Category Archives: Written by: Angie Kalthoff

Building Classroom Community through Trust

September 27, 2020Culturally Responsive Teaching, Written by: Angie KalthoffPati Ruiz

By Angie Kalthoff

Neuroscience tells us the brain feels safest and most relaxed when we are connected to others we trust to treat us well.

I recently participated in an informal conversation with other educators where we were discussing teaching and learning in a distance learning setting. Current teachers were sharing ice breakers and back to school activities that they were finding for their very different-than-normal back to school. I asked for resources around how to talk to kids about their current situations due to the state of the world. People are dealing with a lot of emotions right now. World events like a pandemic, wildfires, and social justice conversations around the murder of George Floyd are a lot for adults to digest. I can’t even imagine how children or teens are processing it all. In this conversation, no one had a resource to share that was specific to online learning but we did talk about Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond. I learned about this book when I was a technology integrationist. Additionally CIRCL Educators has been focusing on it, and other books and topics related to social justice, bias in algorithms, techequity, and other anti-racist practices over the past few months.

In Ms. Hammond’s book, I learned about the importance of trust. Research shows that a positive relationship between students and teachers is crucial for students to reach their fullest potential. Of course! Ask any educator and they can talk to you about the importance of relationships and trust. I experienced this early on in my teaching career. But, if you would have asked me to explain why, I wouldn’t have been able to connect it to the research and history shared in this book. This phenomenon is rooted in our history, from the time when humans roamed the earth and started to live in communities to get protection from animals. From these experiences, it is thought that the brain created a social engagement system to ensure humans form communities, build trustful relationships, and work to maintain them. In this post I will present an introduction to help you understand how to use the research around neuroscience in your classroom to influence positive behaviors, discuss why we developed these systems, and how this relates to your classroom with a culturally responsive response in mind.

To start, if you are new to Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT), one of the questions I continually ask myself is “am I thinking of my students whose lived experiences are different than mine and what perspectives am I not thinking about?” in her books she focuses on “How do I treat my students who are different from me? They could have a different skin color, they could speak a different language, they could have different abilities than I do, and have different lived experiences. And, am I building their self esteem or am I creating the positive affirmations that will benefit them in life outside of my classroom?” Ms. Hammond defines CTR as the process of using familiar cultural information and process to scaffold learning. She emphasizes communal orientation and focuses on relationships, cognitive scaffolding, and critical social awareness.

I began my teaching career as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in 2008. This title has now transitioned to Multi-Lingual and has also been referred to as English Language (EL) teacher and teacher to English Language Learners (ELL). Many of my students spoke more than one language and I appreciate the thought that has gone into the transition of the title. I learned a lot about teaching and the importance of relations early in my career. As a white teacher, who grew up in the MidWest, my background and lived experiences are very different than many of my students. While students in my classroom moved to Minnesota from all over the world, a large part of my student population came from refugee camps in Somalia. It was during this time I learned about the importance of building trust with students and families. I wish I had a resource like Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain but I didn’t. In this post, I will share specific research based practices that you can take into your classroom whether it is online in a virtual settings or in person in a physical building.

Neuroscience for Teaching Practice

Affirmation

When your brain feels safe and relaxed it sends oxytocin (the bonding hormone) out which in turn makes us want to build trusting relationships with the people we are engaging with. Neuroscience tells us the brain feels safest and most relaxed when we are connected to others we trust to treat us well. How does the brain know when to do this? In most people, the brain releases oxytocin when any of these actions happen:

Simple gestures
A smile
Nod of the head
Pat on the back
Touch of your arm

Affirmation in your school environment.

One way that you can bring this into your learning situation is through an affirmation. In the book, a study is described where a principal takes the time to greet each student by giving them her full attention, getting to their level, and offering a bow. Students in this study would light up based on this affirmation and respect, both figuratively and literally.

Mirror Neurons

When we are around others in that we have a trusting relationship with, mirror neurons may help keep us in sync with them. Some researchers think mirror neurons help us have empathy with others. Additionally, they may help us make and strengthen bonds. Have you ever thought about why you smile when someone smiles at you? This action may be connected to the mirror neuron system. Early studies showed that mirror neurons mirrored what you see. For example, when we see a behavior such as smiling, mirror neurons in the region of our brain that relate to smiling activate. Some researchers believe that we also mirror the behavior we see by also performing the behavior (smiling in this example) and that this mirroring signals trust and rapport.

This section had me searching the Internet for more information and one analogy that often came up was “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” This makes me think about young children and babies. Have you ever had an interaction with a young one where they try to copy a noise, facial expression, or gesture, it may be related to the mirror system. You can watch this introductory video if you want to learn more. (It’s from early on when we were just starting to learn about mirror neurons, but it presents many questions that researchers are still investigating.) Note, the mirror system is fascinating but there is still much research to be done to fully understand it.

Mirror Neurons in your school environment.

While researchers are still learning more about how the mirror system works, many of the big ideas discussed are important for practice. We definitely have areas in our brains that help make us feel connected to others. It may well be that the synchronized dance of mirror neuron systems between people is what is responsible, or it may be something else. Regardless, there is no doubt that connections are related to feeling more relaxed and trusting — important for learning. As a teacher, it really is important to make a personal and authentic connection with your students.

