CSTA NE (Huskers) February Minutes

Date: February 23, 2015: 6:00 PM — 7:43 PM

Place: ITFP

Present: Steve Carr (ITFP), Leen-Kiat Soh (UNL), Scott Handelman (Lincoln Southwest), Kent Steen (LPS), Deb Bulin, Lloyd Summerer (Lincoln Lutheron), Brent Jarosz (ITFP), Scott Burns (late, Pius X), and from the Lincoln Coding Women: Lisa Davis (social media) (oobbles@oobbles.com)

1. Introduction
2. Report on meeting with Cory Epler and Lillie Larson
   • 1. Fairness of access across state
     • 1.1. Distance learning
   • 2. Existing K-12 CS standards — CSTA has one
   • 3. Differences between IT, CS, and instructional technology
   • 4. Visit setup to visit elementary school teacher Prabulous March 4th, 2015.
   • 5. Also the change in admissions at UNL
     • 5.1. including adding a new science unit for CS?
   • 6. ACTION PLAN: Leen-Kiat will contact Code.org again to help with policy change, and to follow up with Lillie Larson/Cory Epler
   • 7. ACTION PLAN: Leen-Kiat will ping Cory Epler and Lillie Larson again in March
   • 8. ACTION PLAN: Kent will demo at NAG and Cory/Lillie would possibly attend
   • 9. ACTION PLAN: Leen-Kiat will meet with UNL CSE Department chair on UNL admissions
   • 10. ACTION PLAN: Steve will meet with Rod Armstrong from the AIM institute to get business to share their perspectives with NDE/state board
3. Report on meeting with Lincoln Chamber of Commerce at NIC
   • 1. Rod Armstrong from AIM was there
   • 2. City-wide code event in conjunction with CS Education Week, December 5th, at NIC (250 students) (probably a 3-hour event)
     • 2.1. Awareness → what CS is, what is it used in the realworld (probably 1.5 hours)
       • 2.1.1. Underground sensor, drones, simulation
       • 2.1.2. Nanonation, Hudl — business end
     • 2.2. Hands-on coding
   • 3. Suggestions
     • 3.1. Upper elementary and middle schools
     • 3.2. Targeting parents, teachers, career counselors
     • 3.3. Show them the social impact of computer science.
     • 3.4. Pull in more youth organizations (e.g., scouts, 4H)
     • 3.5. Lincoln Southeast + Lincoln Southwest students to do presentations
     • 3.6. Maybe a series of videos on computing/IT
     • 3.7. One-stop website of events taking place in Lincoln, NE
       • 3.7.1. Like our Facebook page?

4. Our CSTA Website
   • 1. All interactive stuff gone away — some wordpress plug-in
   • 2. ACTION PLAN: Lloyd will investigate the website problem
5. Favorite CS Programming Problems
   • 1. Steve presented a “mad dog” problem (geometry) on looping, discussed the characteristics of the problem, also the instructional aspects (different phases: get things done, make it pretty, implement/test)
   • 2. Lloyd presented two problems: Coffee shop that ships all over the country, help compute prices; Cash register
     • 2.1. Bonuses/additional tasks to get more points (some are very do-able to lure students in)
     • 2.2. Grading criteria: Documentation (Assignment, Specification, Top-Down Design, Test Cases), Source Code (modularization & generalization, design, structure & efficiency, Readability, Consistency & naming, initial comments, coding comments), and Execution (user interface, robustness, testing, correctness)
     • 2.3. they grade it first, then graded by teacher.
     • 2.4. Chuck asked about denominations optimization
   • 3. Scott Handelman presented on problem: logic puzzle/crossword puzzle
     • 3.1. Find words that are interesting: do string manipulation, find the longest word (for example)
     • 3.2. part 1: loading file (walk-through) to come up with a dictionary
     • 3.3. part 2: 10 different assignments for students to choose five (choice!)
       • 3.3.1. some are easier than the others (anagrams, palindromes, 4-more-Zs, vowel-to-consonant ratio, scrable)
       • 3.3.2. words — instant feedback on whether meaningful outcomes
     • 3.4. Give prizes to students who could do all ten.
   • 4. Leen-Kiat talked about his Game Days for Multiagent System class
   • 5. Scott Burns trying to come up with a grading rubric for programming in geometry
6. Scott Handelman discussed his NETA talk on Intro to Programming in Python
   • 1. Target audience — a wide range (experienced, beginning teachers, novice)
     • 1.1. Assuming zero python experience
     • 1.2. What students have done
     • 1.3. Resources available
   • 2. Lloyd: Probably more high school teachers
   • 3. Kent: could get all levels too
   • 4. Definitely have resources for all
7. Next meeting is March 23, 2015
   • 1. April Meeting is April 20, 2015 (right before NETA)

Thanks,

Leen-Kiat