6 ms·

Real talk from real computer science teachers

35 points by kevindeasis 11y ago

wtvanhest 11y ago
If the goal is to get more people coding, the biggest problem that I see few people (besides Hartl) solving are getting people from absolute zero to a deployed project. For web dev it means starting at a computer with just a web browser and showing them how to get a functioning site running which you can send a web address to outsiders, even a very, very minimal one. The definition changes with robotics, or other coding disciplines, but the absolute key is developing tutorials and tools which help people go from zero to minimal app deployment. Once you get someone there, they can build on it using tutorials.
Benichmt1 11y ago
Maybe I'm biased but I wish Computer Science was more of an integral standard of education instead of an afterthought. With all this discussion about Common Core, we're still at the point in my state where MAYBE a Computer Science can be applied to the Math credit requirement for graduation. I just feel like so many schools view it as an optional afterthought. Source: Physics teacher who has been begging his administration to add this course. Right now I have over 40 kids who meet after school to learn programming and scripting, but can't find it to be added as part of the official offerings.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Computer science is highly interdisciplinary and syncretic and as such cannot be neatly fit into a first-order subject without diluting it or investing in lots of prerequisite instruction, which for the purposes of a compulsory schooling system is next to intractable. "Programming and scripting" classes are a different matter altogether with highly dubious benefits beyond far-fetched theorizing by its overly optimistic proponents. Too much faith is put on compulsory schooling. Everything must be coordinated and planned. The very idea that one might acquire programming as a means to a pursued end later in life appears to be anathema to many people, who instead advocate that a ritualistic drilling of how to write lines of ALGOL will mystically make people "technically literate" and appreciative.
- kickscondor 11y ago
  I teach computers and technology (basically stuff like Arduino, Twine, Scratch and so on) at an elementary school. Obviously my experience is just my experience - yours might be different - but there seems to be a fervor right now for applying technology at every level of education. To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Programmers just want to be in startups right now.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Its not really surprising, considering that programmers can make significantly more (even before considering the lure of the potential upside of equity) in the private sector (startup or not) -- or even as programmers in the public sector -- than they could hope to teaching, and without paying for the additional required certification and credentialing requirements to get into teaching.
    - douche 11y ago
      You've also got the almighty gender disparity problem again, in reverse. Teaching and programming have almost mirror-opposite gender splits[1][2]. Without going into the debate about the programming gender disparity and lighting that fire, if you've got very few teachers from the subset of the population that for whatever reason correlates with computer programming, you're likely to end up with very few school teachers that are interested enough or qualified to teach it. I thank my stars that my high-school chemistry teacher had sons that grew up in the Apple II era to be computer programmers and that she thought it was important enough to teach an elective in it. [1]http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-gender-gap http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-ge... [2]http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender-gap-where-are-the-female-programmers/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender...
  - cwbrandsma 11y ago
    Age might be a factor. When I was in my 20's I had no real interest in teaching kids. No I'm older, with highschool age kids myself, now I have some interest in it (I am teaching 2 of my kids to program myself). But I'm not sure I would want to teach a real class either. Computer Science is very hit-or-miss. Seems bad to force a kid to complete a class when they have no aptitude for it. Final side note: I help run Boise Code Camp, which is held once a year around spring break. As part of that we devote one room just to kid topics (grade school-middle-school). That room accounts for over 10% of our attendance.
nickpeterson 11y ago
Might sound a bit crazy, but anyone else surprised at the reasonable gender equality in that photograph? I somewhat expected a large amount of male teachers, but if this is indicative of the average makeup it bodes well for future female CompSci majors.
- erroneousfunk 11y ago
  Not really. More than three fourths of all public school teachers are female, and it was co-organized by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, so it makes sense. Even at the high school level, teachers aren't usually teaching what they have a degree in or have industry experience in, they generally major in education and teach whatever the school needs. A lot of my math/science teachers in high school were just following the book along with the class, especially the younger teachers.
  - cwbrandsma 11y ago
    This was my school growing up in small-town USA. Town population of 2000, no cities within a 5 hour drive, class of 60 kids. My math teachers typically had math degrees, but the science teachers were usually warm bodies. (no such issue with English, history, or spanish tho, had plenty of those)
gshubert17 11y ago
