Information Technology Education

I was very excited when one of the CS professors in my department, who had admitted he wasn't sure about the causes of gender disparity in CS, accepted my offer to share what I knew. Studying this topic has been my hobby since I stepped into my first core major CS classes and wondered where all the women went. I've found that professors and others often want to talk about or implement their idea for a partial solution, like a mentoring program or curriculum changes, right away, without taking time to look over the root causes. It was encouraging that this professor was open to learning about the research in the field before taking action. I based the main arc of my presentation on a book chapter by Whitecraft and Williams that Greg Wilson of Software Carpentry was kind enough to forward to me. It's an evenhanded look at much of the research in this area, including theories that are often out of favor in most places I frequent. It served as a great overview, though I felt i...

I was thinking about perceptions of Computer Science and I remembered a particular event in my junior year. A friend told me he had just heard a great song that reminded him of me, since I was studying Computer Science. He messaged me a link to "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton. Thanks? [via  JoCopedia ] The melody is great, and the lyrics are compelling—I've listened to it on repeat writing this post. But it's also a handy way to remember almost every stereotype of Computer Science work and workers. I thanked my friend, but internally I was a touch offended at the connection being drawn between my field and primate-level glorified keyboard smashing. Even more internally though, I worried that maybe the song held some truth about my future if I pursued a job in software engineering. Are all stereotypes based at least a little bit on reality? Code Monkey get up get coffee Code Monkey go to job Code Monkey have boring meeting With boring manager Rob Rob say Code Monkey...

For several months, I always carried a deck of cards in my backpack. I like playing gin rummy as much as anyone, but that's not the reason why. I carried them because I had discovered Computer Science Outreach Magic . I learned a Computer Science magic trick from cs4fn.org/magic , and I've been hooked ever since. I've performed this trick to much success when manning booths at outreach events and teacher visiting days. It lets you engage people while illustrating a bit of computer science. At the PyLadies ' lunch at PyCon '13 , Esther Nam convinced me to write a blog post about this card trick I was so excited about. "Lots of people want to know how to demonstrate computer science without a computer!" she said. Teaching the card trick to Computer Science student volunteers at the Tucson Festival of Books. Performing the big reveal at a University of Arizona College of Science ceremony.  That's exactly why I love this trick. It's portable, it'...

(...or at least how I did) I wanted to write this blog post because: I'm proud of the brochure I made for my CS department when I was a member of the CS Ambassadors club, one year ago. I realized that my CS department wasn't all that great at describing what it was about—and I imagine it isn't just my university that has this problem. I believe that if a department can't describe Computer Science in an intriguing way at university and outreach events, they're throwing away a valuable method of drawing in new students. Mainly those who already know about Computer Science before college will enroll, which bodes badly for diversity in your department. Here is the original flyer (click to enlarge if you like). To be fair, it's more an "intro to the major" brochure than an outreach brochure, which could explain the wordiness. But that can't explain the picture of a guy looking into what I assume is a chemistry machine? Or the idea that one of the best j...

     My department head convinced me and another senior in the Computer Science department to be "career panelists" at a local one-day conference meant to introduce science careers to middle school girls.      Sometimes CS gets left out of the "STEM" conversation, and this event was a good example: my classmate and I were the only advocates for computing, and there were no technology workshops at all, despite hands-on virtual reality and robotics events being advertised. There were fantastic astronomy, biology, and chemistry workshops however.      I mentioned this to the organizer, and she reminded me that it was a completely volunteer-run event, and no one volunteered to offer technology workshops . I wondered how much responsibility the organizers had for reaching out to people in technology, or in that case reaching out to minority speakers (all presenters I saw were Caucasian, while the students were 90% Latina), but tha...

I'm participating in Computer Science Education Week! It's a movement to get people involved in promoting CS education at a grass-roots level. Although it's set for the week of Grace Hopper's birthday (Dec 9-15), you can participate at any time that's good for you. This is great for me, because that is my finals and graduation week! Get more info and pledge your support at  http://www.csedweek.org/ . I plan to blog about my views on CS education as a university student who has been involved in several outreach projects. My main goal is to create a list of resources for teachers to incorporate CS into their classrooms, which can be distributed at teacher fairs and other outreach events. Let me know if you have ideas!