AUDRA YOCOM: All right, so hello, everyone.
Thank you for having me today.
I am excited to be here and to be able to participate.
Before I begin and introduce myself or anything,
I do want to give a huge shout out to the CS50 team
for putting on this conference, especially the production team.
If y'all want to give them some cool reactions, or a thanks in the chat,
I think they definitely deserve it.
It's been very professional.
I'm excited to see the finished product when these are all recorded.
So thank you for taking a moment to do that.
My name is Audra Yocom You can see here a little bit about me.
I got my bachelor's degree in technology and engineering education,
and my master's degree is in information technology management.
I am currently working on my admin license.
So I could eventually maybe become a principal.
I don't know if I'm going to do that, but we'll see how things go.
And I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do with myself
when I'm no longer in school.
So we'll see what I do with my free time.
A little background information--
I teach at Pleasant Grove High School in the Alpine School District.
You can see here some quick demographics about where
I teach, how many students are at our school in our district.
We are the largest school district in Utah.
I just finished my ninth year of teaching,
8 and 1/2 at Pleasant Grove High School.
And this next school year, I will be teaching programming, game development,
web development, computer science principles, and computer systems,
which is our fancy way of saying computer hardware.
So in true K-12 fashion, lots going on for me
as the sole teacher at my high school in this subject area.
Today, I do want to discuss with you four topics--
enrollment, engagement, curriculum and outcomes, and resources.
Please feel free to ask questions or make comments as we go.
I do have the chat open.
And I do teach a class that is virtual, so I am pretty used to watching the chat
while I'm going.
So if you have any comments, I would love to hear them or see them.
But I also want to point out the link there for the resource document
that I've created--
two things that I'll be referencing throughout the presentation, as well
as the QR code, the link in the QR code goes to the same place.
And I'll pull those up again towards the end of the presentation
if you missed it, or the slides are available on the conference website,
if you need to review those again.
So I'll be sharing with you some examples of what has worked for me
in my teaching situation.
I do want to point out--
I think a couple others today have also pointed this out-- a dangerous habit
to fall into is comparison.
Please don't compare yourself with teachers
that have a varied level of experience and knowledge.
My hope is that you walk away today with at least one new idea or resource
that you are excited to take back to your school.
So let's start with enrollment.
Strategies to promote and advocate for your classes.
If your district or your teaching situation is anything like mine,
computer science courses are elective courses.
And students in Utah do not--
only need one CTE course to graduate.
So it doesn't have to be a computer science course.
They could take a shop class.
They could take a sewing class.
Lots of different things qualify for that.
And so that situation leads to teachers needing
to do some PR and advertisement for their classes.
And that's PR among students, but also among parents, and even
administrators and counselors who are influencing what students are signing up
for throughout the school year.
So one strategy I'm going to touch on briefly
is to talk about concurrent enrollment.
This is one that, especially among parents, counselors, and administrators,
is a really powerful motivator.
Concurrent enrollment or dual enrollment, as it's often referred to,
is a cheap way for students who are in high school to also get college credit.
Teachers do have to apply to be approved by the university department
to participate in annual trainings.
But it's absolutely worth it if you have the ability to offer this.
And the institution that we work with is the university, Utah Valley University,
just a few minutes south of where our high school is at.
And in Utah, this is pretty common practice.
I know up in Salt Lake County, they work with Salt Lake Community College
for concurrent enrollment credit, and even further north,
Weber State University for some of our schools up north.
So coming back to UVU, one of the things I'm really excited about
is they actually just announced that they
are going to be adopting the CS50 curriculum for their CS 1030
course, which is their foundations of computer science.
That's the one that I offer concurrent enrollment for my computer science
principles course, that I've already been using that curriculum for.
So they're just adopting it for themselves at the university.
And I'm hoping that this brings in a lot more teachers in Utah
into using this curriculum.
So some really cool and exciting things going on there.
And just to give you an idea, if you aren't
familiar with concurrent enrollment, students
who participate in this, at least in my school,
they only have to pay the application fee to the college,
and then it's $5 a credit hour.
It's a screaming deal for those students.
And that's why the parents are so motivated, if you offer that,
to sign their kids up for it.
And a lot of students will go through, and they
can earn-- if they register strategically,
they can earn a certificate in information technology systems,
or even their associate's degree if they take a couple of distance education
courses on top of that.
So these are all of the concurrent enrollment
courses I'm going to be offering this next year, just to give you an idea of--
it's so motivating to parents that it's something that's
motivating for me to try and offer.
So another strategy that I've found to work really well
to boost enrollment in my courses is with middle school outreach.
And I'll go to the middle schools that directly feed into my high school.
And there are two in the area that feed into Pleasant Grove High School.
And just to give you some context, as we're
talking about ninth graders in Utah, most of the ninth graders
are in the middle school, even though ninth grade
counts as high school courses.
They physically don't move into the high school until they're in their 10th grade
year.
So I connect with the tech teachers at the middle schools.