I have a master's in computer science, worked in industry for a couple of decades, have been teaching high school computing for the past decade, and think of myself as a "real" computer science teacher. At the high school level, I think it is better to teach computing as a broad-based life skill, not as a prerequisite to the AP exam, college major, or programming specialization. Most students of history in high school won't be historians; most students of literature won't write great novels or screenplays; and so on. I think computing is like math and science generally, in this way. I use Kernighan's "D is for Digital" book in some of my classes. He wrote it for an introductory college course for non-majors, and it works for high school students too.
- staticint 11y ago
  > Most students of history in high school won't be historians; most students of literature won't write great novels or screenplays; and so on. But by the same token, the economic effects are quite apparent. It takes a very special individual to rise above the pack in history and literature to turn that into a successful career. For most, with so much competition, it will never be more than a hobby. Anecdotally, I have a couple of friends who are published authors and I would be surprised if they are ever able to recoup the cost of the time they put into it, let alone sustain their costs of living. Programmers are fortunate right now that the skill is relatively rare amongst the general population and when demand exceeds supply, prices rise. The concern isn't so much with everyone being a programmer, it is that only a few will be able to make money at it when the supply starts to exceed the demand, much like careers in history and literature today.
  - otakucode 11y ago
    You can already see this happening a bit in the online freelancer marketplaces. It is, apparently, easy to find people to write code for $1 or less per hour. I have doubts about what kind of quality one might get for that price, but the project listings I see, regardless of how low the offered price is, always have dozens of proposals.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    > The concern isn't so much with everyone being a programmer, it is that only a few will be able to make money at it when the supply starts to exceed the demand, much like careers in history and literature today. I thought a lot about this when I got my first job with a BS and was making more (inflation-adjusted) than my mother with an MS ever made teaching elementary school. Why do programmers make so much money, relatively speaking? And the answer is that supply and demand of qualified workers in a specialization is only part of what defines your income range. The other, usually dominant, component is "What is the real value of my work product?" A teacher's real value is the teaching they've provided to X students. In a physical setting, X has a ceiling. But say, ceteris paribus, we compare to an online teacher who can teach Y students, where Y>X. The online teacher's employer can afford to pay him or her more, because they have created more real value ($value/student * greater number of students). Even if the work they do is no different. The miracle of computing systems is that they leverage output. "Do" a calculation once, and you can repeat it as many times as you want. So, accepting that computers increase productivity generally speaking, what do you think the real value created by the people who can program the things that leverage a worker's value is? In essence, we get a piece of the following pie: total_created_value = ((existing_worker_value * improvement_multiplier) - existing_worker_value) * number_of_affected_workers Where workers can be actual people or just systems But the key is that our value scales with number_of_affected_workers, with limited additional effort on our parts. So if we can make an improvement for 1,000 people, there's always going to be a decent living in that -- because the consumer can afford to pay for the work. They may choose to save that money themselves, but in my experience people are willing to pay to get better product (more reliable, on time, more features, etc etc).
rw2 11y ago
Make computer science teaching something a computer programmer can do in his spare time! I have TAed at Cornell and ran my own section for beginner Java and pretty sure I can do a great job of teaching students. However, why would I leave a programming job or a founder job to do a teaching one at a huge pay cut. Make the part time easy to do and I can drive to a school daily near lunch hours and teach an hour of class and grade homeworks after work.
- dj_axl 11y ago
  You're right about the pay for teachers. However if you look at the way it's worked out for adjunct professors at the college level, the part-time pay is even less, plus they miss out on benefits. If there's any high school teachers' union involved, I'd bet they'd be against allowing part-time teachers. Once I chanced upon an ad for high school comp sci teacher. They were willing to waive the Master's degree requirement as well as the teaching credential requirement. As you note, the pay was ridiculously low, about 30-35% less than industry salary for a fresh-out-of-school graduate. Would have been nice though, for someone eager to teach but wanting to skip the 2-4 years of extra training.
leroy_masochist 11y ago
From article: > "Until CS Principles, 95% of my students were math and science majors." Since when did high schools start making kids choose majors??
- SiVal 11y ago
  That was a teacher from the Alabama School of Fine Arts, which began as a state-funded program to pay the fees of private, after school music, art, writing, theater, and science/math schools so all kids, especially lower income kids, could have access to private, fee-charging programs that developed talents other than just sports. Eventually, the program evolved into an actual public school, but one which requires auditioning for the specialty you are interested in. The author of "The Hunger Games" is a graduate.
  - leroy_masochist 11y ago
    That's very cool! Thanks for the explanation.

