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spent increasing numeracy and literacy rates and that teaching computer science is a passing trend that will be quickly outdated.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 the Australian Technologies Curriculum

Bamn. There we have it. The Australian Technologies Curriculum has been officially approved by the Commonwealth Minister for Education. This Foundation – Year 10 curriculum contains two subjects: a) Design and Technologies and b) Digital Technologies. It’s fair to say that it is the second subject that has most piqued the tech industries’ interest due to the inclusion of coding/programming (visual programming in year 5-6 and general coding languages in years 7-8).

The Minister’s announcement also touches on the previously announced $12million STEM fund that will go to:

• the development of innovative mathematics curriculum resources ($7.4m) – “The Mathematics by Inquiry project will produce a suite of innovative, high quality mathematics teaching and learning resources” (LINK)
• supporting the introduction of computer coding across different year levels ($3.5m) -not too many details on this one – sounds like it will be an online resources collection.
• establishing a P-TECH-style school pilot site ($500,000) – an industry/govt collaboration based on the IBM/City of New York school. These will be based in Geelong and Ballarat. The program is administered by Skilling Australia Foundation (LINK)
• funding summer schools for STEM students from underrepresented groups. ($?600,000) – Previous press releases mentioned a focus on Indigenous Australia and females in technology, but not too many details since then.

My thoughts:

This is pretty big stuff. It was exactly a year ago that the curriculum review suggested that the introduction of technology subjects would crowd and complicate the Australian curriculum and that coding should be introduced as part of an elective from year 9 onwards. This time last year there was a very real chance that technology in general, and coding in particular, would be integrated as part of other subjects – or, left up to the interests of individual schools/teachers to introduce.

Given the implications of implementing an Australia wide curriculum change – the $12million STEM funding is starting to look a little out of place. At the time it looked like a consolation prize for an education system that was going to miss out on a technology focus. Now that the game has changed – this fund appears a little piece meal – four interesting, but not exactly game changing or scalable initiatives.

For a government aiming to position Australia for the 21st century – the introduction of this curriculum is a good start. The responsibility is now passed to the State Governments to look at the extent to which it will be adopted and the speed/quality of implementation.

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 Robots and Education

I thought I’d start the new year with a post about the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. More specifically, a post about Ozobot – the winner of the 2015 Kids at Play Interactive Award for Best Robot.

Ozobot is a golf ball sized robot that responds to lines drawn on paper or a tablet. The robot follows the lines and does different things depending on the line’s colour – e.g. spin in a circle or speed up. Ozobot is aimed at ages 7-13 (approx years 2-7 in Australia). They are currently programmed using a proprietory language but will soon progress to Google’s Blockly (a visual programming language). The robots run for about $50 a piece including some apps and support resources.

Robots as education tools
There is a strong push to use robots as tools that teach coding. Robots are very physical, you can touch them, play with them and see a tangible outcome from your code. However, unlike many of the free online courses – robots cost money – approx $50-$400 a unit. Two prominent organisations driving robots as education tools in Australia are Robocup Jnr and FiRST Lego League (FLL) – both based off Lego’s Mindstorm platform. For upper primary/lower middle school – FLL is about $350 to enter.

Other robots include:

• Sphero and Ollie by Connected Play ($80)
• Dash and Dot by Wonder Workshop ($260, ages 5+)
• Kibo by Kinderlab ($220-$400, ages 4-7)
• Bee-Bot by TTS Group ($50-$100, for pre schoolers/ages 3+)

I guess the questions teachers and parents have to weigh up are – which robot do they choose with? What are the benefits of tacticle learning tools like robots vs purely visual tools like those on Code.org. Age plays a clear role in this – most of the robots are cute, have names and seem targeted at ages 5-10 (pre-school and primary school) – this is of course before they hit the more advanced robots used in the Lego competitions.

On the Australian Government’s $3.5m coding in schools announcement

The Australian Government’s curriculum review recently suggested that technologies subjects were best placed as an elective for students in Year 9 and above. A day later the same government announced a $12 million fund to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in primary and secondary schools. Of particular note is the second item – a specific $3.5m allocation to introduce coding across different year levels in Australian schools.

The $12 million is broken down like this:

• $7.4m to develop and implement Mathematics by inquiry
• $3.5m towards introduction to computer coding across the curriculum
• $0.5m towards establishing a P-TECH styled education facility
• $0.6m to extend national science and mathematics summer schools to include more girls, disadvantaged and Indigenous school students, including those from regional and remote areas.

