myrmepropagandist
Many people have said "teach everyone to code!" or cheer-leaded for "learning to code!" but there hasn't been enough discussion about what a Computer Science component to a liberal arts education ought to look like.
In mathematics we have many lists and trees of what mathematicians think people ought to learn, what order it should be learned in.
Not so in computer science. We just say "learn to code" this would be like if math people said "learn to integrate functions!"
myrmepropagandist
For me the major topics of a CS education for the general public are:
* Computer Hardware
* Encoding and Decoding
* Logic and Control Structures
* Iterration
* Objects
* Databases
* Ethics and Applications
* User Interfaces and Design
* Computer Networks
* Computer History
This list keeps changing every time I revise my courses which is every year.
myrmepropagandist
Notice that "integrating functions" is an outcome, a specific skill. A nice one that implies you know a lot of math... maybe. But not all math curriculums end there. There is a robust debate in math education about if we obsesses about The Calculus too much, everyone understands that doing some integrals isn't "knowing math."
I think most CS educators understand something similar but there is much less consensus about what it is that we are teaching if not "how to code."
Misuse Case
@futurebird @bmacDonald94 I had a liberal arts education and took intro to computer science to fulfill my math requirement, LOL
But in all seriousness. Learning to code is really not enough. Having even a basic education in IT security and understanding system and network architectures is at least as important if not more so.
Bill
@MisuseCase @futurebird ~ Agreed. My work entailed IT as a peripheral. That did not remove me from having to learn basic IT to use it as an effective tool. The overview is critical to understand the full reasoning employed building and using this tool. 👍
Rosy Maths
@futurebird I like these. Bookmarking for later.
The aim of my middle school "Computer Science" course is to teach them enough that they can use coding as a tool for other topics, and also that they can think logically and be safe online.
So I split it up into 4/5 main topics.
*Computational Thinking
*Programming (Scratch and Python, including explicit instruction in selection, iteration, program design and recursion)
*Digital citizenship
*How computers work (includes history)
In the lower years we also do a typing course and some work learning Google suite (school choice) and by their last year the interested ones do some Arduino and robotics and the others pick from a fantastic online academy (Grok Learning) to do courses that interest them, or a personal project.
We don't offer Computer Science as a final year subject so it's very much about teaching useful skills and enough knowledge that they can understand tech news and pick it up again later if they want to.
Rosy Maths
@futurebird One of the most popular lessons I taught last year was the history of debugging. I found an awesome article with a picture of the first ever "bug" taped into one of Grace Hopper's notebooks! I need to revise this to do next week with my yr 7s.
myrmepropagandist
I always forget to add "History" and that is bad. I forget it in mathematics too, and I think this tendency causes big problems for both subjects.
myrmepropagandist
If you asked experienced math teachers to list the core topics for k-12 math education you'd get a number of different lists, but the lists could be combined and grouped into what math education *is* (for better or worse) today.
I'm looking to be able to do that same thing for CS.
The one area I'm avoiding is so-called "digital citizenship" this includes "what happens when you post your photo online?" and "what is a good password?"
This is taught in HEALTH class.
myrmepropagandist
Teaching calculus just for doing physics is a missed opportunity. Calculus shows several reasonable ways to deal with infinity, counter intuitive aspects of infinite processes-- huge stuff.
Just because it was put there for one purpose doesn't mean that's what it must be.
If graph theory were taught by tens of thousands of teachers for decades it would change. Could be very exciting.
Might we anticipate some of that maturity since this is unlikely to happen?
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
@futurebird Algebra and calculus are in the curriculum for different reasons. Algebra is important as a tool for abstraction. Being able to express a general solution by abstracting over concrete values is one of the most powerful tools that we have for thinking.
Calculus is in the curriculum because of Sputnik. The USA redesigned the curriculum to produce people who could solve rocket equations to catch up with the USSR. Most of the western world copied this shift. In most cases, it is a complete waste of time. In the very few times when I have encountered a problem where the solution involved forming a differential equation, it never involved solving the equation because a computer can do that orders of magnitude faster than I can. The time I spent at school practicing these things so that I could solve one in 5 minutes instead of 30 was no help, given that I could enter on into a computer in a few tens of seconds and it could solve it in well under a second.
I would happily kill 90% of calculus in the curriculum.