35 points by kevindeasis 11y ago

If the goal is to get more people coding, the biggest problem that I see few people (besides Hartl) solving are getting people from absolute zero to a deployed project. For web dev it means starting at a computer with just a web browser and showing them how to get a functioning site running which you can send a web address to outsiders, even a very, very minimal one. The definition changes with robotics, or other coding disciplines, but the absolute key is developing tutorials and tools which help people go from zero to minimal app deployment. Once you get someone there, they can build on it using tutorials.

Benichmt1 11y ago

Maybe I'm biased but I wish Computer Science was more of an integral standard of education instead of an afterthought. With all this discussion about Common Core, we're still at the point in my state where MAYBE a Computer Science can be applied to the Math credit requirement for graduation. I just feel like so many schools view it as an optional afterthought. Source: Physics teacher who has been begging his administration to add this course. Right now I have over 40 kids who meet after school to learn programming and scripting, but can't find it to be added as part of the official offerings.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Computer science is highly interdisciplinary and syncretic and as such cannot be neatly fit into a first-order subject without diluting it or investing in lots of prerequisite instruction, which for the purposes of a compulsory schooling system is next to intractable. "Programming and scripting" classes are a different matter altogether with highly dubious benefits beyond far-fetched theorizing by its overly optimistic proponents. Too much faith is put on compulsory schooling. Everything must be coordinated and planned. The very idea that one might acquire programming as a means to a pursued end later in life appears to be anathema to many people, who instead advocate that a ritualistic drilling of how to write lines of ALGOL will mystically make people "technically literate" and appreciative.
kickscondor 11y ago
I teach computers and technology (basically stuff like Arduino, Twine, Scratch and so on) at an elementary school. Obviously my experience is just my experience - yours might be different - but there seems to be a fervor right now for applying technology at every level of education. To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Programmers just want to be in startups right now.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Its not really surprising, considering that programmers can make significantly more (even before considering the lure of the potential upside of equity) in the private sector (startup or not) -- or even as programmers in the public sector -- than they could hope to teaching, and without paying for the additional required certification and credentialing requirements to get into teaching.
  - douche 11y ago
    You've also got the almighty gender disparity problem again, in reverse. Teaching and programming have almost mirror-opposite gender splits[1][2]. Without going into the debate about the programming gender disparity and lighting that fire, if you've got very few teachers from the subset of the population that for whatever reason correlates with computer programming, you're likely to end up with very few school teachers that are interested enough or qualified to teach it. I thank my stars that my high-school chemistry teacher had sons that grew up in the Apple II era to be computer programmers and that she thought it was important enough to teach an elective in it. [1]http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-gender-gap http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-ge... [2]http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender-gap-where-are-the-female-programmers/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender...
- cwbrandsma 11y ago
  Age might be a factor. When I was in my 20's I had no real interest in teaching kids. No I'm older, with highschool age kids myself, now I have some interest in it (I am teaching 2 of my kids to program myself). But I'm not sure I would want to teach a real class either. Computer Science is very hit-or-miss. Seems bad to force a kid to complete a class when they have no aptitude for it. Final side note: I help run Boise Code Camp, which is held once a year around spring break. As part of that we devote one room just to kid topics (grade school-middle-school). That room accounts for over 10% of our attendance.

nickpeterson 11y ago

Might sound a bit crazy, but anyone else surprised at the reasonable gender equality in that photograph? I somewhat expected a large amount of male teachers, but if this is indicative of the average makeup it bodes well for future female CompSci majors.

erroneousfunk 11y ago
Not really. More than three fourths of all public school teachers are female, and it was co-organized by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, so it makes sense. Even at the high school level, teachers aren't usually teaching what they have a degree in or have industry experience in, they generally major in education and teach whatever the school needs. A lot of my math/science teachers in high school were just following the book along with the class, especially the younger teachers.
- cwbrandsma 11y ago
  This was my school growing up in small-town USA. Town population of 2000, no cities within a 5 hour drive, class of 60 kids. My math teachers typically had math degrees, but the science teachers were usually warm bodies. (no such issue with English, history, or spanish tho, had plenty of those)

gshubert17 11y ago

I have a master's in computer science, worked in industry for a couple of decades, have been teaching high school computing for the past decade, and think of myself as a "real" computer science teacher. At the high school level, I think it is better to teach computing as a broad-based life skill, not as a prerequisite to the AP exam, college major, or programming specialization. Most students of history in high school won't be historians; most students of literature won't write great novels or screenplays; and so on. I think computing is like math and science generally, in this way. I use Kernighan's "D is for Digital" book in some of my classes. He wrote it for an introductory college course for non-majors, and it works for high school students too.

