Competency #1: Understanding K-12 CS

Summary

In this activity you will complete the first of four modules prepared by the state of Iowa Board of Education and AEAs to help teachers in the state better understand CS and how to apply the CS Framework and Standards when designing CS lessons for students.  [My big thank you to the state of Iowa for making these available for us to use in our program].

Your activities for this Competency are:

 

Creating an Account

First, you will need an account on Some of you may already have accounts through previous PD. Others of you may have to create a new account.

Please go to

And follow all instructions to either login to your existing account or create a new one.

 

 

Module #1

For this activity please complete the following module:

 

Deliverable, Part 1

While completing the Module you should take notes about what you experience.  Furthermore, you should complete the Reflection Journal Activities as they are presented in the materials. 

When you are done, please word process your responses to the following reflection questions.

  1. What did you write for each of the the Reflection Journal Activities?
    • Reflection #1 - How has computer science affected you already today? Thinking a little deeper about one of the items you mentioned in the previous answer, identify the problem (or inefficiency) and discuss how technology was used to make it possible or better/easier/faster.
    • Reflection #2 - Do you ask your students to engage in computational thinking already? If so, in what ways? If not, where might you include computational thinking in your instruction?
    • Reflection #3 - In your journal, describe how your current context does or does not reflect the information from the video and statistics on the previous pages of the module
  2. What was the main point of this training module?
  3. How did this material fit in with the material you have learned in your CSEd program so far?
  4. Identify and discuss at least one item/topic in the training that you felt added to what you had previously learned.  How did it improve your knowledge/learning?
  5. Identify and discuss at least one item/topic in the training that was a completely new idea or thought for you.  How did it improve your knowledge/learning?

 

Deliverable, Part 2

What is Computer Science?

I recognize that, on its own, this is a fairly simple question and likely could be answered with only two or three sentences.  In fact, many sources attempt to do exactly that. In order to better explain the type of answer I am looking for, let me ask a different question:

Suppose that you were asked by your principal/superintendent to give an explanation to the school board about Computer Science.  Specifically, you are asked to make sure that this explanation helps this non-technical audience understand a) the definition of computer science as a field and b) how it does (or perhaps should) fit into K12 education (perhaps even adding "in your district").  What would you say to explain computer science to this audience?

Please include references to materials from the AEA online resources as part of your answer.

I really want this to be a single, well thought out reflection essay and not simply 2-3 sentence answers to these questions. I would expect a high quality response to be 600-1000 (or more) words [NOTE: I really do hate prescribing word counts.  And I absolutely will not word count in order to evaluate your responses.  But it is one of the easiest and clearest ways for me to indicate the scale of the solutions that I am looking for in the responses. ]

 

Deliverable, Part 3

Why should we include CS in K12 education?

And your answer can't be "because the state of Iowa has mandated it." Why might they have done this?

You may certainly include talking points from our required readings, but I would encourage you to expand on this by connecting to your classroom and/or what you have been learning so far in this program. While I think that we have pulled together a good set of resources, I think there are lots of other great resources out there that can help us all (teachers, administrators, students, parents, etc) better understand computer science and why it is important to include it in K12 education. It is perfectly legitimate to reference these as well in this response.

Again, this is likely several hundred words just to earn the 3 and will need to be well crafted and use specific examples/references to earn a 4.

 

Evaluation