To apply the research from this chapter and begin building a different kind of relationship there are two things you can start working on today that relate to empathy and connection; listening with grace and building trust.

To Listen with Grace

In chapter five there are a few examples of how to listen with grace. They include:

Give one’s full attention to the speaker and what is being said
Understand the feeling behind the words and be sensitive to the emotions being expressed
Suspend judgement and listen with compassion
Honor the speaker’s cultural way of communicating

I know we are all so busy that it’s hard to sometimes take the time to be fully present, but listening and connecting in whatever ways we can is even more important in the online space.

Trust Generators

In the book, Zaretta Hammond shares five ways to help create trust, I will discuss one of those, Selective Vulnerability. I chose Selective Vulnerability due to the state of the world we are living in as we live through a pandemic. Our lives and routines have changed. For many, this means taking what we have known as education and changing it drastically. Educators who have been teaching in classrooms for their whole careers are now expected to move to an online environment. Children who have benefited from the in person learning environment are now having to learn from a device outside of school. I think, as a learning community, we might all benefit from selective vulnerability. CIRCL Educator Sarah Hampton and I both agree that there is room to grow in being transparent with students in our own growing pains as learners.

Trust Generator: Selective Vulnerability

Definition: People respect and connect with others who share their own vulnerable moments. It means showing your human side is not perfect.

What It Looks Like: Sharing with a student a challenge you had as a young person or as a learner. Sharing new skills you are learning and what is hard about it. In either case, the information shared is carefully selected to be relevant. Think about who you are talking to and what you have in common. The goal here is to connect and show that you are a fallible human being. A student with a very different background may not be able to understand certain examples and there is the possibility that your example could alienate rather than build rapport.

As I mentioned before, one of the important questions in the book is “How do I treat my students who are different from me?” I think the focus of thinking about the perspective of the person in the interaction is so important. This year has brought so much for all of us to deal with, and as teachers, we need to know who we are talking to and what experiences have shaped them, so that we can work to make connections as a foundation for teaching and learning. If you want to dig deeper into listening with grace and building trust, Ms. Hammond has that and so much more in her book.

What do you think? Connect with us on social media @CIRCLeducators and share how you show affirmation to your students!

Harnessing Educational Data: Discussing Dr. Safiya Noble’s Keynote from Cyberlearning 2019

July 21, 2020AI in Education, Book Club, Cyberlearning, School Administrators, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Amar Abbott, Written by: Angie Kalthoff, Written by: Judi Fusco, Written by: Pati Ruiz, Written by: Sarah HamptonPati Ruiz

By Pati Ruiz, Sarah Hampton, Judi Fusco, Amar Abbott, and Angie Kalthoff

In October 2019 the CIRCL Educators gathered in Alexandria, Virginia for Cyberlearning 2019: Exploring Contradictions in Achieving Equitable Futures (CL19). For many of us on the CIRCL Educators’ team it was the first opportunity for us to meet in person after working collaboratively online for years. In addition, CL19 provided us with opportunities to explore learning in the context of working with technology and meet with researchers with diverse expertise and perspectives. We explored the tensions that arise as research teams expand the boundaries of learning, and explored how cyberlearning research might be applied in practice.

One of the topics, we thought a lot about at CL19, is algorithms. We had the opportunity to hear from keynote speaker Safiya Noble, an Associate Professor at UCLA, and author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press). In her Keynote, The Problems and Perils of Harnessing Big Data for Equity & Justice, Dr. Noble described the disturbing findings she uncovered when she started investigating algorithms related to search. She was not satisfied with the answer that the way algorithms categorized people, particularly girls of color, was what “the public” wanted. She dug in deeper and what she said really made us think.

This keynote is related to some of the conversations we’re having about Artificial Intelligence (AI), so we decided to re-watch the recorded version and discuss the implications of harnessing Big Data for students, teachers, schools, and districts. Big Data is crucial in much work related to AI. Algorithms are crucial. We bring this into our series on AI because even though math and numbers seem like they are not culturally-biased, there are ways that they are and can be used to promote discrimination. In this post, we don’t summarize the keynote, but we tell you what really got us thinking. We encourage you to watch it too.

Besides discussing algorithms for search, Dr. Noble also discusses implications of technology, data, and algorithms in the classroom. For example, Dr. Noble shared how she breaks down how a Learning Management System works for her students so that they know how the technology they are using can inform their professors of how often and how long they log into the system (among other things). She said they were often surprised that their teachers could learn these things. She went on to say:

“These are the kinds of things that are not transparent, even to the students that many of us are working with and care about so deeply. “

Another idea that particularly resonated with us, as teachers, from the talk is the social value of forgetting. Sometimes there is value in digitally preserving data, but sometimes there is more value in NOT documenting it.

“These are the kinds of things when we think about, what does it mean to just collect everything? Jean–François Blanchette writes about the social value of forgetting. There’s a reason why we forget, and it’s why juvenile records, for example, are sealed and don’t follow you into your future so you can have a chance at a future. What happens when we collect, when we use these new models that we’re developing, especially in educational contexts? I shudder to think that my 18-year-old self and the nonsense papers (quite frankly who’s writing a good paper when they’re 18) would follow me into my career? The private relationship of feedback and engagement that I’m trying to have with the faculty that taught me over the course of my career or have taught you over the course of your career, the experimentation with ideas that you can only do in that type of exchange between you and your instructor, the person you’re learning from, that being digitized and put into a system, a system that in turn could be commercialized and sold at some point, and then being data mineable. These are the kinds of real projects that are happening right now.”

