On City of New York’s “Computer Science for All”

Today I’m taking a look at the City of New York’s recent announcement of its plan to introduce computer science to all public schools in the next 10 years.

I’m always interested in the details of public announcements. Where is the money coming from? Where is it going? and how will it be measured? Here’s what I could find out about this announcement:

• $81 million dollars over ten years to introduce computer science to all public schools in the next 10 years (by 2025?)
• It will be a 50-50 public-private partnership with the first 2.5 years funded by three Foundations (the Solomon Wilson Family Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation and AOL Foundation). This makes the City’s contribution approx $40m or around $4m per annum. This also means the City of New York will essentially need business development managers to find the remaining funds.
• Computer science will not be a graduation requirement. It will be compulsory up until year 8 and then middle and high schools can offer the subject as an elective.

What I couldn’t figure out is how the money will be spent, and by who. There were a few leads – the first is that the City estimates it will need about 5,000 trained teachers. The second is that the National Science Foundation has said it plans to train 10,000 teachers to teach computer science. Although this May 2015 release talks about the NSF training approx 100 New York public school teachers. I’m hoping those 100 were a pilot for an ongoing program.

This announcement is part of a much larger education initiative to support literary and numeracy programs with the measured intention of increasing university participation rates. It also builds off two other initiatives: a computer science teacher training program (2013, mentioned above) and an Advanced Placement program (2014), that would see college level material offered in high schools.

The program is expected to face challenges in training enough teachers, supporting schools and students with infrastructure and also adapting the content and learning styles to accommodate a world where coding is taught in boot camps, micro courses and in project based learning. Critics of the program have said that this money would have been better spent increasing numeracy and literacy rates and that teaching computer science is a passing trend that will be quickly outdated.

My thoughts:

I’d love to see the breakdown of how the money is being spent. Not to critique it, but to gain ideas for what we could be doing locally. Other programs I’ve looked at spend their money on teacher training, so that would make sense. Infrastructure is another bucket that needs funding but is much more expensive as you have both capital and maintenance costs – mixed with your standard deployment costs.

Teacher training is a very real issue. It is something we will face here in Australia. I also believe that it is a known issue therefore can be factored into deployment plans. If there is a serious plan to rollout coding in schools then the teacher professional development side of things should not be underestimated as it plays a serious part in the program’s success.

On influences on women choosing technology careers

Report: Women Who Choose Computer Science – What Really Matters (Google, 2014)

Today I had a read of this Google backed report into women in technology. In the face of so many reports commenting about negative perceptions of women and tech, this one stood apart due to its positivity. The report identified the two main drivers that can have the most impact on increased female participation as ENCOURAGEMENT (social/family/peers and self belief) and EXPOSURE (availability of academic subjects and perceptions of the tech sector). The report also highlighted that some commonly held beliefs about what influences students may not be as important as we credit them.

Top four influencing factors are:

• Social encouragement: positive reinforcement of computer science from family and peers. Family support influenced 17% of people surveyed, peers 11%. It also noted that girls are half as likely to receive encouragement as girls.
• Self perception: having an interest in puzzles and problem solving – and a belief that those skills can translate to a successful career. Self perception of maths ability and problem solving influenced 17% but the ultimate influencer was a passion for solving problems and tinkering.
• Academic exposure: availability of both structured (formal/graded studies) and informal (after school programs). This accounted for 22.4% of explainable factors – the study went on to say that regardless of how they were exposed – young women that had been exposed were more likely than those that weren’t (eg. Anything is better than nothing).
• Career perception: familiarity and perception that tech careers can be diverse and be positive. Accounts for 27.5% of explainable factors on why a young woman would pursue an career in technology. The main problem here is that a flawed perception of tech (ie nerdy, boring, hard, technical) actively dissuades young woman from pursuing an interest, and ultimately correcting the perception.