This funding is a subset of a larger $400m project called the the Industry, Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda (the Agenda). Under this Agenda, the Government has four key ambitions, including:

1. a lower cost, business friendly environment with less regulation, lower taxes and more competitive markets;
2. a more skilled labour force;
3. better economic infrastructure; and
4. industry policy that fosters innovation and entrepreneurship.

The $3.5m coding in schools funding description currently reads:

Building on these maths education programmes, the Government will provide a further $3.5 million to encourage the introduction of computer coding across different year levels in Australian schools. ‘Coding across the curriculum’ will contribute to addressing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry feedback which consistently emphasises a looming acute shortage of computer programming skills. It is anticipated that a consortia of organisations with appropriate professional capacity and technical expertise will be contracted through tender processes to deliver these programmes.

My thoughts:

Need more information. The $12m funding announcement came a day after the Government released its review effectively suggesting that specific tech subjects are mainly relevant for students Years 9 and above. The review also suggested that computer science learning objectives were best delivered when folded into other subjects. This announcement of a specific fund for coding ‘across different year levels’ doesn’t align with the curriculum announcement. Another thing I’m not clear on is the duration – $3.5m per annum is very different to $3.5 over four years.

Coding in schools is currently a niche interest – mainly existing as weekend, lunchtime or after school programs outside the school structure. This helps retain their independence and keeps the administration lean. Organisations like Code Club have just started expanding – these organisations are powered by international resources, enthusiastic local volunteers/teachers and, where available, private sector funding. CoderDojo operates in the same area but has more of an industry mentorship/weekend activity approach.

I’m keen to know if the allocated funding is intended to scale existing extra curricular activities or whether it is intended for something embedded in the school structure.

On the Australian Government’s Review of the Digital Technologies Curriculum

The Australian Government recently announced its review of the Australian Curriculum. Suffice to say the technology community was not impressed. The review suggested that the proposed Technologies curriculum was best suited as an elective for students in years 9 and above. This goes against the very things that made the original draft attractive – that it was compulsory from Foundation to Year 10 and that it separated out the ‘using’ of technology from the ‘making’ of technology.

The review had a number of recommendations:

• The Technologies learning area should be introduced from Year 9 – not Foundation- Year 10 as previously suggested
• The two Technologies strands of Design and Technology (“using tech”) and Digital Technologies (“making things with tech/computational thinking”) should be merged – which is not dissimilar to the current structure and avoids a direct focus on programming/coding
• The terminology of the curriculum needs consistency and terms/achievement levels need clear definition – never a bad idea

Additional recommendations from the subject expert include:

• Integrate design and technologies into other subjects in primary years and then commence the specific subjects in lower secondary classes (year 9)
• IF design and technologies is taught in F-8 then teachers would need serious support and professional development
• That additional training is provided for secondary school teachers to support the curriculum

The reasons given in the review are as follows:

• There is no international consensus on what a technologies curriculum should include. Apart from the US and UK, few other countries are making technology a compulsory subject and the review outlines the confusing way that technology has been integrated into global curriculums (as part of science, a VET subject, a coding subject etc)
• The primary school curriculum is overcrowded and removing Technologies frees up time to teach other subjects – avoiding the ‘inch deep and a mile wide’ scenario
• Concern over the structure of the subject – that the separation of ‘technologies’ (designed to emphasise ‘making’) from the ‘general ICT capability’ (designed to emphasise ‘using’) was confusing
• The need for teacher professional development in order to pull this off – that teachers were not accustomed to the complex language proposed in the Technologies curriculum and would need support

The subject specialist reviewing the curriculum raised a number of concerns:

• There was little involvement from primary teachers in designing the Digital Technologies curriculum
• The name of the ‘digital technologies’ was not suitable and was not recognised by industry
• Language used in the curriculum achievement standards for Years F-8  is beyond many teachers without a specialist background.
• The writing of the curriculum is pitched at too high a level for primary and secondary teachers.
• The reviewer also questioned whether “Technologies”, as a subject, is the natural home for the technology subject matter OR should it be pervasive across all subjects?

My thoughts:
The above recommendations seem to undermine the purpose of a national Technologies curriculum. The intent of the curriculum update was the ensure that Australian students were gaining contemporary skills that would put both the students and the country in a good position in the next 15-20 years. It is natural that this is a difficult task with few global case studies – that’s what happens if you want to stay at the forefront of education. It is also natural that teachers should have support to implement these changes. I would argue that teachers need support even without these changes as currently 60% of teachers handling Years 7-10 and 48% of Year 11-12 have no formal ICT qualification.

I’m not sure about the idea of integrating Technology across other strands. I imagine this means that during an art class, students would use some form of digital media, or maybe they are asked to create an iBook for a history presentation. I have a feeling this will lead to a situation where teachers (naturally) support concepts they are already familiar with – what teacher, off their own bat, would use robotics as a method of teaching geometry when you can use more established traditional methods?