We are now thinking a lot about how to help students and teachers better understand how our digital technology tools work, how we should balance the cost of using technology to help learners with the potential problem of hyper-datafication of saving everything and never letting a learner move past some of their history.

As we think through this tension, and other topics in the keynote, some of the questions that came up for us include:

What information is being collected from our students and their families/homes and why? Where does the information go?
Who is creating the app that is collecting the data? Are they connected to other programs/companies that can benefit from the data?
What guidelines for privacy does the software company follow? FERPA/COPPA? Do there need to be more or updated standards? What policies aren’t yet in place that we need to protect students?
What kinds of data is being digitally documented that could still be available years after a student has graduated? How could that impact them in job searches? Or, what happens when our students, who have documented their whole lives digitally, want to run for public office?
There are well-documented protocols for destroying students’ physical work, so what documented protocols are in place for their digital work?
Are school devices (e.g., Chromebooks or iPads) that contain student sensitive data being shared? Are all devices wiped between school years?
- Students clean out their desks and lockers at the end of the school year, should we be teaching them to clean out their devices?
- Do students have an alternative to using software or devices if they or their families have privacy concerns? Should they?
Is someone in your district (or school) accountable for privacy evaluation, software selection, and responsible use?
- How are teachers being taught what to look for and evaluate in software?

In future posts, we’ll cover some more of what Dr. Noble suggested based on her work including the following points she made:

(Re)consider the effect of hyper-datafication
Resist making issues of justice and ethics an afterthought or additive
Protect vulnerable people (students) from surveillance and data profiling
Fund critical digital media research, literacy programs, and education
Curate the indexable web, create multiple paths to knowledge
Reduce technology over-development and its impact on people and the planet
Never give up on the right things for the planet and the people

Finally, some of us have already picked up a copy of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism and if you read it, we would love to hear your thoughts about it. Tweet @CIRCLEducators. Also, let us know if you have questions or thoughts about the keynote and/or algorithms.

EAGER: MAKER: Studying the Role of Failure in Design and Making

February 1, 2020STEM, Video Showcase, Written by: Angie KalthoffAngie Kalthoff

by Angie Kalthoff

One of the videos in the STEM for All Video Showcase covered learning what failure means. In the video, Alice Anderson says, “we really heard from educators that they wanted their learners to struggle and persist through struggle and problem solve.” I connected with what Alice described in the video, it made me think “This is it! This is what I want too!” This blog post shows my reflections on this video. I recommend watching the video to better think with me about the role of failure in learning.

As an educator, I value growth mindset–being able to say to myself, I don’t know it yet but I can work towards it and try my best. I work to instill this mindset in my students at the early childhood, elementary, and university levels. When reviewing this STEM for All project, I connected with a comment made by Adam Maltese “My sense is that the best way to achieve this is to create a culture where iteration toward improvement is a core ideal.”

There’s often not time nor the correct culture for iteration in schools. With my students, I use the word FAIL as an acronym: First Attempt In Learning; I tell my students that I expect them to fail, I fail too. I know it can be frustrating to fail and I try to support them with read-alouds of books to show how the characters have dealt with failure. (Side note, for inspiration and to show grit, Rosie Revere, Engineer books are great to share with students.) I will share more from the video about projects and findings around failure and some ideas for the classroom.

Overview of the program featured in the video

Over the last few years, the research team that created the video explored how kids (9-15 years of age) engage in making in both formal and informal contexts to see how they respond when things do not go as planned. They looked at how youth reacted to moments of failure and what role adults play in these experiences in hopes of finding a way to help kids persist when they experience frustration. Their goal was to help kids keep coming back and understand how they define failure.

Kids in this study were from three locations: a museum-based maker program, middle school classrooms, and an after-school making and tinkering program.

Around persistence, the team considered was if the attitude displayed by students was related to how familiar a learner was with the tools and materials. Could their familiarity have influenced their persistence? For example, if a student was engaging with new material and they gave up after only a few attempts but persisted much longer on another project, was there any correlation between having experience with a tool and the amount of time spent problem solving.

How to use in practice

If you’re interested in thinking more about failure, this project gave some practical tips teachers can implement in their classrooms. To illustrate, I make connections from their suggestions to similar things I’ve done in classrooms.

They suggest: Save failures to learn from.

After attending DevTech professional development and working with students in the Early Childhood Technology (ECT) Graduate Certificate Program at Tufts University (where I currently work), I was inspired to keep a Kibo (a robot created for young children available through Kinderlab Robotics) hospital of broken parts. Instead of throwing away parts that no longer work, we keep them for kids to see and explore. They now get to explore broken motors to understand why it’s important for them to use them appropriately. By keeping things that don’t go right, or are a fail, they get to learn from the experience. In this STEM for ALL research project, researchers explain how at one summer camp, they created a Museum of Bent Nails. They took the experience of being frustrated when learning how to use nails and the failure one might feel when one becomes bent and turned it into a learning experience. Fellow CIRCL Educator, Sarah Hampton also loves how it turns all the hard work and learning into a badge of honor — it’s such a tangible way to value failure as a necessary part of the process!

