe, I guess.
Alright, let's go to question five.
So what steps are being taken by you or others
to help with expanding future computer science instruction?
- Well, I'm happy to share,
in northern New Hampshire, just that an effort
to actually define what a certification
in computer science looks like.
So we have the first I think five, 10 teachers
gaining that certification this coming year,
and then they'll grow from there.
So high school, and then I believe
a middle school certification.
And Code.org is making a great push here in New Hampshire.
We have, we're sending I think 40, 45 teachers
to the Phoenix conference this summer.
And a part of that deal is that they're then
offering a course.
So we go from doing a unit of study in code to a course.
And in New Hampshire, those 45 early adopters
and influencers, I think can play a big role
in spreading, especially if then at the state level,
there's a push for teachers to become certified
in computer science.
- I mentioned earlier that the state of Alabama
is working to, actually next week it should go
before the Board of Education that we will have
a course of study that mainly focuses
on computer science, but also has digital literacy
in it, as well.
And so, the steps that we are taking in order to help expand
really is starting from the state.
I really, I'm proud of that work.
I mentioned Dr. Jeff Gray earlier,
he's from the University of Alabama,
who brought Code.org to us.
And he was integral in these standards, as well.
And so he's taking it from a standpoint of,
what should these students look like
when they come to him at the university.
And so his work has trickled down to the K-12 environment.
So I think that, again, with those key partnerships,
we are looking to take something from,
Bill, I think you mentioned the awareness stage,
all the way into integration.
And I know that that's a big task,
and that we might see that that takes years of work,
but just knowing that it's on our mind, our horizon,
is very exciting to me and to others, as well.
- Alright, anybody else have input?
- I'll just chime in and say with the ECEP states,
we're looking at this holistically,
both pre-service training, how can we involve universities,
how can we help them to build out programs?
What are the needs of inservice teachers?
How can states help the teachers find community,
and find the PD that is right for them?
How does that all tie into the frameworks
and standards that are being developed?
So really taking a holistic view of what it's going,
it's the long game, it's the marathon of CS for all.
And trying to hear all of the voices that put it together,
and listen to the obstacles, and try to think
about ways through them, not around them,
that will get us on the other side of computer science
being a regular part of the K-12 school day.
- Alright, anybody else?
And audience, or participants, I wanted to remind you.
If you have a specific question, feel free
to use the raise hand feature
so that we can get your question answered.
We've been trying to address them here.
Alright, so let's go to question six.
And this is actually our last question.
And I'm glad that we have a little bit
of time to answer it, 'cause I feel like this,
we'll get some really great input here.
So what one or two pieces of advice would you have
for implementing computer science in settings
with varying access to technology?
- Yeah, I can take that first, if you want.
So I think it's kinda come up already in the past answers.
But I think the biggest thing is just partnerships
are so key.
And so, basically, it's kinda like,
so we were able to, one of the things we were able
to partner with our local gas and electric company
to run a full fiber optic network within our schools.
We were able to partner with MIT
to just boost our Internet connection.
And those are all based off of just conversations
that I just kinda went like, hey,
what if we did this, is that possible?
Or what do you think about that?
And so I think the biggest advice
for forming those partnerships is ask, always ask.
Always figure out what, even if it sounds ridiculous,
just always ask.
'Cause what's the worst that can happen, they say no?
And so, we've been able to do a lot of really good stuff.
And so there were some more kind of obvious partnerships
we've had, like we have a really great partnership
with HP right now, where they've been really helpful
for us through a local vendor,
who's been just really, really helpful.
And we're pretty trusting, not to say we don't
compare prices and that kind of stuff.
But we've been able to kind of form those partnerships
and keep them, and really kinda nurture those
and keep them going.
And I think the biggest thing there is just,
nothing comes from not asking.
And so, even when it comes to like pricing on stuff
from partners, from vendors, is I always just,
I never take the face value for the price.
I always say, "Well, yeah, what about a little bit less?"
Right, I'll even give them the sob story,
like poor kids in Holyoke, and show them sad puppy eyes
from little kids and stuff.
But it definitely is like ask,
and it pretty much never fails
that the initial quote you get on any price of something
is always negotiable with the business.
And it almost always comes down, which really helps.
And so, the other piece of advice that I just
I wanna make sure is just, all technology
is just an inanimate object.
There's nothing until the people are there.
And so you've gotta make sure
that what you're putting money towards
and what you're putting time and effort
and resources towards is really,
has the people behind it and people at the other end.
So underestimating the human aspect
is probably one of the most common problems,
and probably one of the biggest problems that's left
kind of a bad taste in its mouth in my district,
that we're working to get over,
and we're really working to push past that.
And so, and again, the always ask is even like,
that's the same thing with teachers, right?
Always ask, always put that email out there,
like hey, there's this really cool program,
who wants to try this?
There's gonna be an early adopter to raise their hand
and tries it out.
And then they can extend that in the future.
So it's just that, keep pushing, stay curious,
and keep seeing what you can get,
and how far you can push stuff.
- I would say, with the key people in your district
that are leading and spearheading the CS movement,
is to have answers to the hard questions.
So, if someone says how would we possibly ever do this?
That you have kind of a consistent answer
as to how we're going to do this.
Well, we're gonna do it through offline means,
or we're gonna do this in X-Y-Z manner,
so that whoever that team is that's spearheading,
those influencers know the answers,
so that they're not always
having to defend, but instead, they're promoting.
They're taking that opportunity to take that conversation
that could be a negative and really
change it into a positive.
So I would say getting together and having
kind of that FAQ, this is what we're gonna say
to some of those hard questions.
And then also, modeling it.
And being, walk the, walk it, do it.