In saying this – arguably nothing has changed. The national curriculum has been sitting in draft format for almost a year and was reliant on State Government to support to roll out at a local level. The report mentions that one jurisdiction already had a good existing course and had no plans to replace its current content.

The report can be found here: Review of the Australian Curriculum, Final Report (October, 2014) – the Technologies section begins on page 208

On Mark Zuckerberg’s $120 million grant to San Francisco

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are donating $120 million (over five years) to public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. The couple’s gift will be spread over the next five years and is the biggest allocation to date of the $1.1 billion in Facebook stock the couple pledged last year to the nonprofit Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The first $5 million of the $120 million will go to school districts in San Francisco, Ravenswood and Redwood City.

Initial grants will go toward:

• providing computers and connectivity in schools
• teacher training
• parent outreach to support them keep track of student learning
• leadership opportunities for students
• transitions for students moving from middle school to high school
• leadership training for principals.

The May 2014 gift comes at a time when critics are still questioning what became of Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark, New Jersey’s public school system. Four years ago, he announced the donation flanked by then-mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. A recent New Yorker article criticises the donation and the chain of events it set in motion. While well-intentioned, the money has so far failed to fix the city’s ailing school system. The process lacked meaningful community input and much of the money has been spent on high-paid contractors and consultants. Four years later, the money is nearly gone and a lot of people are angry. The story’s most poignant quote is from Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County, who says “Everybody’s getting paid, but Raheem still can’t read.” Zuckerberg admits that he and local leaders could have done a better job engaging the community and soliciting ideas about how to spend the money.

The money will be routed through the Startup:Education fund with the aim of providing computers and internet connectivity to needy schools, offering teacher training, and helping to fund new district and charter schools among other initiatives.

Extract from: Zuckerberg, Wife Gift $120M To CA Schools, The Big Story, May, 2014)

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 Telstra Foundation’s support for Code Club Australia

The Telstra Foundation recently announced its financial support ($532,000) for Code Club Australia. This is part of the Foundation’s larger $2.4million package it has allocated to a number of technology/digital lifestyle initiatives including anti-cyber bullying, disability inclusiveness, online mental health and its flagship partnerships with the Indigenous Digital Excellence (IDX) team and the eSmart Libraries project. All up the Foundation has now invested some $18million in digital lifestyle initiatives.

From the press release:

(This funding will be used) to help achieve the Code Club Australia’s mission to give every child in the country the chance to learn code through an accelerated “train the trainer” program targeting 500 teachers and prioritising schools in low socio-economic areas. While teaching kids to code now may help solve a future skills shortage, coding also builds kids problem-solving abilities, digital confidence and helps kids understand the world around them.

My thoughts:
Nice work Telstra! The global trend we’re seeing is that the tech sector, and particularly student education, is moving faster than government education providers. State (and national) level curriculums take years to compile, process and distribute – students need this type of education now. The private sector, together with programs like CodeClub, Code.org, CodeAcademy and CoderDojo, is helping fill this space while governments work out if, how and when to incorporate this content into a formalised curriculum.

It’s interesting to note that both Code Club and Coder Dojo generally operate outside school hours. For the most part they are seen as extra curricular activities. This is probably the most effective place for these programs to start as it means they can operate with more independence than if they were operating inside class time. It also means that the students that do attend are the ones that elect to be there. This addresses concerns that these programs are pushing a computer science agenda onto students that may not be interested. If you’re looking for a simple differentiator (correct me if I’m wrong) – in Australia, Code Clubs act as after school programs run by teachers while Coder Dojos tend to run out of community centres (libraries) by volunteers (on weekends or whenever is convenient).

Where is this headed: In the USA, Code.org also started out as an extra curricular activity and is now making a heavy push to develop teaching materials and embed itself into the actual school agenda. Code.org recently announced its Code Studio that provides lesson plans and teacher support dashboards for classrooms across the full K-12 spectrum.

A final comment – I was recently talking with a teacher about the impact these programs are having at their school. They raised the point that while these programs are great (well resourced, free, scalable) – they also don’t appeal to every learning style. Online, computer based learning has a heavy preference to Visual learners. This teacher wanted to balance their program to include elements attractive to Auditory and Kinesthetic learners as well. This is where the programming learned through Code Club can tie in nicely to things like RoboCup Jnr and FiRST Lego League (all founded on Scratch, MIT’s visual programming language).

If you’re after more info – here’s a more detailed video with Peter Argent (starts around 4m20s, length: 00:28”17’)

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.