They suggest: Facilitate learning, don’t fix things that aren’t working.

When I was first attempting to facilitate learning with kids and programming, I attended a Code.org workshop. In the workshop, I heard a suggestion about pretending to hold a teacup or actually holding something in my hands like a cup or a book to stop me from taking control of a device to fix broken programs. By doing this, as I walk around as an educator, I am not tempted to touch student projects and fix things for students. Instead, I ask questions to help when students are stuck. (It’s really easy to not realize you do things FOR students!)

Some tips from educators in the video:

Keeping your hands behind your back while talking with learners (so you don’t handle their project)
Ask for permission to touch student projects
Suggest that learners ask two other people before a teacher

They suggest: Take time to reflect on your own behaviors

Related to facilitating learning and not doing it for the students, Co-Presenter Amber Simpson shared what she did: “I decided to wear a GoPro camera to capture my interactions with upper elementary students engaging in making activities. It is alarming what you learn in watching yourself on video as I was not necessarily modeling appropriate behavior for the undergraduate students I was working with in the space. I found myself not allowing the elementary students to experience failure as much as I thought (or hoped for). However, being on this project has made me aware of such instances and trying to be mindful of my response (or not) to failures not only in making contexts but other contexts such as an academic setting.”

If you have the resources, it is great to watch yourself on video. Okay, it might be a little painful, but the insights are so important.

They suggest: Think about how the word FAILURE is used.

The researchers discussed the reticence they saw in educators to use the term failure. For K12 classroom educators, it can be hard for us to embrace because of the need to assign grades. For informal educators, who are often bound by the need to make the experience fun, they may find the word failure antithetical to their purposes. Also, a teacher’s background relates to how they use the word failure. For example, educators with an engineering background are very familiar with iteration in a design cycle and bring that in. Educators with an artistic background also talk about the process of creating and not ever reaching “the end.” That notion can either be daunting — to think one is never done, or it can be comforting to know that you can always continue to improve.

As an educator, I am still curious about a few other things related to practice:

Mindset around failure. What were people already thinking about and how did past experiences influence their experience?

I know some of my students are more ready to think about and handle failure. How can I help all of them?

Working through struggles. How can adults help kids redefine failure as a chance to try something new?

I have some new ideas, but I’m going to keep thinking about this.

Developing practical experiences around struggle. Can a particular experience be designed to help all kids and adults become comfortable with struggle?

Again, no easy answer, I’ll keep thinking here.

Practical note: I discussed this project and the idea of failure with Sarah Hampton. She and I agree that it is important to instill the iteration/design process into lessons and yet we find it hard to take the time with current academic expectations and demands in the school day. If you have suggestions for us, please share via Twitter at @circleducators and #CIRCLedu

Career Connections: Bridging the gaps through STEM Explorations and Community Partnerships

September 16, 2019Uncategorized, Video Showcase, Written by: Angie KalthoffAngie Kalthoff

By Angie Kalthoff

I’ll be doing a series of blog posts around videos I from the NSF 2019 Video Showcase. The Bridging the gaps video caught my attention because I worked with underserved and underrepresented students for many years. As a technology integrationist, I was constantly thinking about how I could connect students and their families with careers they may not know about–maybe even careers in our own community. Based on our goal of connecting with the community, during the Hour of Code celebration in December, we created Community Code. Community Code was a way to bring people from our community into our classrooms to share their jobs and how technology is used in their workplace.

In addition, some local businesses and universities hosted family nights and offered a variety of activities for families to engage with. The goal was to connect our community with our classrooms from kindergarten through senior high school. As I watched the video, I became interested in learning more about this project because of the segment where students and community members shared their experiences.

Overview of the Program
i3STEM is a project focusing on “inquiry based extended learning opportunities for underserved and under-represented middle school student populations.” This program includes hands on STEM explorations and collaborative events with community partners for college and career connections. Researchers on this project are working to increase an interest in STEM through the events that are offered to the underserved and under-represented students in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. Their goal is to grow academic achievement in science and math and increase STEM awareness with the outcome of more students going into STEM careers. “STEMgineers”, students in the program, shared experiences about field trips, activities, and how they are now inspired to be future computer scientists, geologists, and science teachers! Kids who have faced challenges in the traditional classroom have now been able to participate in an experience that made them feel empowered and successful. Students were excited about the experiences they had with their community partners. The video shows how connections that were once difficult to make were turned into real life learning opportunities. Researchers close the video with a statement sharing how the experiences the students had are helpful for the whole child and not just for academics.

The Goal of the Program
Career Connections: Bridging the gaps through STEM Explorations and Community Partnerships offers extended learning opportunities to underrepresented schools. Their goal is to improve academic achievement in science in math, increase awareness and interest in stem in hopes that their students will pursue STEM related careers.

Outcome of the Program
A few of the main points researched include:

Attendance and participation in learning opportunities
Student views and interests in STEM or pursuing a STEM career
Student scores in math and science
Academic/observation scores for teachers in the program

They shared positive results in the Stem For All Showcase discussion; those included:

73% of the students entering high school chosea STEM academy
75% of students expressed an interest in pursuing a STEM related career
Academic gains for students in both math and science doubled from one year to the next
73% of the teachers in the program have maintained or increased state standardized testing scores based on their students’ performance.