Graph theory, to me, is closer to algebra. It’s not that there are specific things like A* that are useful, it’s that it’s an important way of framing problems. Once you understand graphs, you can understand finite automata. You can understand Markov chains. And you can understand how data is represented in most modern programming languages. It’s a tool for thought and the thing that gives it that property is, in part, the fact that it’s really hard to name the one thing that showcases it.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
@futurebird I’m not sure I have a list. Coming up with a good taxonomy for computer science is something I’ve struggled with. At a minimum, I would like people to understand how to decompose problems into smaller ones (induction can help here as a concept, but it!s often taught as an ends to itself) and how to think about unambiguously specifying things so that they can be automated. These skills are essential to programming but are also generally useful. I’d also like people to learn some graph theory and queueing theory, because many real-world problems (as well as bits of computer science) depend on them.
Edit: The thing I’d like to see form any such list is why the things are important. There’s a lot that we claim is computer science (including a load of things other people claim are their own discipline, such as maths, engineering, psychology, economics, or physics). I’m not so interested in what an exhaustive list of ‘things that are computer science’ looks like (I don’t really think siloing knowledge is helpful), but in a list of ‘what things are traditionally regarded as computer science but should be general knowledge’.
myrmepropagandist
What do you think the most powerful theorems of graph theory are in a CS context?
I love graph theory, but I find it's more about a framework for organizing problems, but it can feel thin on solutions.
I'm glad someone else who cares about CS sees the value of graph theory but since it's never been allowed in the "standard" math, much like CS, it's not as focused and distilled as Algebra or Calculus.
What is the "fundamental theorem of graph theory" what is the slogan?
myrmepropagandist
What would be your list? "I don't see on the list is anything about systematic thinking and building abstractions"
That's done through: Encoding and Decoding, Logic and Control Structures, Objects & Functions and Databases. Systematic thinking (using and designing algorithms) building abstractions (modeling, variables, etc) could be math or physics topics. What makes it CS?
This could be a misalignment of vocabulary. So it might be faster to tell me your list.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
I'm not entirely sure about several of these:
Computer Hardware
What level is this taught at? Logic gates are fun, but most people struggle to understand how you go from 'and gate' to 'mobile phone'. That's a huge leap. If you take it a bit further and talk about memory and compute (and sequential execution) then you've got some useful building blocks you're straying quite a way from hardware because it's the abstractions that are the important bit.
Encoding and Decoding
In the sense of encoding text as numbers and so on? Definitely core to computer science, but there's a lot there where even most practitioners don't really need to know the details, people who just want a side knowledge of computer science are going to get lost.
The core learning I'd want from this is people to understand that you can represent anything with numbers. The rest of it is information theory, and I'd teach that without direct reference to computers, with problems like:
Ans so on.
Logic and Control Structures
I'm not sure what this is. Flow control? Conditional and repeated execution is important. The computer science unplugged curriculum had some nice things for teaching this.
Iterration
That's weirdly specific.
Objects & Functions
It's really easy to get into the weeds with details here. A few things:
Databases
To actually understand databases, you need a solid grounding in set theory as a prerequisite. That seems a bit too specialised for a general class.
Ethics and Applications
Very broad, but important.
User Interfaces and Design
A lot of this also doesn't need to start with computers. The Design of Everyday Things has a bunch of good examples. Though you do get to have fun explaining to people why every dialog box on Windows has the buttons the wrong way around.
This has a lot of overlap with psychology, but it's nice to show people that this side of computer science exists.
Computer Networks
At the very least, teaching people the difference between an application, a service, and a protocol, would make the world a better place.
Computer History
Again, this is very board and the value can change a lot depending on what it includes.
The key thing that I don't see on the list is anything about systematic thinking and building abstractions. To me, these are the most important parts of computer-touching and run through a lot of the underlying computer science.
myrmepropagandist
This is a subtext of what I'm talking about here with curriculum development. Teaching and lessons are proven *in the classroom* you can plan all you want but until you try it with students you know very little. Class time is precious, knowing the pitfalls, benefits and bonuses of how you present each problem and challenge can make a huge impact on what students learn.
A subject is forever changed by being taught to massive numbers of people many many times.
Quinn Norton
@futurebird you forgot #1: information theory.
Quinn Norton
@futurebird i really honestly feel that getting to Shannon early builds just the right instincts as you go along, and they're universal principles that do a good job bridging this esoteric world to the rest of the universe.