And I work with them to actually bring my own students down to present to them.
And I'm going to sidebar for a second here.
And then I'll talk a little bit more about that.
But as a teacher, I think you inherently have to be pretty self-aware.
And one of the reasons I love teaching computer science
is I get to be a lifelong learner, as the industry is always changing.
But as a teacher of any subject, you also
have the opportunity to be a lifelong learner when it comes to your teaching
style, and knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are in your practice,
or even in learning how to connect with the latest generation of students.
And for me, an obstacle I've had to learn how to manage
is I can come across to students in a pretty intimidating way.
This has always surprised me, because I know how chill I am.
But obviously, new people who are meeting me don't.
But I've learned in the last nine years that I
have a pretty great natural RBF, which, if you don't know what that is,
look it up on Urban Dictionary.
I'm not going to say it here.
But I am naturally not a super extroverted or peppy personality.
And obviously, I'm fine speaking in front of crowds
or teaching to a classroom, but my comfort zone is to be in the background,
observing.
And apparently, I don't look very friendly or approachable when
doing that.
So all of that to say the middle school outreach is vital for me and my program,
because it helps break that wall of intimidation and fear
that many ninth graders coming into the high school have.
And that could be an intimidation of being in a new building,
or a fear of, what's the next three years of my life going to be like?
Or they're interested in tech, but that teacher is a little bit scary.
So trying to break through those walls and those barriers early on
is something that makes all the difference for me and my students.
So going back to the middle school outreach,
there are a few different things that we do with the middle schools.
Tours at the high school are a new addition
that my CTE department has organized.
Groups of ninth graders will walk around to the different CTE classrooms
and hear from the teachers a quick little spiel about their classes.
And this is great, not only for the reasons I previously mentioned,
but it familiarizes the students with the physical space of the high school,
just to help them overall be more comfortable with that transition
that they're about to make.
And for my program specifically, having those students physically
in my classroom is a big deal, because my classroom is situated
in a part of the school that you wouldn't even know it
existed, unless you were looking for it.
And so getting those students physically into the classroom is a really big deal.
And as some of the comments have mentioned,
thank you for saying it's a nice school.
This classroom, when I inherited it, did not have carpet.
There were things-- we repainted it.
We put new carpet in.
Fortunately, my admin was supportive of me making this look
like a welcoming space for students.
And yes, that is an old Mac in the corner.
Some of the stuff I inherited.
It was basically a museum when I inherited it,
a museum that needed some curating and updating, for sure.
So also something else, your eye was really
good for seeing the Macs in the corner over there,
but I don't know if they're good enough to pick out what
is on top of the shelves above the TVs.
But they are lined with a rubber ducks.
And we've talked a little bit-- a lot about rubber ducks
today, and rubber duck debugging, and the rubber duck AI.
So students in my classroom, when we get to that conversation,
they get to pick their rubber duck from my collection
that I've got displayed around the room.
And then I keep a bin that I call the duck pond.
And that's where their duck stays for the year,
and they just pick it up on their way into class.
And then at the end of the school year, they
get to take their duck home with them.
Now, before the high school tours were a thing,
I was already connecting with technology teachers at the middle schools,
like I said earlier, to bring my students down to their classrooms,
to present about the courses and the clubs that I run at the high school.
Now, I purposefully have the current students give these presentations.
I'll introduce myself, make sure the students are aware of who I am
and my face, but I like to leave the bulk of the presentation
to my current students, because having them
talk about what they like about the courses I teach,
or what they like about being in high school
is so much more convincing than somebody who's
not close to their age or relatable.
It's the cool older kids telling them what classes are fun.
And we strategically do this right before freshman registration.
And we make sure, in addition to the presentation,
we have some sort of hands-on activity.
So I have included one of my favorites here that I want to take a few minutes
and have you experience for yourself.
It is a couple of years old, so maybe it is starting to get dated.
But please take a moment, and go to the phishingquiz.withgoogle.com.
And I included some screenshots here, just to show you what to expect,
or if you can't quite go there on your own.
As soon as you hit, Take the Quiz, it's going to ask for a name and email.
And if you're worried about your students' data privacy,
that this website is asking for information,
it's actually just to feed the simulator for the simulation.
So it could be Bob Smith for the name, and bob@bob.com, or whatever random.
It doesn't have to be real.
So I'm going to pause for 2 minutes while you speedrun the phishing quiz.
All righty, even if you're not done, if you'll circle back to us,
you can definitely go back and finish the phishing challenges later.
But I'd love to hear in the chat.
Did anybody get phished?
Now, the fun thing is when you do this with students, they think that they're--
think they know it all.
They think they're not going to get got.
And it's really an eye opener for them and a great conversation starter
for online safety, and what to look for in emails
for keeping yourself protected.
So hopefully that is a valuable and interesting resource.
Nobody is maybe willing to share that they got,
or maybe you're just not quite finished yet.
But I'm going to go ahead and keep rolling so we stay on schedule.
