Alice Symposium - June 2006
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Owen Astrachan Duke University
| Title: Social Networks as a Foundation for Computer Science | Slides (ppt) The study of programming has served as an introduction to computer science for quite some time (in all likelihood, forever.) Arguments exist for not using programming as an introduction to our discipline. However, if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, it appears that programming is *THE* introduction to computer science, at least in terms of market-share. As educators and practitioners, we often argue about whether Scheme is better than Java, which IDE is better for novices, and what the role of the command-line is in today's curriculum. Instead, we should be discussing whether teaching computer science today should be based on understanding recursion and the Towers of Hanoi or a single nucleotide polymorphism in a DNA sequence. In this talk I will discuss possible directions we can take in teaching computer science and why social networks may serve as one of several interdisciplinary foundations on which we can build a study of our field. Owen Astrachan is Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Duke University and the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies for Teaching and Learning. He has an AB degree in Mathematics from Dartmouth, and MAT, MS, and PhD degrees from Duke. He received an NSF CAREER award in 1997 and was an IBM Faculty Fellow in 2004. Professor Astrachan received Duke's 1995 Robert B. Cox Distinguished Teaching in Science Award, an Outstanding Instructor Award while teaching on sabbatical at the University of British Columbia, and Duke's 2002 Richard K. Lublin award for "ability to engender genuine intellectual excitement, ability to engender curiousity, knowledge of field and abilty to communicate that knowledge." He has also been heavily involved with the AP/Computer Science program, serving as a committee member, the third chief reader and as chair of the task force that recommended the recent switch to Java. | | |
| Caitlin Kelleher Carnegie Mellon
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Title: Using Storytelling to Make Computer | Programming Attractive to Middle School Girls Slides (ppt) Traditional approaches to teaching computer science are often unsuccessful in attracting middle school girls into the discipline. Introducing computer programming as a means to the end of creating 3D animated movies (i.e. storytelling) has the potential to interest more girls in learning to program computers, a traditional gateway to computer science. Based on formative testing with more than 200 girls, I designed Storytelling Alice, a version of the Alice system modified to ease the process of creating stories. Storytelling Alice includes high-level animation primitives and scene-support, a set of 3D characters and scenery objects designed to facilitate storytelling, and a study comparing girls' attitudes, programming behavior, and learning of programming concepts in the Storytelling Alice and Generic Alice indicate that girls who use the storytelling version choose to spend more of their time on programming activities and have more motiviation to work on their projects. Caitlin Kelleher is a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow who completed her bachelor's degree at Virginia Tech, where she majored in Computer Science and minored in Physics and Math. She is currently finishing a PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University where she is a member of the Alice Research group. Alice is currently in use in introductory programming classes at more than 100 universities and 50 high schools across the country. Caitlin's research focuses on creating a programming environment based on Alice that will give middle school girls a positive introduction to computer programming through the activity of creating short animated movies. Over the past 4 years, she has observed hundreds of middle school girls learning how to program by creating stories in versions of Alice. When not working, Caitlin enjoys spending time playing her harp and throwing frisbees for her dog. |