Hi, I’ve taught computational biology to high school students for years to accelerated students, most of whom attend science and math magnet (specialty) schools. These students self-select for a rigorous high school curriculum and are motivated to take on challenging work, including programming. We teach them R, which they use to carry out independent investigations. We teach the Software Carpentry R lessons when the course starts each fall.
Not surprisingly most of our students come from desirable zip codes, with some exceptions. We teach students at the Rockdale Magnet School for Science & Technology, a school-within-a-school in Georgia. Rockdale County High School is Title 1 funded (Federal Aid for the Disadvantaged), and more than 50% of its students receive free lunch. Our students from Rockdale often don’t own computers, and until recently the school had only a few computers available for student use. The other schools we work with are all public (no tuition) and their students come from diverse backgrounds, though most of these kids don’t seem to lack for much. We don’t feel like we’re preaching to the choir. In addition to reaching students from diverse socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, more than half of our students since 2006 have been young women. We gave them their first experiences in programming, and more than a few have stated that they chose computational majors in university as a direct result of our course. One recent alumna said “I took the course because it had the word biology in it, and I’ve always wanted to be a biologist. Now that I’ve taken it, I’m hooked on computer science.” Relevance to students’ interests is key to motivation. Biology, social studies, and psychology attract women (NSF Science & Engineering Indicators, 2016), so computer science integrated within these disciplines will reach more than just the usual suspects. Data Carpentry lessons do this already for bio and social studies, and can be taught to accelerated students at science/math magnet school students or students in gifted and talented programs. Software Carpentry R, Python and Matlab lessons work with inflammation data and can be integrated into biology, health or math classes. It’s difficult for high school teachers to find time to fit programming into their courses, which is why it’s important to work with accelerated schools or gifted programs. They are less driven by results from standardized tests (a U.S. fixation) and need novelty and challenge to meet their students’ learning needs. Guest teaching by Software Carpentry instructors could be a welcome addition – it would give teachers and students direct access to practicing scientists and provide top-notch programming instruction. Sue Sue McClatchy Bioinformatician & Research Program Manager The Jackson Laboratory 207.288.6431 [email protected] From: Discuss <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 3:29 PM To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Discuss Digest, Vol 34, Issue 7 Send Discuss mailing list submissions to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Discuss digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: SWC for high school (16-18) (Ted Hart) 2. Re: SWC for high school (16-18) (Tracy Teal) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 04 May 2016 18:14:20 +0000 From: Ted Hart <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: Greg Wilson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, Software Carpentry Discussion <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Discuss] SWC for high school (16-18) Message-ID: <ca+swrbdu2hl7m78ds6hgowdqcf9qppt512a_tzso5mvszng...@mail.gmail.com<mailto:ca+swrbdu2hl7m78ds6hgowdqcf9qppt512a_tzso5mvszng...@mail.gmail.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" I think what high school students will get out of SWC probably varies widely by the level of the class or school. My intuition is that there's probably much more heterogeneity at the high school level in terms of access to resources, background etc... than you'd find at the graduate school level. I've actually thought that a SWC workshop would be well received where my wife teaches. However it's probably an outlier school, a privateschool in silicon valley mostly attended by the children of tech execs and VC's. I know they regularly use github for projects (Like the school robotics team: https://github.com/RoboticsTeam4904) and each student has to complete a long term thesis type work that is often an app or build their own drones and program them. They build websites and host them on github as well for humanities projects. The pitfall of teaching to high school students seems to be how best to inspire interest (as Greg mentioned). I would guess there's a strong bifurcation in those who know and care about programming and those who don't. Whereas grad students are all doing similar kinds of work and those who lack programming skills can see a real benefit to their productivity, I think the same could not be said of high school students. Those who are really interested have probably taught themselves and are really into programming for their own reasons, and those who aren't have no motivation to learn. That means a workshop would just be preaching to an already well educated choir. The real challenge would be how to inspire those who don't take joy in programming that these are useful skills. Also the types of schools that would be most receptive / able to host a workshop (like Nueva where all the kids are given brand new laptops ever school year) are likely to be those who might be in the least need (Not to open up a pandora's box of class and school districts.) I think to work the instructors would have to work closely with the STEM or CS teachers at a school to tailor the workshop to the specific needs and skill levels. If people would be willing to take that time, I think it would be really positive. Ted On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 9:20 AM Greg Wilson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 2016-05-04 12:05 PM, John Corless wrote: I think this is a very interesting question that I have considered. I helped at a workshop at a local university and decided to bring my 16 year old daughter. She is an excellent science minded student, and more or less kept up during the workshop (with extra support from Dad!). But in the end I am not sure she got much from the experience. I am pretty certain that she has forgotten shell, git, and R commands and syntax since she hasn't used them since. For her, normal high school computer use is limited to writing papers with word processors. My hope was that she would at least know that there is such a thing as a command line and scripts of programming languages that can be used to analyze data. Maybe that will help her when she faces more serious computer work later in college and beyond. So my hope was simply that a little familiarity might breed less discomfort later in her life. +1 to this - in order for lessons to stick, learners have to be able to do something with the knowledge that they actually want to do, and most high