Things that have less influence include: ethnicity, family income, parental occupation and perceptions of natural ability. Other factors that had limited influence include: having a family member in the tech sector, early exposure to tech, age of first computer exposure, access to mobile devices, natural aptitude, pre-college computer science education.

The conclusion is overwhelmingly positive. Mainly because the report believes that the four core influencers can be addressed. It believes that outreach programs should:

• contain a parent education component,
• provide young woman an opportunity to practice problem solving skills,
• support organisations adding informal or formal computer science education to more schools,
• focus on the visibility of female role models and story telling of positive impact careers.

My thoughts:

I liked the simplicity of this arrangement – exposure and encouragement. It makes sense. I liked the positivity that these are actionable areas and the suggestions for how to act. I like that the report makes an effort to identify things that are not critical influencers (but could be seen as distractions to outreach programs?). I would argue that those elements are things that need to be considered – e.g. parents and peers will still influence but, depending on background/situation, may influence in different ways.

One thing the report didn’t touch on was the age at which young women are most receptive to external influences. The report is categorised into ‘high school’ and ‘post college’ – but doesn’t mention primary education or the role of high school peers in subject selection. There is the common perception that early high school (age 13-14) is the subject choice cliff, the point at which female perceptions of technology is first revealed (and where schools a lot of their student cohort).

On Camp/Interactive (C/I) (Bronx, USA)

C/I (Camp/Interactive) is a Bronx based tech education program focused on supporting high-school students from underserved backgrounds. Its mission is “inspire and equip underserved students with the skills in computing, leadership, and professionalism needed to thrive in the Internet economy and beyond“. Starting in 2001 as a four week summer program (two weeks outdoor leadership training, two weeks intensive technology training) the program expanded in 2006 with a Bronx based learning centre and later added internships.

The program has three main components (from C/I website):

• Code/Interactive: students attend computer science education sessions at least twice a week at their schools with a C/I Teacher to work on self-directed computer science education modules in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Participating schools gain a robust curriculum, technology, teaching materials, access to other program elements (summits, camps and internships). [C/I’s website shows it is working with roughly 12 schools in the Bronx area.]
• Camp/Interactive: Young Entrepreneur Summits give C/I’s top students an opportunity to develop their technology skills in a unique environment. Each Y.E.S. program hosts panels of minority tech entrepreneurs to share their expertise with C/I students, equipping them with the tech and leadership skills needed to be successful in today’s fastest growing industry.
• Careers/Interactive: Successful students from C/I’s year-long programs apply for paid summer internships at top tech companies. Interns utilise their coding, prototyping, and leadership skills to gain hands-on work experience and training for a future career. Past internship hosts include GroupMe, RetailMeNot, GILT, AirBnB, Business Insider, The New York Times, FourSquare, General Assembly, CK-12, and Gust.

C/I lists its results as:

• Increase in college attendance rates: C/I students are five times as likely as their peers to go to college
• Break the poverty cycle: C/I provides graduates with skills that can double their household income
• Opportunities to join the workforce: 60% of C/I interns are offered full time employment

My thoughts:

There are many things I like about what I’m reading. The first is thoughtful links between the program elements. Offering in-school resources, coupled with more intensive camps/office visits for keen students and ending with the opportunity of a paid internship. I like that the program uses its own year long education program as a filter for companies looking to support interns – only students that complete the years worth of extra curricular study are offered internship positions. This both recognises/ensures the quality of the teaching, but also addresses employer side concerns about the quality/motivation of the students they are taking in. I imagine that if employers were also participating as mentors and hosting office visits then they would also have a chance to meet the students before taking them onboard as interns.

I also like that the program has an official signup process for schools. In Australia we face a challenge that often programs are introduced by a single motivated teacher, and are reliant on that one teachers’ passion and time to keep the program running. Ideally these programs would be taken in by the school and supported at the highest level – then actively promoted to teachers and parents alike as something the school is doing to improve its educational capacity. This is particularly important in the computer science realm where content moves fast, students learn fast and finding skilled educators can be tricky.

