The best thing that came from it was that I got to practice using a Mac and teaching in the same classroom I'd be using in the fall. The classroom has 25 Macs in it with huge screens separating the teacher from the students, which is great for a lab, but terrible for a lecture or class discussion. And with so many computers in such a small room, there's no space to squeeze behind the students to see what they're working on and help them. But the lamest thing about the classroom is the whiteboard. There's just one small board, and it's hanging in an unlit part of the room. There's a mark on the middle of the board, to remind the teacher that only half of the board is actually visible to all the students.
a look at one of our lovely classrooms
Finally, there's a ceiling-mounted LCD projector, aimed at a big screen which, on the press of a button, inches its way down from the ceiling--blocking the whiteboard. So, you can't project onto the whiteboard and draw on your projection. You can't leave something visible on the whiteboard while you're projecting. And you can't even alternate between using the projector and the whiteboard, because it takes a minute to raise or lower the screen. The only reasonable solution, therefore, is to give up on the whiteboard entirely, and stick to the projector. There is also a device that projects from a piece of paper onto the screen. But it still takes several seconds to toggle between that and the LCD projector, and of course you can't see both at once. Ah, where have you gone, sweet high school classroom, with your luscious wall-to-wall whiteboards?
The frustrating thing about doing a workshop like this is the huge range in the abilities of the teachers taking the workshop, from expert CS background but no teaching experience, to having survived years of teaching AP without knowing how to declare a variable--and everythig in between. So anything you teach is likely to bore half the group and completely run over the other half.
The format of the workshop is that we session leaders talk at the class and dispense our varied opinions from morning to dinner every day, and in the evening the teachers are given time to work on the many exercises and projects we touched on. In reality, the teachers are understandably exhausted by the end of the day, so not much happens in the lab. Maybe a better format would have been to alternate between instruction and lab time.
Monday, July 28
First day. I introduced very simple objects and classes with a roleplay, and then asked the teachers to write the code for the objects they had acted out. Most people seemed bored with the roleplay, and then hopelessly lost with the code. I ran out of time before making much progress. That's ok, because the teachers are supposed to do most of their code-writing during the lab time after dinner. But I only ever saw one teacher come back to work on my exercises.
me (in the blue hat), asking one of my roleplay participants to "flip"
Tuesday, July 29
I presented my string lab, but never even got to the point in the lab where we start using strings. Only one teacher continued working on the lab later.
Next, I presented searching and sorting. People seemed to love it, but I didn't get to demo my lab, and no one ever worked on it afterward.
searching for some sun in Pittsburgh,
and having a logarithmic time
At the last minute, I got a chance to teach heaps and priority queues to the 8 AB teachers, who self-selected to be a little more advanced than most of the group. This was a lot of fun, because this group was truly ready to understand the material I was presenting. I would love to have worked with them more, but didn't get the opportunity.
Wednesday, July 30
I presented my much-abridged Tetris lab, walking the whole group through the first few exercises in my 90 minute session. By this point in the workshop, I had come to realize just how advanced this would be for many of the teachers. So, I encouraged people who knew what they were doing to go ahead, and I gave lots of time for everyone else to work on the first couple exercises, as I hovered around the room helping and finally revealing the answer so that everyone could move on. Most teachers never got to see a tetris block move, but I think this was much more successful than my other sessions, and I did see several teachers continue completing the lab later that day.
CMU Campus Map
(My building is the big concrete block.)
Date night. I walked back to Squirrel Hill to meet Virg for dinner. We tried a Middle Eastern place called Aladdin's, and it was awesome. Probably our biggest dining success yet here. Delicious salads with cool homemade dressings, and yummy marinated meats.
Thursday, July 31
There's a cafeteria in the building next to mine, but everyone kept dismissing it and urging that we go out to Craig St for the great food at Lulu's. So when I finally got to try the cafeteria, I was pleasantly surprised to discover they serve Lulu's food there, too. I can already tell I'll be eating this yummy stuff every day.
I presented for only 10 minutes. In that time, I finally demo'd my sorting visualization. I think people thought I was cool for having made it, but no one seemed to like it much. I also talked up my grid display framework for making arcade games and such, but having not had time to actually show how to write code with it, there wasn't much interest. But I did demo how to teach iterators with plastic eyeball finger puppets, and people loved it. Go figure.
lending a hand to comp sci teachers in need
Friday, August 1
For a little while, there were no other session leaders in the room, so I got to share my cynical views on the AP exam with the group. (Don't tell!) Also, had the teachers do a free-response question.
After checking out the Phipps Conservatory in the evening (where Virg joined us), the teachers played a wild game of Cancellation Hearts in the lab. It's like ordinary Hearts, only you use two decks of cards and have lots of people playing (we had 11), and when two of the same card are played in a trick, they cancel each other out, so neither can win the trick. It's actually a very interesting game, and a lot of fun. And unlike my previous experience with it at the AP Reading, I actually did pretty well this time.
The workshop ended the next morning, and Ravi arrived shortly afterward, which Virg has already blogged about.
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