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dateMore Than a Year Ago
subjectEducation
authorMark Guzdial
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Preparing Computing Students For the Designer Role
From BLOG@CACM

Preparing Computing Students For the Designer Role

The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predictions for the next 10 years predicts lower-than-average growth in programming jobs, but dramatic growth in designer...

­U.S. Women in Computing: Why Isn't It Getting Better?
From BLOG@CACM

­U.S. Women in Computing: Why Isn't It Getting Better?

We've known for over a decade that there are too few women in computing in the U.S., but recent reports point out that it's not getting better: Not in any academic...

The Call to Teach Computing to Everyone
From BLOG@CACM

The Call to Teach Computing to Everyone

Major media sites are exploring the idea of teaching computer science to everyone, as a requirement for understanding one's world.

Curriculum Standards Efforts Are Important: Help Reduce Committee Battles
From BLOG@CACM

Curriculum Standards Efforts Are Important: Help Reduce Committee Battles

Curriculum standards efforts are important. They help bootstrap new departments, and they help reduce pervasive curriculum committee battles.

Why Don't We Use Worksheets in Computer Science Education?
From BLOG@CACM

Why Don't We Use Worksheets in Computer Science Education?

Worksheets (short, constrained, sets of exercises with mostly fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and multiple choice activities) are unusual in CS education. Use of...

Royal Society Report Recommends CS in English Schools: Implications For ­USA?
From BLOG@CACM

Royal Society Report Recommends CS in English Schools: Implications For ­USA?

The Royal Society, the world's oldest scientic academy, released a report this month calling for a radical change to English schools: Real Computer Science for...

Online Stanford Classes Explore New Models For CS Learning
From BLOG@CACM

Online Stanford Classes Explore New Models For CS Learning

What's cool about the online Stanford CS classes is not the numbers, but the models.  They are explorations of new ways to teach computer science. 

Enrollment and Quality: Does It Matter to Measure?
From BLOG@CACM

Enrollment and Quality: Does It Matter to Measure?

CS is declared to be the hottest major on campus based on enrollment at the top institutions.  But is it rising everywhere? We don't really know how to measure...

High School CS Teachers as the New Computing Professionals
From BLOG@CACM

High School CS Teachers as the New Computing Professionals

If you were a human-centered computing research in 1960's, you'd study, "Who are software engineers?" Today, the new computing professionals to study are high school...

The ­U.K. Is Taking Steps to Improve Computing Education in Schools
From BLOG@CACM

The ­U.K. Is Taking Steps to Improve Computing Education in Schools

The United Kingdom is stepping up its efforts to improve computing education in schools. 

Trip Report on the 2011 International Computing Education Research Workshop
From BLOG@CACM

Trip Report on the 2011 International Computing Education Research Workshop

Last week's ICER 2011 conference was a smashing success.  We learned how students believe in a "Geek gene," where students work on their programs, how to make compilers...

What We Owe Google, and What Google Owes ­Us
From BLOG@CACM

What We Owe Google, and What Google Owes ­Us

We rely on online information sources—maybe too much. What is our responsibility to make sure that they're accurate, and what responsibility do the sources have...

Why Don't Languages Support Multimedia All the Way Down?
From BLOG@CACM

Why Don't Languages Support Multimedia All the Way Down?

It's a hallmark of CS thinking, to be able to shift levels of abstraction down to the bytes. Why do programming languages make this so hard to teach students?

If You Want High School CS, Require ­Undergraduate CS
From BLOG@CACM

If You Want High School CS, Require ­Undergraduate CS

Pushing computer science classes into the high schools is a top-down approach.  If there was required computer science in undergraduate education, the high schools...

The Long Road to a Seat at the Table
From BLOG@CACM

The Long Road to a Seat at the Table

Computer science is still a new discipline compared to the rest of STEM. It will take a while for people to know what a "computer scientist" is in the same way...

From 'Must' and 'Unsuitable' to Design Guidelines in Computing Education
From BLOG@CACM

From 'Must' and 'Unsuitable' to Design Guidelines in Computing Education

Rhetoric in education tends to be politicized and polarized, and computing education is no different.  Research in computing education might learn from design-based...

At the NSF CE21 Meeting: We Have Such a Long Way to Go
From BLOG@CACM

At the NSF CE21 Meeting: We Have Such a Long Way to Go

The NSF CE21 Community Meeting highlighted the opportunity that computing has to catch up with the rest of STEM on education issues.

Let's Teach Malware When It's Ready: The Purpose of ­Undergrad CS
From BLOG@CACM

Let's Teach Malware When It's Ready: The Purpose of ­Undergrad CS

Ledin's call for teaching malware to all undergraduate students conflicts with my understanding of the purpose of an undergraduate CS degree. 

Peer Instruction For Seeing What Students Know (and Don't)
From BLOG@CACM

Peer Instruction For Seeing What Students Know (and Don't)

Peer Instruction is an important pedagogical approach that is promoted by physics education researchers.  I'm trying it for the first time in my CS class, and it's...

We're Too Late For 'First' in CS1
From BLOG@CACM

We're Too Late For 'First' in CS1

 By the time students get to undergraduate CS1, they already have lots of ideas about computation.  Objects, hardware, breadth, functions first--none of that really...
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