Insane Eagle Sun
meso
Paul Cantrell
@futurebird
Those of us who teach liberal arts CS in college talk about this •a lot• — “what a Computer Science component to a liberal arts education ought to look like” is one of the Topics Paul Won’t Shut Up About — and what I’m hearing from this thread is that we really need to be in conversation with high school teachers a lot more than we are.
Kris
@futurebird The point being here that the game is a very strong motivation for kids.
It is moddable, and everybody mods it. To understand what goes on and to write your own, you need to learn a lot of things, Java, object orientation, build processes, compilers, decompilers, build systems, conventions, how minecraft itself works, 3d coordinate systems, linear algebra and linear transformations, it never stops.
He wanted to do cool stuff, and that mean to tackle hard to learn things.
I explained nothing unasked.
That meant he had to try stuff out, had to learn to ask smart questions, find peers, build connections, and whatnot.
It was very little work, really:-)
myrmepropagandist
A shocking number of young people aren't interested in computer games at all. In fact most of my students aren't even some of those who have taken to programming and building projects with the most enthusiasm.
Games can be an entry point, but it can also limit the audience.
Kris
@futurebird I gave my son Minecraft, Java edition, when he was 8.
He’s 14 years old now, works in Jetbrains IntelliJ, does Java, Go and Python and several other things, has a Discord for his minecraft server with 1000+ people in it, does moderation, team management, project management, and a bunch of other things.
There was no order, just chaos, and everything all the time all at once.
It was absolutely hilarious and awesome.
Hal Pomeranz
@futurebird Ugh. Sorry your IT people are that way.
myrmepropagandist
I don't think it's their fault exactly. There are few if any schools that are doing what I think we ought to be doing.
Hal Pomeranz
@futurebird I bet you have a student who has set up their own network for home use. They can help.
Setting up the network itself could be as easy as installing a consumer-grade WiFi router. The “internet side” of the router hooks up to your regular school network, and all your stuff connects to the WiFi network and the LAN ports on the router. The router will handle protocols like DNS and DHCP with little or no intervention from you.
myrmepropagandist
It is not easy to connect to our school network. That is the issue. I need cooperation from IT to make such things possible and that means for the admins to tell IT that, yes, I really do need that kind of access.
Hal Pomeranz
@futurebird @wmd I wonder if you could recruit some of your students to be your own skunkworks IT department? I bet if you asked around you would find some who already have knowledge in this area. Turn it into an afterschool club for eager beavers and you could create a knowledge transfer pipeline. It won’t happen right away, and there will need to be some hardware investment (crowdfunded? grant money?), but over time I bet you could get the bespoke network of your dreams.
myrmepropagandist
Doing this without support from IT would mean making our own wifi or mesh network? This is a nice idea but it's also a lot for me who has never set up such a network from scratch. Getting computers to play with is *NOT* hard-- but knowing what software to put on them and why? I don't even know where to start. I did some work with Lora a few years back to transmit data several miles but the whole goal was to get it onto the regular internet. 😨
myrmepropagandist
Any time you combine "the internet" and "children" people freak out. And not without reasons, but it's also very unhelpful.
I have been trying to get an intranet set up for them to learn, but I get so little support doing this from IT. And I'm asking a lot of them! There are not a lot of off the shelf "educational servers" designed for kids to play with that have been tested for years and come with worksheets and lesson plans.
I have to make all that from SCRATCH.
🌈☔🌦️🍄 (dect: 6664)
@futurebird oh, that's sad. It seems such a closed field also. While most of the stuff isn't super complicated.
myrmepropagandist
I agree. However, as a HS teacher the resistance and total lack of support I get when I want to teach about networks is remarkable.
And computer history should include a history of networks explaining why the internet is the way that it is.
🌈☔🌦️🍄 (dect: 6664)
@futurebird I feel computer networks are missing here?
myrmepropagandist
yeah hardware isn't the problem. Choosing the right software cooperation from school IT is.
For example I've asked them to open the port on the intranet for FTP like three times and I don't know if this is impossible or what the hang up is.
My students have to put files on our server with a stick disk and that limits the potential for it to be used.
And I'm just asking for FTP(or something that works the same) on the intranet... not outside of school.
