Programming the future

The Toyota USA Foundation granted $130,000 to Tech’s Center for Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC) to support the Institute for Computing Education (ICE@Tech) Program. The ICE@Tech Program aims to improve computer science education in Georgia public schools, mostly at the high school level. CEISMC promotes math and science education for kindergarten through 12th grade.

Georgia high school teachers can attend workshops at Tech on teaching Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced Placement Computer Science (AP CS). ICE@Tech’s mission includes increasing the number of high schools that offer AP CS from less than 50 to all 376 public high schools in the state. ICE@Tech also provides camps and activities for high school and middle school students.

“What we found is that a lot of people, [even] teachers...thought that learning applications was computer science….There’s a whole lack of information about what computer science is today and what it’s going to be in the 21st century. There’s [a] stereotype of [the] geek; it’s anti-social, it’s boring; [all] you do is sit in a cubicle and program all day long,” said Maureen Biggers, assistant dean for Diversity and a director of ICE@Tech.

“[We’re] educating the teachers that go through the program how exciting the future of computing is. Computers are everywhere, and it’s very creative. It’s team-oriented,” she said.

Since its inception in 2003, Richard Demillo, dean of the College of Computing, has ensured a financial commitment to the ICE@Tech Program. The program has also sought corporate support. “We’re looking for corporate partners and foundation partners to help fund us. We believe that [our program] can be a model for the nation [to improve CS education],” Biggers said.

The grant from the Toyota Foundation will help expand the program in several ways. “What’s really nice about it is that we’ve built in teacher incentives....The attendance wasn’t really what we had been hoping for. [With some of the] Toyota Foundation money we will pay the teachers a $200 stipend to come and attend the workshop and our first one using the stipend was full. We just had it on Monday [Feb. 27],” Biggers said.

The grant from Toyota also helps to pay for Tech staff to support the program and assessment of computer science education performance in Georgia. “We’re putting into place a more intentional assessment program so we can measure more accurately the impact of [the program]...if it is [making a difference] and we can show it, possibly we can go out and get even more support...,” Biggers said.

Barbara Ericson is director of the ICE@Tech program. “[Ericson] is completely dedicated to [being] a resource person for the teachers throughout the state, so she goes and pays them classroom visits. She helps them when they’re having trouble with their equipment…,” Biggers said. Ericson also helps run the teacher workshops, which are more intensive in the summer but are also offered throughout the year.

Paul Ohme, director of CEISMC, has played a large role in the ICE@Tech Program. “Paul Ohme...is actually the named PI [Principal Investigator] on the Toyota Foundation Grant for ICE@GT. His staff initiated the grant proposal for us and they are handling the assessment piece,” Biggers said.

The ICE@Tech workshops and camps use Professor Mark Guzdial’s creative computational media approach for teaching computer science. Attendees use Java programming to manipulate media such as pictures they choose.

“[High school teachers and students] build collages, just like in CS1315 and color manipulations, just like in CS1315. They don’t usually get much into sound, so they do fewer of those exercises,” Guzdial said.

ICE@Tech promotes computer science education among groups that are normally under-represented in computing. They aim to “open up the pipeline because women and minorities are just not in computing all over this country, and that’s another thing...we explore with the teachers...how we can increase the types of students who are taking these classes,” Biggers said. The summer camps for high school students are targeted to women and minorities who may not ordinarily be exposed to computer science.

Tech students in the College of Computing have been involved with the program as instructors and lab assistants during the workshops and camps. Tech students have also provided demos of cutting-edge projects.

Kris Nagel, CS PhD candidate, helped plan and lead teacher workshops during summer 2004. “The teachers [saw] the wider range of students who entered the computing degree, and the diversity of careers they envisioned for themselves. When the graduate students demonstrated research projects in computing, the teachers were amazed at the breadth of areas explored—wearable computing to aid in signing for hearing impaired to communicate with non-signers, computing that augments work environments to locate tools and parts of a complex machine for repair and a digital picture frame sharing an elderly parent’s activity levels for the past few weeks. Our teachers were from business, math and science backgrounds and thought of computing in terms of desktop applications,” Nagel said.