If it's an activity that you feel like every student
in the classroom needs a device to do,
take it offline and try to do it that way,
so that when somebody tries to push back,
you can always, you feel confident in how this can be done,
from the smallest level to the grandest.
- Yeah, and I would say,
the story that I think I heard earlier,
who are the lucky kids that
get into that career?
And this notion, with sports teams or entertainers,
who gets to go pro?
Well, in STEM and in computer science, we can all go pro.
Right, our students can all go pro.
And so, that's a powerful message
that this is not for the lucky few, it's for anybody.
And that the other piece that I keep working
with my team on, and then schools, is evaluation.
So if we implement a new program, whether it's
an afterschool coding program, or a single unit in a class,
collect some form of data.
If it's informal, if you have to make it up yourself.
Doesn't have to be standardized science tests
or language arts tests.
It could be Code.org usage, the number of lines of code.
How many students, how many boys and girls, how many days?
Collect that evaluation data, and then represent it
with these resources, we did this this year or this week.
And our target is this, and we're gonna keep tracking
and representing it to you.
That goes a long way with funders, with families,
with administrators, very powerful.
- So just to... - Bill, to piggyback off
of that, speaking about, I'm sorry, Sarah.
- No, go, go!
- Speaking of administrators, I just wanted to mention
that in the last training that we had with Code.org,
we had about four or five of our elementary
assistant principals in there, who had never gone
through any sort of training with their school,
with themselves as a teacher.
So they came in as fresh meat, and when they left,
they got it.
And so, when their teachers then wanted to commit money,
resources, and time toward the CS movement,
then certainly, they were better educated as to the why,
which is what we wanted.
- I was gonna share a story, if anybody was just
at the recent SIGCSE conference in Baltimore,
you might have heard this, but when thinking
about classroom and district obstacles,
a professor from Puerto Rico stood up
and told a story, of course, trying to teach
computer science without power in Puerto Rico right now,
and relied on CS Unplugged to finish up a curriculum,
and was able to change how they were teaching it
in that particular classroom.
The second story, also out of Puerto Rico,
was that there was a high school group that was
for the first time working with mobile CSP.
Also couldn't finish their app development,
because they couldn't charge their phones,
and they had people donate solar
arrays, small arrays for the school, so that the students
could charge their devices and finish.
So I feel like, whenever we think of obstacles
in our area, to think about the teachers in Puerto Rico
that just figured out how to get it done.
Certainly, that's extreme, but sometimes,
I think that we're talking about districts,
especially in rural areas, that might just not have
the access, and how are we making sure that PD
and curriculum are taking into consideration
very diverse school districts?
- Alright.
I believe that is going to be our last question.
Let's see.
So thank you everybody for joining in on the conversation.
I believe we have a survey for you.
- Yeah, everybody loved the solar alternative.
I'm about to look into that, too. (chuckling)
- So before we close things out, I'll just say a few words.
To reintroduce myself, I'm Deirdre Magnan,
I'm with the American Institute for Research.
I'm based in Boston.
And AIR helps manage the CS for All Teachers
Community of Practice, which is funded
by the National Science Foundation,
so we thank them for their support,
and that they value the work that you all are doing.
And I'm not a CS educator,
but it's always so interesting to attend these webinars,
and hear about the different struggles people are facing,
the successes that they've had,
resources that they're using,
and just the support that the group is offering,
just looking at the chat pod.
It's been on fire, and people have been communicating
with each other, and we love to see that.
So we're so glad that people are finding this useful.
On that note, join our Community of Practice.
Everyone's welcome, as Ashley mentioned earlier,
when she was putting in her plug, it is free to join.
There's something for everyone,
whether you're an elementary school teacher,
middle school, high school, if you're focused on CSP
or ECS, we've got a group for all of those topics.
And there's resources, blogs, webinars like this,
all kinds of things.
And the more members who join, the more robust
the community becomes, the more supportive
it is to everyone.
So please do go ahead and join, we'd love to have you.
I wanna also, of course, thank tonight's panelists,
Kelli, Sarah, Bill, and Matt,
and Ashley, who is a CS for All Teachers
Community Ambassador, so thank you, Ashley, also,
for hosting tonight, we appreciate that.
You all make the community so valuable.
Also, just wanted to let everyone know
that we will be posting the webinar recording on the site.
That's csforallteachers.org.
You should see that link there on the screen now.
So we will post the recording there.
We also post it to YouTube, and tweet it out,
so there's different ways to access this recording,
as well as the PowerPoint presentation,
we'll get that online for you to have access to, as well.
We host these webinars, typically one or two a month.
So we don't have the exact date yet for the next one
that we're hoping will be in March.
But do check out the site, because we post that
in the events section, there on the site.
And Ashley mentioned a survey.
So we want your feedback, we wanna know how we're doing,
and we wanna know what you enjoyed about the webinar,
what we could do better.
This helps us improve both content
and the way we deliver it.
So if you could just take two minutes
to fill out that survey, it should be really quick.
It's going to open up in a new browser tab
or window for you, when we close the room.
I'm also gonna paste it in the chat pod,
so that you'll have the link to that,
you can access it.
It will also be on the screen,
just in case it doesn't open automatically for you,
it'll be on the screen when the room closes, as well,
so there's plenty of opportunities to take that survey,
which again, we do really appreciate.
So Ashley and panelists, unless you have anything else
that you'd like to say, I think that's it for the night.
But I wanna give you a shot to say any final words.
- I just wanted to thank my panelists for being here
and participating in this conversation,
it was really great to hear from all of you, thank you.
- Thank you.
- Yep, pleasure to be here.
- Thank you.
- Thanks, everybody, bye bye.
- Alright, bye.
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