ALTHOUGH
Normal Poster
Used PCs that can't update to Windows 11 are selling for pretty close to the cost of shipping these days, the time cost hasn't changed though...
myrmepropagandist
Thing is we might need those things again. And that's just the kind of basic stuff I want them to experience.
And really they would find fun ways to use it since so much of social media and other things are blocked at school. They could make their own little servers for fun things. (and this wouldn't be in conflict with the reasons such services are blocked since that's mostly about ... creeps.)
Normal Poster
It's frustrating because a lot of the student sized projects aren't needed anymore. No one needs a file server because all of their work magically syncs to Google Drive, no one can self host a video game server because every game connects to a central server for matchmaking.
I had students build a Minecraft server years ago but iOS, Chromebook and Android clients can't connect to it, only PC and most of them found that very annoying so I haven't bothered to repeat the project.
Jules 🍺
@futurebird
I teach at Codebar, get so many women who thought they had to be designers or artists cos they were girls, it's ridiculous, so glad to give them a start on other options
Eric Baumgartner
@futurebird Mark Guzdial at UMichigan is a good resource for this. Much of his research focuses on this need, and he teaches undergrad courses on media computation for non-CS majors.
myrmepropagandist
I do this! When I teach about sorting we sort numbered chips and cards.
One of my major goals is to teach student that the concepts we learn exist in any computer language.
prom™️
@futurebird For some grades, it might be best to teach algorithms using physical models. It's one of my favorite examples, that a library index is a hash table. It's just more down-to-Earth than the numeric version.
Rev. Roger BW 😷
@futurebird The serious CS types I've met regard writing actual code as way, way beneath them. But the relatively abstract and maths-heavy CS has become conflated with "learn the framework of the month, get a job" CS.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
@futurebird I think ‘learn to code’ is not quite the same as ‘learn mathematics’ or ‘learn English’. To me, it’s like learning to write or learning arithmetic. A few hundred years ago, we didn’t teach most people to read and write, and you’d hire a scribe if you needed something read or written. Some people opposed universal literacy on the grounds that there weren’t enough jobs for scribes. I see learning to program in the same way, it’s not that everyone should become a professional programmer it’s that most jobs (and many non-paid-work tasks) would benefit from some automation but not quite enough that it’s cost effective to hire a professional, enabling everyone to reach this level is useful. Just as everyone can write a shopping list, but not everyone can become a novelist, or everyone should be able to add a few numbers but not everyone can become a mathematician: the former skill is a prerequisite for the latter (well, maybe not arithmetic and mathematics, given some mathematicians I know).
Defining what should be on a Computer Science curriculum is much harder. As a young subject, I think most departments still believe that you can teach all of computer science in an undergraduate degree. You wouldn’t expect to do a physics or maths degree and learn the entire subject, you’d expect a very high-level overview and a deep dive into a few bits. Until computer science education is framed in that way, you won’t see a good taxonomy of knowledge and skills in the field.
jandi
@futurebird @wmd What about Sugar? https://www.sugarlabs.org/#try
myrmepropagandist
How much of a closed ecosystem is this?
Sorry for being a little stand off-ish but I've wasted too much time looking into things that turn out to be too closed and not portable enough.
It's part of my problem with scratch/code blocks: you can't easily and obviously cut and paste your code to run in a new place. (although I do use it in grade 6)
I don't want to just teach students to use a software. Heck. I don't even want to just teach them one particular coding language.
myrmepropagandist
"block based" coding has come a long way and I think the time students spend with it helps some of them to understand functions.
I think it's horrible for iteration, but kind of nice for objects.
I'm not "anti-scratch" but I find it limiting very quickly.
David Penfold :verified:
@futurebird @jandi @wmd
I learned programming before object orientation was adopted and I never really liked it.
I always liked the algorithmic purity of the Jackson Structured Programming design technique (top-down, stepwise refinement). I'm now curious about Rust as it seems amenable to an adapted JSP approach using BPMN notation, that I now use for business requirements down to algorithmic design. If a document doesn't move, slap a BPMN diagram in it. I've resolved 18-month old business requirement issues between client and vendor in large scale projects with this approach. It's bloody great.
Sorry, needed to get that out for some reason 🤪
Kathe Todd-Brown
@futurebird please please please teach students what a 'file' and 'directory' are before they end up in my college classes. If you could touch on relative vs absolute path that would be great, but I would be happy if they just understood what a directory was and had a sense of file organization.
myrmepropagandist
The online safety and basics of security are in health class because everyone knows it's so important it can't be an elective that some students never encounter.
