Computer Science Teaching Fellows Starting Up in Charleston, SC

Posted by Cameron Fadjo, Program Lead, Computer Science Teaching Fellows

Google recently started up an exciting new program to ignite interest in computer science (CS) for K12 kids. Located in our South Carolina data center, the Computer Science Teaching Fellows is a two-year post graduate fellowship for new STEM teachers and CS graduates. The goal is to bring computer science and computational thinking to all children, especially underrepresented minorities and girls, and close the gap between the ever-increasing demand in CS and the inadequate supply. We hope to learn what really works and scale those best practices regionally and then nationally.

The supply of CS majors in the pipeline has been a concern for many years. In 2007, the Computer Science education community was alarmed by the lack of CS majors and enrollments in US colleges and universities.

Source: 2009-2010 CRA Taulbee Survey (http://www.cra.org/resources/)

This prompted the development of several programs and activities to start raising awareness about the demand and opportunities for computer scientists, and to spark the interest of K12 students in CS. For example, the NSF funded curriculum and professional development around the new CS Principles Advanced Placement course. The CSTA published standards for K12 CS and a report on the limited extent to which schools, districts and states provide CS instruction to their students. CS advocacy groups, Computing in the Core and Code.org have played an instrumental role in adding provisions to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act to support CS education. More generally, we have seen innovations in online learning with MOOCs, machine learning to provide personalized learning experiences, and platforms like Khan Academy that allow flipped classrooms.

All of these activities represent a convergence in the CS education space, where existing programs are ready for scale, and technological advancements can support that scale in innovative ways. Our Teaching Fellows will be testing after school programs, classroom curriculum and online CS programs to determine what works and why. They’ll start in the local Charleston area and then spread the best programs and curriculum to South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina (where we also have large data centers). They are currently preparing programs for the fall semester.

We are very excited about the convergence we are seeing in CS education and the potential to bring many more kids into a field that offers not only great career opportunities but also a shot at really making a difference in the world. We’ll keep you posted on the progress of our Teaching Fellows.

Scaling Computer Science Education

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

Last week, I attended the annual SIGCSE (Special Interest Group, Computer Science Education) conference in Denver, CO. Google has been a platinum sponsor of SIGCSE for many years now, and the conference provides an opportunity for hundreds of computer science (CS) educators to share ideas and work on strategies to bring high quality CS education to K12 and undergraduate students.

Significant accomplishments over the last few years have laid a strong foundation for scaling CS curriculum, professional development (PD) and related programs in this country. The NSF has been funding curriculum and PD around the new CS Principles Advanced Placement course. The CSTA has published standards for K12 CS and a report on the limited extent to which schools, districts and states provide CS instruction to their students. CS Advocacy group, Computing in the Core, even provides a toolkit for communities to follow as they urge legislators for integration of Computer Science education into core K12 curriculum.

All of this work has made an impact, but there is still more to do.

I see our priorities in CS education to be ones of awareness and access. As CS educators, we must continue to raise awareness about the tremendous demand for jobs in the computing sector, and balance misconceptions with accurate data. Many students, parents, teachers and administrators remember the hype and disillusionment of the Dotcom period and myths on outsourcing and dwindling jobs yet the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that ⅔ of all job growth in Science and Engineering will be in Computer Science employment over the next decade. (See 2010 BLS report here.) Clearing up this misconception is essential if we hope to satisfy US labor needs with recent graduates over the next several years.

Source: Gianchandani, Erwin. Revisiting ‘Where the Jobs Are’. The Computing Community Consortium Blog post on 23 May 2012. Link accessed on 8 March 2013.

Another misconception surrounds the range of CS-focused occupations that exist. The world of CS is expanding rapidly and we should celebrate the diversity of CS applications that are gaining momentum. Instead of the archetype of a sun-starved computer scientist, or software engineers working in isolation with little teamwork or communication opportunities, educators can encourage project-based learning, video game development, robotics, and graphic design as more concrete representations for abstract computational thinking.

Google believes that computing and CS are critical to our future, not only in the high tech sector, but for everyone. Our economy is becoming more and more dependent on technology-based solutions, which will require a future workforce with significant levels of CS knowledge and experience. In addition, we anticipate new career opportunities opening up in the next 3-5 years as more businesses move into the cloud and shift the way they run their IT departments.

Help us get the word out about the great opportunities in computing through organizations such as code.org, ACM, and NCWIT. Google is doing its part to support CS education and outreach through many programs including CS4HS, our Exploring Computational Thinking curriculum, and several student and teacher programs. So much opportunity, so little time!

Continuing the quest for future computer scientists with CS4HS

Erin Mindell, Program Manager, Google Education

Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) began five years ago with a simple question: How can we help create a much needed influx of CS majors into universities and the workforce? We took our questions to three of our university partners--University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon, and UCLA--and together we came up with CS4HS. The model was based on a “train the trainer” technique. By focusing our efforts on teachers and bringing them the skills they need to implement CS into their classrooms, we would be able to reach even more students. With grants from Google, our partner universities created curriculum and put together hands-on, community-based workshops for their local area teachers.

