This is a great conversation. There are a lot of opportunities for teaching and helping in instructing for coding for K-12. The current Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry lessons aren't geared for high schoolers, because they assume motivated learners - people who are aware of the need to, or at least interested, in learning these skills to apply them to problems they're already interested in. Most high schoolers don't have this same experience or perspective yet. That motivation is partly why the 'media first' approach is effective. It provides motivation by having an interesting problem to work on. It's more the 'maker' approach; you'll learn these skills because you're interested in solving the problem or making a neat project.
There are materials that have been developed for a broader audience. In particular the Hour of Code (https://hourofcode.com/) is a global effort that has this project-based approach and have a lot of different topics, at different levels, and in many languages. These might be a great starting place if you're volunteering to teach at the K-12 level. These lessons also have the same hands-on approach that the Software and Data Carpentry lessons do. The experience that you as Software and Data Carpentry instructors have makes you terrific people to teach at the K-12 level, and it is really important for generating enthusiasm for computational skills and programming! It's just finding that right match of materials and students. We would love to hear about your experiences teaching at this level or in other outreach efforts. Please let us know here on the Discuss list, or on the (not yet often used) Data Carpentry discuss forum ( http://discuss.datacarpentry.org/t/teaching-at-the-k-12-level-or-in-outreach-efforts/111) Create an account or sign in with your github ID (I'm fixing the gmail login). Best, -Tracy On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Ted Hart <[email protected]> wrote: > I think what high school students will get out of SWC probably varies > widely by the level of the class or school. My intuition is that there's > probably much more heterogeneity at the high school level in terms of > access to resources, background etc... than you'd find at the graduate > school level. I've actually thought that a SWC workshop would be well > received where my wife teaches. However it's probably an outlier school, a > privateschool in silicon valley mostly attended by the children of tech > execs and VC's. I know they regularly use github for projects (Like the > school robotics team: https://github.com/RoboticsTeam4904) and each > student has to complete a long term thesis type work that is often an app > or build their own drones and program them. They build websites and host > them on github as well for humanities projects. > > The pitfall of teaching to high school students seems to be how best to > inspire interest (as Greg mentioned). I would guess there's a strong > bifurcation in those who know and care about programming and those who > don't. Whereas grad students are all doing similar kinds of work and those > who lack programming skills can see a real benefit to their productivity, I > think the same could not be said of high school students. Those who are > really interested have probably taught themselves and are really into > programming for their own reasons, and those who aren't have no motivation > to learn. That means a workshop would just be preaching to an already well > educated choir. The real challenge would be how to inspire those who don't > take joy in programming that these are useful skills. Also the types of > schools that would be most receptive / able to host a workshop (like Nueva > where all the kids are given brand new laptops ever school year) are likely > to be those who might be in the least need (Not to open up a pandora's box > of class and school districts.) > > I think to work the instructors would have to work closely with the STEM > or CS teachers at a school to tailor the workshop to the specific needs and > skill levels. If people would be willing to take that time, I think it > would be really positive. > > > Ted > > On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 9:20 AM Greg Wilson < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> On 2016-05-04 12:05 PM, John Corless wrote: >> >> I think this is a very interesting question that I have considered. I >> helped at a workshop at a local university and decided to bring my 16 >> year old daughter. She is an excellent science minded student, and >> more or less kept up during the workshop (with extra support from >> Dad!). But in the end I am not sure she got much from the experience. >> I am pretty certain that she has forgotten shell, git, and R commands >> and syntax since she hasn't used them since. For her, normal high >> school computer use is limited to writing papers with word processors. >> My hope was that she would at least know that there is such a thing as >> a command line and scripts of programming languages that can be used >> to analyze data. Maybe that will help her when she faces more serious >> computer work later in college and beyond. So my hope was simply that >> a little familiarity might breed less discomfort later in her life. >> >> >> +1 to this - in order for lessons to stick, learners have to be able to >> do something with the knowledge that they actually want to do, and most >> high schoolers don't have a lot of legacy data to reformat or analyze. >> This is one of the reasons why the "media first" approach pioneered by >> Guzdial and Ericson is so effective: pretty much everybody has a use for >> fiddling with pictures. (I'm still frequently tempted to re-do our intro >> Python lesson around image manipulation, but that's a topic for another >> day...) >> >> Thanks, >> Greg >> >> -- >> Dr Greg Wilson >> Director of Instructor Training >> Software Carpentry Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >
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