Finally, I like the program structure. It has clear opportunities to engage as volunteers, participants and financial sponsors. It appears measurable and it looks possible to track outcomes due to the high engagement with the students involved.

On EU Code Week

So… October 11-17 was EU Code Week. The week that European educators focused on raising the profile of computer science initiatives across the EU. EurActiv has published a series of special reports focusing on coding, education and the economy. They are collated in this nifty PDF – worth the read.

Again we see similar themes. The opening address links the concepts of digital natives – familiar with technology but under served by current education systems, the pervasiveness of technology across different industry sectors – not just the tech sector, a recognised gap between unemployment and the demands of the growing tech sector and technology as a potential economic solution for growth and job creation. Example: “The EU’s app-developer workforce will grow from one million in 2013 to 2.6 million in 2019. Additional support and marketing staff will take that figure to 4.8 million by 2018.”

The special report touches on the role of public-private partnerships in championing awareness-raising campaigns and spreading best practice. It mentions a “Coding Industry Coalition” (nb. Google hasn’t heard of it outside of EurActiv’s report) of global businesses that has formed in response to this demand. The idea is that European Union policy makers have little to no control over national based education programs. Therefore industry must step in to demonstrate the usefulness of coding in schools.

The report also mentions the “EU Coding Initiative” – the first localised coding platform in Europe. The initiative provides teaching and educational resources, awareness raising initiatives and online tutorials (beginner-expert). The European website was built off the successful Code.org site and features many of the same tutorials and videos. The About section has a little more information:

“The aim of the campaign is to promote coding through a mixture of online and offline, real-life activities, with a view to establishing coding as a key competence within every education system in Europe. The eu.code.org website, developed in conjunction with Code.org, will provide resources in a number of languages, catering to everyone from the youngest coders, to pedagogical resources and lesson plans for teachers, to industry training and certification for professionals. The European Coding Initiative will play a central role in a number of Europe-wide advocacy and awareness-raising campaigns, including Europe Code Week, Computer Science Education Week, the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs and the European activities of the Hour of Code campaign.”

On Salesforce’s $6 million education grant

Salesforce is proud of its philanthropic credentials. The San Francisco based tech company employs a “1-1-1″ model where it sets aside 1 percent of its equity for a foundation (grants), 1 percent of its employees’ time as community service and 1 percent of its product as a donation. A few weeks ago the company announced it was donating $5 million to San Francisco’s public schools (an increase on last year’s $2.7 million donation) and $1 million to Code.org for computer science education. This is the biggest grant the company has ever gifted and represents 25% of the company’s annual grant giving budget (approx $20 million each year).

Here’s how the grant will be applied:

$2 million in 20 principal innovation grants of $100,000 each (no strings attached – generally used for 3D printers, classroom improvements, media studios, software licences etc)

$3 million will pay for infrastructure and training:

• 1,200 iPads
• 800 Google Chromebooks
• Expand to 48 Wi-Fi enabled digital classrooms across 12 middle schools and eight K-8 schools;
• Four full-time district technology instructors to assist the 20 schools
• Training for 100 teachers to go through professional development on computer science

$1 million for Code.org to support school computer science programs

• Computer science elective classes offered as a part of their school schedule
• Code.org’s “Code Studio” classes in middle and K-8 schools
• After school computer science classes hosted at salesforce.com offices in San Francisco

In addition, the Salesforce Foundation has pledged:

• 5,000 volunteer hours from Salesforce.com employees – an increase on the 1,500 hours in the 2013-2014 school year.