My thoughts on how this could be used in practice
After viewing their i3STEM website, I was able to see numerous activities that were implemented in their classes. Some of the activities were similar to what I’ve done in classrooms while some were brand new to me. For example, the Mystery Bag STEM pdf, includes cards that you can print off and add to a bag with resources for students to complete a project. Other projects include:

“As part of the Homestead Act, you are required to cultivate your many acres of land. Using only the items in your bag, engineer a technology to help with that task.”
“Production costs for your “Fancy Fidget” have gone up. Using the items in your bag, engineer an interesting fidget toy that costs less than .75 to build.”

The way the website is organized makes it easy for viewers to find what they are looking for based on the following categories:

Teacher Resources

– Here you can find lesson plans, links to helpful videos, and a teacher guide.

Student Resources (which were used for their project, probably less helpful for you)

– Student survey links, links to resources for local issues, help for choosing topics, and resources for projects.

About Us

– Shares contact information for the project, information about the schools and sponsors, and an over of the project evaluation.

I found their resources and thinking really helpful. I think this is a great way to create a bridge between community and education.

We’d love to hear from you — Tweet to @CIRCLEducators or use #CIRCLEdu.

Constructionism and Epistemology

February 22, 2019Book Club, Collaboration, Constructivism, Written by: Angie Kalthoff, Written by: Judi FuscoJudi Fusco

By Judi Fusco and Angie Kalthoff

In our book club, a question came up that is important. Where’s the epistemology in constructionism? Constructing something doesn’t seem like epistemology. Is it? If you’re not in the book club, that’s okay, keep reading as we’re talking about the question that was asked and not the book.

First, great question — we should really think about it! Before we answer that question, let’s make sure we’re all in agreement of what epistemology is. It’s a tough word. There are many papers that spend a long time struggling with how to define it. Since this is a blog and not a class discussion where we can write on a whiteboard (physical or virtual) and really go back and forth, here’s a simple definition with elements that we think are good for starting this discussion. (Feel free to let us know if you think something should be added to it.)

Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, including how it is obtained, how it develops and changes, what it is, and how the knowledge is verified or justified

Whew, that’s a lot. It’s all about knowledge. What do you think?

The original question was about how does epistemology relate to constructionism? As constructionism starts with creating or building something, where’s the epistemology? In a creative act of building or making something, a person has to get the knowledge that is in their head into an artifact. Because of this, the creation of an artifact is an epistemological act. The creator demonstrates their understanding (knowledge) in the artifact. They also may be verifying it or justifying their knowledge. (Again, feel free to disagree or think with us here.)

For example, when making a Scratch Program, the creator may work for a long time on making sure that the size of a character (sprite) is correct, or that two characters have a certain size relationship between them, or that the program moves the character to the right place on the screen. The creator may plan before they create their artifact or act as a bricoleur.

bricoleur — a person figuring it out as they are doing it with “whatever” materials are there

Both approaches, planning and bricolage, are ways to create. Students approach Scratch programs in both of these ways. In both approaches, the creator may try and fail multiple times. There’s a lot to be learned when you try and fail. When you fail, but you want to succeed, you try something different. If you really like something you’ll keep trying and building up more knowledge about what works and what doesn’t. (Constructionism talks about the work being personally relevant, if it’s personally relevant, you probably like what you are doing and are invested in the act of improving it.) The process of trying and failing as you create is an epistemological act. If you try multiple times it continues to be an epistemological act. (We’ll discuss failing in a future post as it’s also a huge important topic!)

As your students begin to work through issues, think about how you can be supportive in this process of trying and failing. How can you create a culture that values failure in your classroom? When working with students who have questions about “the right answer,” one way is to help them to think in another way about the issue. At first, this is met with frustration from students. All they want to know, in that moment, is if their work is “right.”

Learning to work in this new way can be very challenging for both students and teachers. It’s hard not to give the “right answer.” If something is open-ended and doesn’t have one answer, for example when designing things, it can be easier to work in this new way because you can think through trade-offs with students. But it can still be hard not to point students in one direction when they are asking. It can also be hard to let students “fail.” Going back to the relationship with epistemology, students and teachers have a lot of experience in instructionist-style classrooms where teachers give the answer; moving to a constructionist style classroom takes time and practice. One of the things you have to learn to do is to hold back on giving the right answer. It can feel like you’re not doing your job, but you absolutely are. You will still guide, you will ask questions, but you won’t just tell them the answer.

After Creating the Artifact
After we have the object, another part of the process of constructionism occurs. People interact around the object. Last week, Judi wrote: A lot of people talk about constructionism as learning by doing, and it absolutely is, but while we create, we should also discuss, iterate, and learn (create new knowledge structures, or modify old ones in our heads). Setting up conditions so students can “make sense” and learn is so very important in constructionism.

To me (Judi), this part of constructionism is equally important as the creation part. It’s also an epistemological act. If you create, you will absolutely learn, but if you take time to hear what another person thinks about the object, what they think you got right and what you need to work on, that’s really magical. It can be really hard to get the conditions right where people will work together and give real, honest, informative feedback on something. This part of the process really requires that people trust each other, get into a shared intellectual space, and then think together.

