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UCSB Computer Science Grant
updated: Nov 28, 2012, 3:00 PM
Source: UCSB
While science education at the K-12 level is guided by national and state
content standards, computer science instruction is ad-hoc, and often focuses on
how to use computer software, rather than how to create or adapt it. With a
grant of nearly $600,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF), two
professors at UC Santa Barbara hope to change that by developing computer
science curricula geared toward children in grades two through six.
"I think computer science has suffered because there's no Popsicle stick
bridge," said Diana Franklin, a faculty member in UCSB's Department of Computer
Science and one of the project's principal investigators. "For civil
engineering, you can have kids make a Popsicle stick bridge, and they have
created a rudimentary version of what an engineer might build. Computer science
has always lacked that tactile, cool thing that lets kids feel like they did
what a computer scientist does."
The researchers will be working with students and teachers at Peabody and
McKinley Elementary Schools in Santa Barbara, and with schools in the Rio School
District in Oxnard. Their first step will be to interview the students to get a
sense of what they know about computers and how they can be used for problem
solving.
"We want to find out what they already know, and what types of problems they're
already solving using what's referred to as computational thinking," said
Franklin. "They're problem-solving skills that people already use, but are not
methodically taught, and they're not identified as computational thinking. The
idea is to identify what they're currently doing in computational thinking so we
can build up to more advanced levels."
Computational thinking is a method that can be used to algorithmically solve
complicated problems of scale. "A good example is choosing a space in a parking
lot," noted Franklin. "Some people like to minimize the distance they walk. So
they'll keep driving to the front, trying to find the closest spot. Other people
don't want to hunt for a parking spot, so they'll go farther out. These are two
different algorithms to solve the same problem of finding a parking space. This
ability to come up with, and express, an algorithm to analyze what you're
minimizing is part of computational thinking."
As it turns out, schoolchildren do the same kind of thing every day. "We talked
with kids at one of the elementary schools in preparation for the work we're
going to do, and one of the examples that came out of that discussion had to do
with finding a seat at the lunch table," said Danielle Harlow, assistant
professor in UCSB's Gevirtz Graduate School of Education and the project's other
principal investigator. "Do they want to be close to the playground so they can
get out there as soon as they finish lunch? Do they want to be close to their
friends? Do they want to be close to where the food is located? Or do they just
want to find any open space? They do the same sorts of problem solving, but in
different contexts."
This is the starting point for the researchers' work in building curricula to
advance computational thinking -- algorithmic development and problem solving
without the computer -- as well as computer science proficiency. "We also have
some programming projects, so they'll be doing some digital storytelling," said
Franklin. "They'll do a series of warm-up exercises in which they learn computer
science concepts on the computer, and then they'll do a final project."
The students' projects will be designed to dovetail with what they are already
doing in school, Harlow noted. "These are connecting with the current standards
and the next generation of standards, but using the child-friendly computer
programming to create them," she said.
Over the grant's three-year period, Franklin and Harlow will continue to observe
the students and interview a select group to identify what they are learning as
they move through the curriculum. "We'll have two iterations, so we'll be able
to make changes as necessary," Harlow said. "Then we'll be able to study how
students go from baseline knowledge, which is what we're going to be looking at
later this year, and how that develops over the grant period. This will form
what we call a learning progression."
Very little empirical research has been done on young children's concepts of
computer science, and that makes the work done by Franklin and Harlow fairly
groundbreaking. "In funding the grant, the NSF asked for a computer scientist
and an education scholar," Franklin said
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