Sources:

• Salesforce Pours $6M Into SF Schools, Computer Science Education, TechCrunch, September 2014
• Press Release, Salesforce, Sept 2014
• Salesforce.com’s Benioff gives S.F. schools new $5 million gift, SF Gate, Sept 2014

 

On Code.org’s Code Studio

Today Code.org announced its new Code Studio. This open source platform is designed to support students as young as kindergarten to pick up computer science concepts. It is still a visual programming language (similar to Scratch) but is HTML5 based (so runs in most browsers) and has puzzle based lesson plans for K-12. The lessons teach the usual loops, conditionals, and functions as well as branching into new topics such as how the internet works and digital citizenship. Other neat features are tools that let you build apps and new tutorial videos by tech celebrities.

For me, the most interesting part of this is the new teacher interface. This allows teachers to monitor where their students are in the lesson progression. An interesting idea that pushes Code.org further into the area of curriculum support/lesson plan development.

To help the rollout – Code.org is running training across 60 cities in the US – aiming to prepare up to 10,000 teachers to use the resource. [Source: Announcing Code Studio (Code.org blog, Sept 2014)]

My thoughts:

Nice! While there are a number of STEM related education organisations out there – Code.org is the one that consistently aims for scalable outreach. The organisation keeps coming up with new ways to keep its purpose relevant and on trend. In this case – if those planning the curriculum are moving too slow, then Code Studio is a solution for schools that are in a position to do more than the basics.

Its around this point that the organisation could start considering how it localises its product suite. While computer science concepts may not differ around the world – curriculums and teaching requirements do. In Australia they almost differ from state to state. It would be gold if someone could start mapping these Code.org classes against the local syllabus. Almost a localised wiki of lesson plans that complement the Code.org platform – or at least explain it in localised terms.

On Cracking the Girl Code: How to End the Tech Gender Gap

Girls Who Code is a fantastic US based not-for-profit that addresses the tech gender gap by offering activities that specifically support young girls with an interest in computer science. At its most practical – the NFP runs summer courses (seven weeks) for groups of girls around the country. The courses are facilitated by a trainer with financial support from a major tech companies.

Some background stats (US centric): only 12% of computer science graduates are female. Code.org estimates that by 2020 US universities will not be able to fill even a third of the country’s 1.4 million computing positions with qualified graduates. The industry needs to tap all areas of the economy to find skilled employees. Girls Who Code has gone from graduating 20 girls in 2012 to approx 3,000 in 2014. 95% of who go on to study computer science at university. Another insight is that girls place higher expectations on themselves – at a university level girls are likely to drop out if their marks hit a B+ while boys are happy with a B-.

The article outlines some strategies used by Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California to raise the percentage of women graduating from computer science from 10% to 40% in seven years.

These include:

• Emphasise problem-solving real-world issues because girls tend to want to help their communities.
• Group projects: research shows that girls flourish when they collaborate with others.
• Role models: help girls build a network of like minded people – a challenge as there are so few high-profile female programmers as role models

 

Google Chief Warns of Skills Shortage

Maile Carnegie, managing director of Google Australia was quoted in today’s Australian:

… (Maile) Carnegie, (managing director of Google Australia), is addressing one of her chief concerns about Australia’s future.

Why, she asks, have 52 per cent of all graduates emerging from Singapore universities studied STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and computer science courses, compared to just 16 per cent from Australian universities?

“We’re going backwards,” Carnegie warns. “The number of students with a computer science background in Australia has actually declined by 30 per cent since 2001.

“The long-term challenge for Australia is how do we, as a minimum, keep pace with the global revolution that is happening? But the more immediate challenge is how to make sure we don’t slip further behind.”

On this first anniversary of her appointment to (arguably) Australia’s coolest job, Carnegie has two key messages.

The first is that if primary and secondary school kids haven’t learned to love science in the formative years, it’s too late to expect Australian universities to turn out world-challenging science and technology talents…

Her second core message is that if Australians think we have been changed unrecognisably over the past 15 years by the digital technology revolution, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

The broader context for the article is the launch of the Australian element of  Google’s Impact Challenge – an initiative to financially support (up to $500,000) ideas that address social concerns.  The main point I pull from this quote is the word ‘formative’. That we need to introduce these skills at a young age.