schoolers don't have a lot of legacy data to reformat or analyze. This is one of the reasons why the "media first" approach pioneered by Guzdial and Ericson is so effective: pretty much everybody has a use for fiddling with pictures. (I'm still frequently tempted to re-do our intro Python lesson around image manipulation, but that's a topic for another day...) Thanks, Greg -- Dr Greg Wilson Director of Instructor Training Software Carpentry Foundation _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.software-carpentry.org/pipermail/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org/attachments/20160504/51f4cd38/attachment-0001.html> ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 12:28:42 -0700 From: Tracy Teal <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: Ted Hart <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: Greg Wilson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, Software Carpentry Discussion <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Discuss] SWC for high school (16-18) Message-ID: <CAOYVmROCR8=9FOjX-xBTS1QFYrO_y4KgmwaMAYMOtqer6xn=x...@mail.gmail.com<mailto:CAOYVmROCR8=9FOjX-xBTS1QFYrO_y4KgmwaMAYMOtqer6xn=x...@mail.gmail.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" This is a great conversation. There are a lot of opportunities for teaching and helping in instructing for coding for K-12. The current Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry lessons aren't geared for high schoolers, because they assume motivated learners - people who are aware of the need to, or at least interested, in learning these skills to apply them to problems they're already interested in. Most high schoolers don't have this same experience or perspective yet. That motivation is partly why the 'media first' approach is effective. It provides motivation by having an interesting problem to work on. It's more the 'maker' approach; you'll learn these skills because you're interested in solving the problem or making a neat project. There are materials that have been developed for a broader audience. In particular the Hour of Code (https://hourofcode.com/) is a global effort that has this project-based approach and have a lot of different topics, at different levels, and in many languages. These might be a great starting place if you're volunteering to teach at the K-12 level. These lessons also have the same hands-on approach that the Software and Data Carpentry lessons do. The experience that you as Software and Data Carpentry instructors have makes you terrific people to teach at the K-12 level, and it is really important for generating enthusiasm for computational skills and programming! It's just finding that right match of materials and students. We would love to hear about your experiences teaching at this level or in other outreach efforts. Please let us know here on the Discuss list, or on the (not yet often used) Data Carpentry discuss forum ( http://discuss.datacarpentry.org/t/teaching-at-the-k-12-level-or-in-outreach-efforts/111) Create an account or sign in with your github ID (I'm fixing the gmail login). Best, -Tracy On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Ted Hart <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I think what high school students will get out of SWC probably varies widely by the level of the class or school. My intuition is that there's probably much more heterogeneity at the high school level in terms of access to resources, background etc... than you'd find at the graduate school level. I've actually thought that a SWC workshop would be well received where my wife teaches. However it's probably an outlier school, a privateschool in silicon valley mostly attended by the children of tech execs and VC's. I know they regularly use github for projects (Like the school robotics team: https://github.com/RoboticsTeam4904) and each student has to complete a long term thesis type work that is often an app or build their own drones and program them. They build websites and host them on github as well for humanities projects. The pitfall of teaching to high school students seems to be how best to inspire interest (as Greg mentioned). I would guess there's a strong bifurcation in those who know and care about programming and those who don't. Whereas grad students are all doing similar kinds of work and those who lack programming skills can see a real benefit to their productivity, I think the same could not be said of high school students. Those who are really interested have probably taught themselves and are really into programming for their own reasons, and those who aren't have no motivation to learn. That means a workshop would just be preaching to an already well educated choir. The real challenge would be how to inspire those who don't take joy in programming that these are useful skills. Also the types of schools that would be most receptive / able to host a workshop (like Nueva where all the kids are given brand new laptops ever school year) are likely to be those who might be in the least need (Not to open up a pandora's box of class and school districts.) I think to work the instructors would have to work closely with the STEM or CS teachers at a school to tailor the workshop to the specific needs and skill levels. If people would be willing to take that time, I think it would be really positive. Ted On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 9:20 AM Greg Wilson < [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 2016-05-04 12:05 PM, John Corless wrote: I think this is a very interesting question that I have considered. I helped at a workshop at a local university and decided to bring my 16 year old daughter. She is an excellent science minded student, and more or less kept up during the workshop (with extra support from Dad!). But in the end I am not sure she got much from the experience. I am pretty certain that she has forgotten shell, git, and R commands and syntax since she hasn't used them since. For her, normal high school computer use is limited to writing papers with word processors. My hope was that she would at least know that there is such a thing as a command line and scripts of programming languages that can be used to analyze data. Maybe that will help her when she faces more serious computer work later in college and beyond. So my hope was simply that a little familiarity might breed less discomfort later in her life. +1 to this - in order for lessons to stick, learners have to be able to do something with the knowledge that they actually want to do, and most high schoolers don't have a lot of legacy data to reformat or analyze. This is one of the reasons why the "media first" approach pioneered by Guzdial and Ericson is so effective: pretty much everybody has a use for fiddling with pictures. (I'm still frequently tempted to re-do our intro Python lesson around image manipulation, but that's a topic for another day...) Thanks, Greg -- Dr Greg Wilson Director of Instructor Training Software Carpentry Foundation _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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