How do we put constructionism into practice?
Reading more about constructionism gives me ideas about how to get this to happen in a classroom. Of course, there’s not just one thing I can point to say “this” is how you do it. It takes time to develop this in your classroom. The first time you try, it might not be so good. I always encourage people to start small, but with something meaningful and to keep reflecting on what is working or not. Don’t try and change your practice overnight. One important thing to remember as you try promote constructionist interactions and use this powerful learning method in your classroom, you need to trust your students and they need to trust you and their classmates. Constructionism came out of constructructivism; remember we are trying to get learners to construct their knowledge and understanding in the head and in the real world. Knowledge is complex, is constructed by the learner, and learning happens gradually. (One more thought about shared intellectual space, take a look at another recent blog post for more information about what that means; a shared mental space is so important in learning.)

More on Epistemology
Angie adds: I remember reading Mindstorms by Seymour Papert and first coming across the word epistemology. I was making notes and highlights and then I encountered the word epistemology. I dug deeper into this word and went online to see what else I could find. I hadn’t yet heard of this word and was trying to find meaning in the work I was doing as a Technology Integrationist. This was it! This was what I was trying to capture. Yes, I could see how technology, when used as a learning and creation tool, can really transform learning for students. But I was seeking the why. I knew there was more going on behind the scenes than just adding equipment. In fact, just adding technology doesn’t necessarily change the way learning occurs. The thought of epistemology, as a way that changes how we acquire knowledge, started me down the journey of computational thinking and coding in classrooms, as early as kindergarten. And here I am now, digging into as many things as I can find to help and share what is happening beyond using a tool.

Constructionism really is a way we can help students engage in meaning-making processes for themselves. The more we can help them do this, the more they learn. Epistemologically speaking, we’re not giving students “knowledge,” they are constructing it in in the world as objects to share with others and in their heads with the help of those artifacts, classmates, their teachers, parents, and others. We hope this helped with the question; we’d love to hear from you as discussion is so important in learning! As we listen to the book club entries, we’ll try to capture tips and suggestions and make another post about constructionism in the near future. If you have a question, or anything you think we should include or discuss, tweet #CIRCLEdu.

STEM for All Video Showcase Featuring SciGirls Code

October 2, 2018Computational Thinking, Computer Science, STEM, Video Showcase, Written by: Angie KalthoffAngie Kalthoff

By Angie Kalthoff

The STEM for ALL Video Showcase is an online film festival of 3-minute videos about educational projects that are really interesting to watch. It includes projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other organizations with a goal to highlight projects that are transforming Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science education. In 2018, there were 214 video projects shared that highlighted the work of 713 presenters and co-presenters. The showcase project brought people from over 174 countries to the site to learn and discuss.

The showcase is an interactive event. Viewers were invited to ask questions and have discussions with the people doing the research and with other viewers, right on the site in a discussion thread. You can still go read the conversations that happened on the site during the event. Conversations were also carried over to social media. To follow along the Twitter conversation, you can visit #STEMvideohall.

An additional element making this an interactive project is the awards. Projects were recognized through the following awards:

Facilitator Choice
Presenter Choice
Public Choice

All projects fell into one of the following themes which revolve around

Transforming the Educational Landscape:

Partnerships that advance education
Broadening participation & access to high quality STEM experiences
Innovative practices transforming education
Research informing STEM learning and teaching

As a facilitator for the STEM for ALL Videoshow case, my job was to review projects and facilitate conversations with presenters and visitors. I facilitated discussions on projects around Computer Science (CS) and Computational Thinking (CT) in education. For me, this was an incredibly exciting experience. I am a public school educator, more specifically a Technology Integrationist. I began my teaching career in an elementary English Learner (EL) classroom before transitioning to my current position. I am constantly thinking about ways to incorporate CS and CT into elementary classrooms while creating a culture where classroom teachers confidently deliver the lessons. In my job, I have conversations on a daily basis with educators, families, administrators, our community, and students about the importance of CS and CT in education. This showcase gave me insight into projects that are currently being worked on to make CS and CT education accessible for all students in a variety of different ways.

The video project I would like to highlight in this post is SciGirls Code: A National Connected Learning CS Model. It was the winner of Presenters Choice and Public Choice awards!

As described on the site, “SciGirls Code,” a pilot program funded by the National Science Foundation STEM + C program, uses principles of connected learning with 16 STEM outreach partners to provide 160 girls and their 32 leaders with computational thinking and coding skills. To reach this goal, SciGirls developed:

a nine-month curriculum centering on three tracks—mobile apps, robotics, and e-textiles;
role model training for female technology professionals;
professional development for STEM educators; and
a research component that investigates the ways in which computational learning experiences impact the development of computational thinking as well as interest and attitudes toward computer science (CS.)”

Girls in the program participate in projects around apps, robotics, and e-textiles all while sharing their learning with other girls in the program across the nation. Using Flipgrid, a Minnesota startup, girls create quick videos in which they share their thoughts and experiences. Through their experience they understand that coding isn’t an individual venture, it is connected.