But, my radical proposal is that every student should have a foundation in CS so maybe it should be on this list if I'm not treating this like a list of things for the "super nerds" only.
myrmepropagandist
Thank you for this reminder. I think we either assume people do not need to know about files structures and therefore do not teach it OR we assume they must already know it to be at the level they are but they do not.
Meanwhile "we" are all self-taught. No one ever taught me about files. This would first come up in Hardware near then end, but I don't think that makes it "real" Maybe Networks should be "Networks and Files Structures"
What would be an awesome memorable lesson? hmm
Erik Ableson
@futurebird @ktoddbrown This falls into the false belief that digital natives will magically know everything about computers because they grew up surrounded by them. The number of things I have to go over with students in *IT* courses is astounding (not talking first year either)
lampsofgold
@futurebird Computer History is straight-up relevant to my computer-touching job regularly, in part because we've barely advanced computers in 50 or so years, and in part because knowing the history of a system helps you make educated guesses about it's present.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
@futurebird For people who aren’t going to be practitioners in the field, the history bit is usually the most valuable part of a science course. Anything else is a snapshot of current knowledge, but understanding how that knowledge is built and the misconceptions that led people down the wrong path is far more valuable.
Even as a practitioner, often the hard part of understanding a system is not what it does, but what constraints used to exist that made people build it that way (and do they still exist?).
Elizabeth Sudduth
@david_chisnall @futurebird I agree with this with the caveat that we have to be very intentional in how we teach it because students are weird sponges and sometimes only remember the hypothesis that was found to be wrong, without remembering the wrong part.
And this is why I don't talk about Lamarckism during intro biology anymore. Way too many of them grasped onto inheritance of acquired characteristics because we talked about it first and never learned how evolution actually works.
Grant_H
@futurebird I think if you look at any "decent" syllabus, the topics are there (I have taught HS South African IT and Cambridge CS). I weave history into each section. The problem is how much time one has!
Essentially, there are a set of isomorphic graphs representing viable syllabus progressions. Unviable progressions are the ones that drive teachers mad! ("How can you teach x until they have learned y")
myrmepropagandist
I'm thinking about this less as a single course, and more "what should students learn by the time they graduate?" spread over many years, through many courses not all of which might be called "Computer Science."
Some of my teaching time is called "Health and Wellness" for some arcane reason. But, they give me so little time I will take it.
Joshua A.C. Newman
@futurebird @jandi @wmd
It’s weird becuase it’s designed primarily for sound, but #plugdata is what I’m working on developing a pedagogy around. https://plugdata.org
gizmomathboy, FC
@futurebird @jandi @wmd this is to me the hands down best introduction to progressing I've ever read
It doesn't "waste" time explaining things. All you need is a browser and an internet connection. Although wrist case scenario you grab the JavaScript library/file he uses to program in the browser and see about hosting it locally.
There are some excerpts of the book on that page
Real code, low friction to create something like a sphere
Easy for kids to explore freely
https://pragprog.com/titles/csjava2/3d-game-programming-for-kids-second-edition/
Daniel
@futurebird to this day, I wish for an accessible, visual representation of data-processing, and signal/event handlers in my programming. So I emphatically relate to “block based coding” helping with understanding functions.
And I think it helps with building an intuition for when (and how) to draw diagrams for understanding larger software systems, too …
But it’s been **a while** since I’ve actually used a block based language. And I can imagine how bridging the gap is challenging.
@jandi @wmd
myrmepropagandist
I'm realizing a big part of the resistance I'm facing is because the adults I'm working with don't understand networks themselves, and they do really do want the best for the kids...
But, it must be very scary to have someone talking about teaching this very powerful important dangerous stuff when you are scared of it yourself.
I'm certain that the majority of our faculty (many who have PhDs in their subjects) couldn't *clearly* define what a server is.
cognitively accessible math
@futurebird @wmd i hadnn't really thought about that but yes, it's like history of architecture/ construction connections.
"everybody should learn to code" is part of the Proprietary Curriculum Drive to Buy Our Products, too.
myrmepropagandist
We recently had a "professional development" day about AI. And the teachers here are more well-informed than most. I was generally impressed. However, we are all too old to have had such an education. It's something new we must create.
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