CS4HS workshop this summer at the UW

The University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering department is running a workshop this summer targeted at high school or middle school teachers of math, science and computer science, and we'd love to have you join us!

The workshop's goal is to give teachers the knowledge and resources to incorporate computational thinking elements into their regular curricula, while giving them the opportunity to earn two University of Washington credits or 20 clock hours from WSTA.

Specifically, the CS4HS workshop aims to:

• Let you earn either 20 clock hours OR 2 university credits.
• Expose you to exciting examples of computer science operating in close relationships with other disciplines.
• Teach you the basics of computational problem solving and give you the vocabulary to relate these concepts to your students and your own subject material.
• Give you hands-on experience with visual and physical programming environments (No programming experience necessary)
• Broaden your view of computer science and the way it is shaping Washington's communities and people--and those of the entire world.
• Explore opportunities for you to help broaden your students' interest in computer science and dispel myths about what computer science is and is not.

We would love to welcome you to the workshop August 10th-12th. More details can be found at: http://cs4hs.cs.washington.edu/ and below.

Thank you for your interest--if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me!

Workshop detail:

• When:  August 10-12th, 2011 (Wednesday-Friday approximately 830am - 5pm)
• Where:  UW campus (Seattle)
• Cost:  $35 registration includes lunch for three days, light breakfast, reception, parking, housing for out of town participants,  clock hours or university credit
• Credit:  Two university credits granted by the University of Washington or 20 clock hours
• Who:  Teachers of high school and middle school math, science, or computer science classes.
• What:  Learn what the field of computer science has to offer and take home some ideas of how to incorporate computational thinking into your classes

Crystal Eney
Academic Advisor - Lead
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington - Seattle
cs4hs@cs.washington.edu

April Programming Contest Results

First, thanks again so, so much to Amazon.com for being our official sponsor! Thanks to their support we were able to give away 10 gift cards ranging from $10-$50 as well as 4 kindles! Plus every participant got a tshirt and slap bracelet!

RESULTS OF THE CONTEST:

1st Place Overall: Garfield HS - Eamon Gaffney, Michael Rosenberger (programming in Python)
2nd Place Overall: Tahoma HS - Colin Wallace, Ashton Ohms (programming in Python)
3rd Place Overall: Garfield HS - Seth Vanderwilt, King Xia (programming in Python)

1st Place Novice: Garfield HS - Evan Barley-Greenfield, Nicky Kaman, Joel Jacobs (programming in Java)
2nd Place Novice: Kamiak HS - Tom Overton, Jarret Gaddy (programming in Java)
3rd Place Novice: Issaquah HS - Jeremy Tickman, Matthew Lam, Steven Yang (programming in Java)

At the contest, I accidentally announced 3rd Place Novice incorrectly :( I am very sorry about this mistake. Issaquah HS actually took 3rd Place scoring the same number of points as the Tahoma team I announced; however, Issaquah earned their points 15 mins faster than the Tahoma team.

Here are the detailed results for all teams

Links:
- Contest packets and data files
- Sample solutions [in python] [in java]

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to participate, judge, or support the contest. Hopefully we'll see you back next year for our December 2011 and April 2012 contests!

Programming Contest - April 16, 2011

April's programming contest is just around the corner! We are pleased to announce that Amazon.com will be sponsoring this contest!!

Amazon's sponsorship will include an Amazon speaker before the contest, a t-shirt for each participant, and kindles and gift cards for the raffle. Cost for this contest is the same as before ($30/team) and students will still be provided with donuts/juice for breakfast (sponsored by UW), pizza/snacks/drinks for lunch, and medals for the top three teams in both the novice and overall divisions. WHAT A STEAL!

• Registration will be open until April 8th (deadline for payment as well)



• You can use December's contest as practice problems, but note that April's contest will not have a division in novice and advanced problems. Both divisions will receive the same problem packets

site updates

Cleaning up some backlogged work on our site, I updated the Resources page with links to websites of some members who have recently shared this information. I also posted some minutes of recent meetings on the Meetings page.

Thanks to Cathy for all for that info!

Next Meeting: Sat, April 16 -- Arduino/Processing

Greetings, all.

In addition to the Spring Programming Contest that Crystal Hess is organizing on the date of our April meeting (Saturday, the 16th), we are scheduled to have a workshop, by me, on Arduino and Processing.

If you're not familiar with Arduino, it is an open-source hardware/software platform (a small, inexpensive micro-controller) for prototyping electronics projects. Processing is a related open-source software environment for teaching computing and making interactive graphics, art, and much more.

For this workshop, I would like to get RSVPs to gauge both interest and intention to attend and participate. I'll have to round up enough hardware and other assorted electronics parts and sensors for everyone to have a hands-on experience.

So please send me an email or leave a comment on this PSCSTA.org blog post if you intend to be there.

Also, if you are interested in OSPI clock hours for the workshop (3 hours), please let me. I won't bother doing the registration paperwork if no one needs it.

Many thanks.

.andy
ad _at_ goldensection -dot- cc

Next Meeting: Sat, Mar 19 -- Functional Programming

Greetings everyone.

This is a reminder that our next chapter meeting will be this coming Saturday, March 19, at the usual time and place (1:00 - 4:00 pm at the UW Paul Allen Center).

At this meeting, Mark Engleberg will discuss functional programming. He's going to be talking about the award-winning "Program by Design" curriculum.

Mark will discuss the specifics of how he implements the curriculum using the DrRacket IDE and the graphics and animation teachpacks. He will describe functional programming, and make a case for teaching functional programming first with beginning students.

But more importantly, Mark will explain the philosophical principles that underlie the curriculum. Even if you have no interest in teaching Racket or teaching functional programming, his goal is to change the way you think about teaching computer science, and leave you with concrete ideas that you can incorporate into your existing curriculum to achieve better results with your students.

Hope to see everyone there.

See this page for the full schedule of chapter meetings.

STEM Out! and Scratch Workshop this Saturday

Greetings all.

This is just a reminder that our February meeting is this Saturday, February 12. There are two events scheduled:

• STEM Out! Girl's Event: Crystal Hess has organized a day just for girls to hear stories from women in STEM careers, participate in hands-on activities, network with women peers and mentors, and have fun!
• Scratch Programming Workshop: Lauren Bricker is giving a workshop for teachers on the fundamentals of the Scratch visual programming environment.

The STEM Out! event goes from 9:30 to 2:30 in the UW Paul Allen Center Atrium and is free, including lunch. Registration is still open, so if you have young women students who might be interested, please encourage them to come!

Lauren's workshop, also free, is from 10:30 to 1:30, so teachers attending can still hang with their students. It is in the 6th Floor Commons Room of the Allen Center. We had been planning to offer 3 OSPI clock hours for this, but due to a planning error (OK, I messed up on the paperwork deadline), this will likely not happen in time. If you do want the clock hours, you could bring a check for $10, on the off chance a bureaucratic miracle occurs. Extreme apologies for this.

For the Scratch workshop, please bring a laptop with Scratch installed on it. We won't be in a computer lab for this session. You can get Scratch here: Scratch download.

Thanks. See you Saturday.