Since the initial experiment, CS4HS has exploded into a worldwide program, reaching more than 4,000 teachers and 200,000 students either directly or indirectly in more than 34 countries. These hands-on, in-person workshops are a hallmark of our program, and we will continue to fund these projects going forward. (For information on how to apply, please see our website.) The success of this popular program speaks for itself, as we receive more quality proposals each year. But success comes at a price, and we have found that the current format of the workshops is not infinitely scalable.

This is where Research at Google comes in. This year, we are experimenting with a new model for CS4HS workshops. By harnessing the success of online courses such as Power Searching with Google, and utilizing open-source platforms like the one found in Course Builder, we are hoping to put the “M” in “MOOC” and reach a broader audience of educators, eager to learn how to teach CS in their classrooms.

For this pilot, we are looking to sponsor two online workshops, one that is geared toward CS teachers, and one that is geared toward CS for non-CS teachers to go live in 2013. This is a way for a university (or several colleges working together) to create one incredible workshop that has the potential to reach thousands of enthusiastic teachers. Just as with our in-person workshops, applications will be open to college, university, and technical schools of higher learning only, as we depend on their curriculum expertise to put together the most engaging programs. For this pilot, we will be looking for MOOC proposals in the US and Canada only.

We are really excited about the possibilities of this new format, and we are looking for quality applications to fund. While applications don’t have to run on our Course Builder platform, we may be able to offer some additional support to funded projects that do. If you are interested in joining our experiment or just learning more, you can find information on how to apply on our CS4HS website (or click here).

Applications are open until February 16, 2013; we can’t wait to see what you come up with. If you have questions, please email us at cs4hs@google.com.

Joining forces to support computer science majors

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

A few weeks ago, I attended the annual SIGCSE (Special Interest Group, Computer Science Education) conference in Raleigh, NC. Google has been a platinum sponsor of SIGCSE for many years now, and the conference provides an opportunity for thousands of CS educators to come together, share ideas and work on significant challenges that have emerged over the last five years.

Five years ago, the Advanced Placement Computer Science course and exam almost died. Due to lack of student interest, the B part of the AP CS was discontinued and there was a risk that the A part would also be discontinued. At that time, the number of CS majors at the undergraduate level also hit an all time low. Specifically, the number of students taking the AP CS exam fell 15 % between 2001 and 2007, and the number of college freshmen intending to major in CS plummeted more than 70% during the same period. This was a paradox for CS educators. They knew (and know) that advancing U.S. students' understanding of the principles and practices of computing is critical to developing a globally competitive workforce for the 21st century.

Rather than be defeated, a commission of ten secondary and higher education faculty came together and used this as an opportunity to reinvigorate interest in CS. They re-invented the AP CS into a course that not only introduces students to programming, but also gives them an understanding of the fundamental concepts of computing, its breadth of application and its potential for transforming the world.

The NSF generously funded the development and piloting of this new CS Principles course two years ago. This academic year, the NSF has funded several high school pilots as well. The pilots have been so successful that the College Board has now committed to developing a new state-of-the-art exam for the course. This is a critical accomplishment. The AP CS is the only standardized computing course we have in high school. The high school curriculum is packed—it’s nearly impossible to get any new course from any domain into the curriculum, and the AP CS is our stake in the ground.

Concurrent with the AP CS development, the ACM has pushed forward on two fronts that are also making significant impact. The CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association) now has 11,000 members with 2300 College Board-certified to teach the AP CS Part A (which is still being offered). Membership and interest is rising, and this community plays a key role in professional development, CS standards definition (another critical stake in the ground) and scaling of the new AP CS.

In addition, we have the Computing in the Core Coalition, which is a non-partisan advocacy group of associations, corporations, scientific societies and other nonprofits that is working to elevate CS to a core academic subject in K-12 education. The Coalition does this through advocacy with government agencies and Congress, and by raising general awareness through CSEdWeek.

The good news is we are starting to see positive indicators of change. CS majors are rebounding at the undergraduate level.

The latest Employment Projections for 2010 to 2020 (Bureau of Labor Statistics) show a 6.9% increase in employment from 2006-2010 in computer and mathematical occupations, and a projected 22.0% increase from 2010-2020. This is in comparison to a 14.3% increase, on average, for all other growing occupations.

Students, parents, teachers, administrators and government officials are starting to hear the message:

• There is an exponentially growing demand in computing job opportunities
• Computing is inherently creative, innovative and team-based
• Technology and computing are transforming the world

Of course, we still do not have nearly enough supply coming out of colleges and universities to meet the demand, but the situation has improved in the last two years.

We believe that computing and CS are critical to our future, and we support CS education through many programs including CS4HS, App Inventor (just re-launched from MIT), our Exploring Computational Thinking curriculum, and other outreach programs and partnerships. Computing is at the foundation of all things technology, and computer science is at the foundation of computing.