SciGirls Code is trying to understand the following three questions:

How do computational learning experiences impact the development of computational thinking? [learning]
How does engaging in computational learning experiences impact interest in and attitudes towards computer science? [interest]
How does engaging in computational participation practices impact learners’ perspectives of self and world? [participation]

What they have seen so far from girls who participate in SciGirlsCode:

Increased confidence with coding in girls
Increased interest in pursuing CS careers
Excitement around CS, CT, and coding in general

I loved learning more about SciGirls because prior to the showcase I had been using and sharing resources from SciGirls Code. One of my favorite ways to talk with kids about STEM+C careers (which is STEM with Computing) and why we learn about computer science, is through personal stories. I have found many of SciGirls Code profiles helpful when introducing a coding or robotics activity. I like to start my lessons in classrooms by connecting how what we are doing could relate to the world around them. It could connect to a future career or real life examples they have experienced. While many of the activities have a focus towards girls in middle school, I am able to be selective in resources and adapt them to meet the needs for kids in kindergarten or while working with students of any age.

When you have time, visit their website so you can explore the many different resources they have. They have so much in addition to coding resources. Here are a few of my favorite:

Profiles – Featuring a variety of young and diverse women in STEM careers through short videos that showcase their careers and experiences.
Educator Resources – Providing a variety of resources for classroom use, access to training, and scholarships.
Kid Resources – A site for kids to explore videos, games, and create their own profile.

How do you connect classroom activities on STEM+C with real world stories? Who are the female role models you look to when encouraging a more inclusive culture? How could you use SciGirlsCode resources with kids you know (in and out of the classroom)?

The STEM for All Video Showcase is funded by (Award #1642187) and done in collaboration with the following NSF-funded resource centers: MSPnet, CADRE, CIRCL, CAISE, STELAR, and CS for All Teachers.

Visit the following links to see additional projects Facilitator Choice , Presenter Choice , Public Choice

Visit the following link to view additional facilitators.

From Research to Practice: Introduction & Computational Thinking

September 17, 2018Computational Thinking, Computer Science, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Angie Kalthoff, Written by: Pati RuizPati Ruiz

by Angie Kalthoff and Pati Ruiz

Cyberlearning researchers including Shuchi Grover, Satabdi Basu, Eni Mustafaraj, Jodi Asbell-Clarke, and Katie Rich have been writing about and discussing computational thinking. Their research has been instrumental in helping us think about what these concepts and skills look like in the classroom. One thought from the CT primer that really resonated with us is:

“Increasing access to CT instruction is now widely discussed as a social justice issue.”

As educators with the goal of making Computer Science (CS) accessible for all, we often find ourselves wondering “how can I, share CS with other educators who might feel intimidated by this topic?” In this post we, Angie and Pati will, share how we are connecting what researchers are working on in many different domains and thinking about with what K-12 educators and parents can do to bring CS to their students and children. After all, as the authors of the CT primer point out: “several CT skills are not exclusive to the field of computer science.” For both of us, taking a broader lens gives us more tools to help.

I (Angie) don’t have a formal education in CS. I started my teaching career in an English Language(EL) classroom. It was during my time in my classroom, I discovered I really enjoy helping others create through the use of technology. This led me into my current role as a Technology Integrationist in a K-12 public school district.

My first tools for electronic creation included the iPod (yes, iPods the iPad wasn’t released yet) and interactive whiteboards. While my journey with these devices started as tools of consumption, they led towards tools of creation. However, it wasn’t until I discovered CS that I really felt like I was empowering my students to create anything they could think of. I saw coding as a way of self expression. This mindset grew in me as I explored research in the early childhood CS field.

The image below shows that, while CT can be a new concept for some of us, there are already many situations in which it can easily be brought into existing lessons. Learn more about Advancing Computational Thinking Across K-12 Education (the image below is from this document).

I (Pati) studied computer science in business (Operation and Management Information Systems) in college, but I didn’t get to begin teaching stand-alone CS classes until 10 years after I started teaching because they weren’t offered in my schools. I did teach digital literacy and computational thinking (CT) classes early on, as part of a Middle School skills curriculum. However, my understanding of CT has changed a lot since I worked with my first group of Middle School students. Thanks to the work of researchers that is summarized in this Computational Thinking Primer, I was able to learn more about the skills and dispositions important in CS education and continue iterating on the very first lessons I designed. One of the things that helps me in my teaching is to read about the research being done, think about what was learned, and bring back what I can to my classroom to make improvements. The research I read gives me different ways to think about what I’m seeing in my students and also what I’d like to see.

As researchers like Shuchi Grover and Jodi Asbell-Clarke have pointed out, experts still do not agree on what CT is and there is a CT communication problem. Angie, Sarah, Judi, and I did a lot of thinking on this topic when we worked on the Computational Thinking for Teachers & Parents Webinar Series to help teachers and parents bring CT into the classroom and into their homes. It took time for us to work through relevant research articles and examples. One thing that I really enjoyed about this process was getting to discuss these topics with other very thoughtful people and hearing about new lessons and games. Although I did not play it until much later, one CT game that I now enjoy playing is Human Resource Machine. In this game, you program office workers to solve puzzles using coding commands. According to the game developers, “you start the game with just 2 commands, and gradually earn more as you’re promoted. The entire language contains only 11 total commands – but they’re enough to simulate almost any computer algorithm in the world!” As long as you can do this well, you are considered a “good employee” and can work for another year. You should check it out and see if it could fit into your classroom or just help you think about CT on your own!

