- Lisa Milenkovic
- STEM+CS Supervisor
- Investigating Conceptual Foundations for a Transdisciplinary Model Integrating Computer Science into the Elementary STEM Curriculum
- http://outlier.uchicago.edu/TimeforCS
- Broward County Public Schools
- DEBRA KELLY THOMAS
- Computer Science Instructional Specialist
- Investigating Conceptual Foundations for a Transdisciplinary Model Integrating Computer Science into the Elementary STEM Curriculum
- http://outlier.uchicago.edu/TimeforCS
- Broward County Public Schools
- Annmargareth Marousky
- Computer Science Instructional Specialist
- Investigating Conceptual Foundations for a Transdisciplinary Model Integrating Computer Science into the Elementary STEM Curriculum
- http://outlier.uchicago.edu/TimeforCS
- Broward County Public Schools
Public Discussion
Continue the discussion of this presentation on the Multiplex. Go to Multiplex
Lisa Milenkovic
STEM+CS Supervisor
Our project is a Research-Practice Partnership with the University of Chicago with external evaluator Dr. Lisa Kaczmarczyk.
Project website: http://outlier.uchicago.edu/TimeforCS
Time in the elementary day is in short supply. In our project we are identifying models for integration of CS into this already packed day. We welcome your questions, feedback and suggestions! Thank you for viewing our video.
Barbara Komlos
Hi Lisa,
We will be developing a teacher training component as part of our grant, do you have any sample lesson plans to share that your teachers developed?
I checked out your website and looked at some of the student projects. I am wondering if the students and teachers had guidance/resources related to retelling history about American Indians. We are lucky in Montana to have Indian Education for All through the Office of Public Instruction.
Thanks for sharing. I'll see if I can find your previous videos as well,
Barbara
Lisa Milenkovic
Lisa Milenkovic
STEM+CS Supervisor
Students have resources on American Indians as part of our standard social studies curriculum. We connected to existing curricular resources wherever possible to both save on cost and to build on the familiarity of the teachers and students with the resources.
Alan Peterfreund
Lisa: Appreciate the link but I was not able to get to the site this link worked http://outlier.uchicago.edu/TimeforCS/
Lisa Milenkovic
Lisa Milenkovic
STEM+CS Supervisor
Fixed it now - thank you for catching this, there was an extra hidden character throwing the URL off.
Angie Kalthoff
Technology Integrationist
I am excited that many of the resources I saw in your video are free. This will make it easier for other educational institutions to integrate them into their classrooms like you are doing in your project. How do you plan to share your research with others who are using Code.org and Scratch?
How often was the professional development for teachers? Was it a one-time event or ongoing?
How were teachers chosen to be part of the cohort? Are all teachers in the district/building involved or only a cohort of teachers? How are you making sure that all students have access to these lessons and not just teachers who choose to integrate the lessons?
For the students involved in the study, is this their first exposure to CS or have they experienced it in younger grade levels?
Like Alan mentioned above, this link http://outlier.uchicago.edu/TimeforCS/%C2%A0/ doesn't work. When clicking on the link I receive the message "Page not found."
Lisa Milenkovic
Lisa Milenkovic
STEM+CS Supervisor
Thank you for your questions!
We are formalizing our resources into a user friendly format and plan to share them broadly as they are ready. Code.org sits on our advisory board and has already shared some of our initial findings in a blog post: https://medium.com/@codeorg/code-org-resourceful-teachers-higher-student-achievement-8be1efdec06e
Professional development was on-going in this exploratory study - we had 3 days initial (which included a Code.org CS Fundamentals day in the context of the interdisciplinary modules) for the first module and then embedded support/coaching/modeling as teachers implemented module 1. The teachers were then brought together for another 2 days of professional development to both learn from the teachers what worked with teaching module 1 and to have the teachers learn and plan for implementation of module 2. Most teachers were new not only to computer science, but to interdisciplinary teaching through problem-based learning.
Our research design had 8 schools as receiving the intervention treatment (modules, PD,...) paired with 8 schools that were demographically matched for controls. All the grade level teachers in grades 3-5 were involved at 7 of the schools (1 of the schools opted in with only grade 3 teachers). We felt it was important to use an entire grade level (as did the administration) because the teachers plan together. We have two Instructional Facilitators that support the implementation in the schools to help teachers with the integration (coaching, modeling and where necessary, modifying the lessons to improve implementation).
Most of our students at the elementary level have some exposure to CS, mostly just a few years of "hour of code", but some had more structured CS previously - not all though. The students picked up the CS quickly and became the teachers - the teachers with less comfort with CS learned to step aside and let their students lead and learn from each other.
Angie Kalthoff
Karthik Ramani
Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering
I liked the point made of introducing new concepts in an already packed day. That requires careful planning in terms of how you merge CS into everyday. Could you give some examples of what range of CS concepts the students are exposed to? And expose the way you addressed to incorporate it into the day that is already packed? What grate level are you targeting this content at?
Lisa Milenkovic
Lisa Milenkovic
STEM+CS Supervisor
We targeted grade 3-5 students. The CS curriculum for conceptual understanding is Code.org CS Fundamentals. This was in piloted in 2016-17 (prior to Code.org's new course scheme of A-F) - grade 3 used course 2, grade 4 course 3 and grade 5 course 4. Students then applied their CS knowledge through projects in Scratch. One anecdotal comment was from a student that made the connection and appreciated that the code.org CS Fundamentals curriculum helped with development in Scratch.
Karthik Ramani
Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Thanks. They get basic logic and so on. Do they want to learn more - and - if so what resources do they have to pursue this on their own after they get out of this program? i.e. continued curiosity in the content ...
Lisa Milenkovic
STEM+CS Supervisor
Definitely can't hold the students back! We found that teachers let them use what they learned in projects beyond the modules. Students used Scratch to build additional projects based on the interest or other assignments. They even figured out how to use the Scratch user community for help when they got stuck when developing. Students in Broward have access to code.org on their single-sign on dashboard and can go on to use that on their own to continue to learn, and Scratch is always available.
Julia Cin
Hi Lisa,
I enjoyed learning about Broward County's integration of computer science into core subjects. I think the kids really do pick up on ELA and math being significant based on the amount of time dedicated in our schedules and emphasis on those assessments, so we are saying a lot by incorporating computer science lessons into those subjects. It is also great to show that kids that subjects don't need to be studied in isolation and there are connections between all subjects. Right now my school has no computer science curriculum at the elementary level, so I use our unit time (science, social studies, etc.) to incorporate Code.org lessons about once a week. I'm seeing now that this may send the message that computer science is not necessarily important. I'd love to see the curriculum that was developed to get ideas of how to incorporate computer science into different parts of the day. Thank you for doing the work that you do!
Lisa Milenkovic
STEM+CS Supervisor
Hi Julia,
Thank you for your comments, I'm glad you found our project relevant as a classroom teacher. It sounds like you are doing great at fitting CS in! The more connections we can make for the students, the more relevance they see to what they are learning (and then they branch out to connections we never even anticipated!)
Can you please email me so I can send you some resources we created? We are polishing them for dissemination, but have some from conference presentations we can share now. lisa.milenkovic@browardschools.com
Julia Cin
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for your willingness to share the conference presentations! I just sent you an email. I look forward to taking a look at the materials.
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