staticint 11y ago
> Most students of history in high school won't be historians; most students of literature won't write great novels or screenplays; and so on. But by the same token, the economic effects are quite apparent. It takes a very special individual to rise above the pack in history and literature to turn that into a successful career. For most, with so much competition, it will never be more than a hobby. Anecdotally, I have a couple of friends who are published authors and I would be surprised if they are ever able to recoup the cost of the time they put into it, let alone sustain their costs of living. Programmers are fortunate right now that the skill is relatively rare amongst the general population and when demand exceeds supply, prices rise. The concern isn't so much with everyone being a programmer, it is that only a few will be able to make money at it when the supply starts to exceed the demand, much like careers in history and literature today.
- otakucode 11y ago
  You can already see this happening a bit in the online freelancer marketplaces. It is, apparently, easy to find people to write code for $1 or less per hour. I have doubts about what kind of quality one might get for that price, but the project listings I see, regardless of how low the offered price is, always have dozens of proposals.
- ethbro 11y ago
  > The concern isn't so much with everyone being a programmer, it is that only a few will be able to make money at it when the supply starts to exceed the demand, much like careers in history and literature today. I thought a lot about this when I got my first job with a BS and was making more (inflation-adjusted) than my mother with an MS ever made teaching elementary school. Why do programmers make so much money, relatively speaking? And the answer is that supply and demand of qualified workers in a specialization is only part of what defines your income range. The other, usually dominant, component is "What is the real value of my work product?" A teacher's real value is the teaching they've provided to X students. In a physical setting, X has a ceiling. But say, ceteris paribus, we compare to an online teacher who can teach Y students, where Y>X. The online teacher's employer can afford to pay him or her more, because they have created more real value ($value/student * greater number of students). Even if the work they do is no different. The miracle of computing systems is that they leverage output. "Do" a calculation once, and you can repeat it as many times as you want. So, accepting that computers increase productivity generally speaking, what do you think the real value created by the people who can program the things that leverage a worker's value is? In essence, we get a piece of the following pie: total_created_value = ((existing_worker_value * improvement_multiplier) - existing_worker_value) * number_of_affected_workers Where workers can be actual people or just systems But the key is that our value scales with number_of_affected_workers, with limited additional effort on our parts. So if we can make an improvement for 1,000 people, there's always going to be a decent living in that -- because the consumer can afford to pay for the work. They may choose to save that money themselves, but in my experience people are willing to pay to get better product (more reliable, on time, more features, etc etc).

rw2 11y ago

Make computer science teaching something a computer programmer can do in his spare time! I have TAed at Cornell and ran my own section for beginner Java and pretty sure I can do a great job of teaching students. However, why would I leave a programming job or a founder job to do a teaching one at a huge pay cut. Make the part time easy to do and I can drive to a school daily near lunch hours and teach an hour of class and grade homeworks after work.

dj_axl 11y ago
You're right about the pay for teachers. However if you look at the way it's worked out for adjunct professors at the college level, the part-time pay is even less, plus they miss out on benefits. If there's any high school teachers' union involved, I'd bet they'd be against allowing part-time teachers. Once I chanced upon an ad for high school comp sci teacher. They were willing to waive the Master's degree requirement as well as the teaching credential requirement. As you note, the pay was ridiculously low, about 30-35% less than industry salary for a fresh-out-of-school graduate. Would have been nice though, for someone eager to teach but wanting to skip the 2-4 years of extra training.

leroy_masochist 11y ago

From article: > "Until CS Principles, 95% of my students were math and science majors." Since when did high schools start making kids choose majors??

SiVal 11y ago
That was a teacher from the Alabama School of Fine Arts, which began as a state-funded program to pay the fees of private, after school music, art, writing, theater, and science/math schools so all kids, especially lower income kids, could have access to private, fee-charging programs that developed talents other than just sports. Eventually, the program evolved into an actual public school, but one which requires auditioning for the specialty you are interested in. The author of "The Hunger Games" is a graduate.
- leroy_masochist 11y ago
  That's very cool! Thanks for the explanation.