Finally, as we discussed how to share what we had learned about CT with other educators, we wondered where CT fits in other terms we had been using for years like digital literacy, programming, and CS. To help us think about these terms we remixed an image by Colin Angevine that we found in a report titled Computational Thinking for a Computational World.

In summary, computer science can be seen as the academic discipline that includes programming. Computational thinking includes the problem-solving processes that involve thinking, as Grover and Pea (2013) describe, “like a computer scientist when confronted with a problem.” Computational thinking is useful in many STEM domains and can be brought into other subject areas.

If you are interested in learning more about CT, visit Digital Promise microcredentials Computational Thinking: Key Elements and Practices. At the site, you will find competency-based recognition for professional learning on a variety of additional topics. In future blog posts, we’ll consider how CT differs from Computer Science education and teaching technology skills. Finally, please leave us a comment – we’d love to hear from you about how you use research to guide your work!

References

Grover, S., & Pea, R. (2013). Computational thinking in K–12: A review of the state of the field. Educational Researcher, 42(1), 38-43.

NRC. (2010). Report of a workshop on the scope and nature of computational thinking. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

NRC. (2011). Report of a workshop on the pedagogical aspects of computational thinking. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

What is Pseudocode?

August 23, 2018Computational Thinking, Computer Science, STEM, Written by: Angie Kalthoff, Written by: Pati RuizPati Ruiz

by Angie Kalthoff and Pati Ruiz

Welcome back! As many of us head back to school, we wanted to share our thoughts on Pseudocode and making coffee is one example we thought would be appropriate. Think of pseudocode as a way to help you organize your thoughts in a sequential manner as you design your project, before you translate it to code. Pseudocode is written in a form that is similar to the language you speak, and allows you think through how to solve a problem without having to worry about the rigorous syntax of a programming language.

In fact, pseudocode is simple enough that you don’t need a background in computer science (CS) to write or read it. Pseudocode is can be translated into a programming language and is a great way to help you organize your thoughts. Students might write pseudocode for non-programming or “unplugged” activities, or as they prepare to write programs in block languages or more advanced programming languages.

You may be wondering: Why not just use code to write the program? Syntax. When writing in pseudocode, you are taking your thoughts and transcribing them into a language you understand and can communicate to others. You are in control of the structure and don’t have to worry about choosing a specific programming language or worry about syntax errors (which mean that your code does not work!). The goal of pseudocode is to describe the code of your program in a relaxed way – without worrying too much about the details. And, while pseudocode is written in “english-like” language, more experienced programmers (also known as developers) tend to write pseudocode that is more similar to the syntax of the target programming language.

Sometimes, using images or flowcharts also help as you design your project. A flowchart often starts with a question that has two possible answers:

yes/no
true/false

Flowcharts use special shapes to represent steps, decisions, or actions, and lines between shapes to show the flow or sequence between the steps. Shapes used include ovals (for start and end), diamonds (for questions/decisions), rectangles (for processes), and other actions. Additional shapes could also be used – it’s up to you! To learn more about flowcharts, visit Pseudocode and Flowcharts.

Classroom use of Pseudocode

Many lessons have been developed to help you and your students think sequentially about everyday tasks. By starting in early grades, students will have practice developing their “computational discourse skills”. Computational discourse skills are described by Grover and Pea (2013) as ones that help children develop a vocabulary that is faithful to the computer science discipline while also allowing for the development of an understanding of programming and computational thinking concepts and skills.

Classroom connections to pseudocode include tasks your students have to complete and the directions they need to follow to accomplish these tasks. When students wash their hands, there are a series of steps that are taken. You can think of these as the directions for handwashing or as an algorithm (a list of steps that you can follow to finish a task). To write these steps, we break them down into understandable chunks, and write them in a sequential order.

If someone has never washed their hands before, you could not simply say “wash your hands.” Instead you could write it out in pseudocode.

Wash your hands.
    Walk to a sink.
    Turn on the water.
    Pump the soap dispenser as many times as necessary with one 
    hand while holding your second hand below it in order for the 
    soap to fall into that hand. 
    Stop pumping when a quarter sized amount of soap is in the  
    second hand.
    Once soap is in hand, rub hands together to distribute soap     
    between hands.
    Place hands under running water while rubbing them together.
    Rub hands until so is no longer present.
    Turn off water.
    Pick up towel and rub on hands until hands are dry.

Here are a few example lessons that you could start using in your K-5 classrooms to build students’ computational discourse skills::

In addition to the unplugged activities shared above, students in grades 6-12 can begin developing a pseudocode practice as a precursor to writing code. This Bubble Sort Unplugged Activity is an excellent example of what older students should be able to do with pseudocode. Another example is this Python ‘elif’ exercise found on usingpython.com. Professional programmers all have their own pseudocode styles – some like less detail and some prefer more detail. Some developers use a different method altogether during their software development process.

Want to know what pseudocode could look like? Visit Gabriel Comeau’s post to see how he describes how to make coffee using pseudocode.

Resources

Works Cited:

Grover, S., & Pea, R. (2013). Using a discourse-intensive pedagogy and android’s app inventor for introducing computational concepts to middle school students. In Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (pp. 723-728). ACM.