But in addition to middle school outreach,
the other thing I wanted to talk about in this enrollment section is hype.
And I couldn't think of a word that better described
the sentiment I was going for.
So hype was what I landed on.
But I already talked about the current students getting the ninth graders
excited for the classes.
But it's just as true for the current high school students with each other.
Word of mouth is your best advertisement.
And just like Patrick said in the chat, there's
no substitute for peer-to-peer interactions.
And that has really been what gets a lot of students into my classes.
Their friend took it, or they heard from a friend, or their sibling that took it.
And that's really valuable.
So I would say, also, don't be afraid to tell
your current students to tell their friends if they enjoyed the class
or not.
A lot of times students need that scaffolding, or that extra little push
to advocate for you.
And I think that's totally OK for you to do.
As you plan different activities or events
that you are doing with your students, my other recommendation on this slide
is to invite your admins and counselors whenever possible.
I already spoke about how they are talking to students
throughout the year about what courses they're
going to take in the following years.
And if your admin are busy, or they can't attend something,
please just keep inviting them.
I would say invite them to come into your classroom
when you're doing a cool activity, or if you have a guest speaker.
It doesn't have to be your evaluation when your admin is--
if that's the only time they're in your classroom,
then they're definitely not getting a full picture
of the cool things that you're doing.
So definitely keep inviting them back.
And I think this has been one of the keys to my success
is keeping the admin in the loop as much as possible,
trying to make it easy for them to know what I'm doing in my classroom,
and aware of all of the efforts that I am doing with my students.
I even-- for my club, I do put out a newsletter.
And this is a complete suggestion.
This is obviously over the top.
And it doesn't have to be weekly, or daily, or even monthly.
I think I did mine quarterly.
And I would put up pictures and send it out to parents, and say, we did this.
This student earned this certification, or this recognition.
And it's really-- and I added my admin to that newsletter.
And so just really taking the effort to keep what I'm doing
visible in the eyes of parents and administrators and counselors.
So with that in mind, I just want to talk about what's
going on in some of these pictures.
That top photo there was during our CTE month.
We did a week in my classroom during lunch of retro gaming.
And like I said earlier, the students can walk by my class
and not even realize that they've walked by it, because of the way
that it is built into the school building.
And so this was fun to get kids into my classroom who had never been
in there before and to interact with-- the counselors came up,
and they're really competitive in Dr. Mario, apparently.
So that was a lot of fun to have a Dr. Mario leaderboard.
And you can see there my student playing with our librarian.
In the bottom left photo there, that's my principal
learning how to play Smash Brothers.
We did an event in the Commons area.
And that was purposeful, because it was easy for anyone in the office
to step out for a moment to come and talk to us and see what we were doing,
because my classroom is kind of far away from the office.
So putting things in visible areas of the school, if you can.
Don't always do everything in your classroom.
And along those lines, that middle photo there, we had an industry guest come in.
And we did a tear down with a bunch of old PCs.
So we weren't necessarily scared of hurting anything.
But the students got to have this hands-on experience of taking apart
a computer.
And we did it in a meeting room in the office,
again, very purposefully not in my classroom,
so that people could walk by and see what was going on.
And then, finally, that pixel art donut that you see in the bottom right,
this is very similar to what David shared earlier.
The pixel art activity, or students expressing their creativity
through pixel art is one of my favorite activities to do with students.
And we take over the media center windows and the office
windows for a whole month, displaying our art.
And I put up signs next to everyone's art
with what they named it, who made it, and then
what class they were in when they made that pixel art so that students walking
by can see that, and then know, oh, that looks like something I would want to do,
and possibly then come and sign up for the class.
Now, the last thing I'm going to say about hype
is celebrate with your students.
They usually hesitate to celebrate themselves or make a big deal out
of anything, because they don't want to be seen as someone trying
to draw attention to themselves, or they're not comfortable with that
necessarily.
But if you make a big deal out of things to them, even if it's not in front--
you don't have to stand up in front of the class and call someone out.
But you can just have a conversation with someone
like, I saw that you made the honor roll, or I went
and I saw the play that you were in.
Those little things are going to go a long way in the students trusting
you and building that rapport with you.
And if you're willing to celebrate those moments, it's a ripple effect.
Honestly, the students will start doing it with each other.
And that's what is really contributing to building a positive culture
within your classes and anything that you do in or out
of the classroom with students.
And one of my favorite events that I've attended
was I had this student, who I don't think
I ever heard him say anything except here when I called roll
the first day before I knew names.
And he was so quiet and not--
he was a good student, but we just never really got past that initial stage.
And I went and saw our school was doing The Secret Garden as a play.
And I went and saw the school play.
And he was playing one of the main characters.
I can't remember his name now, but he's the boy that gets to go in the garden
with the girl who's in the secret garden.
He had this bird on his shoulder.
And he was singing solos.
And it was this side of him that I didn't even know existed.
And it was so fun to be able to go back to class the next week and tell him,
"I saw you in the play.
You're such a good singer."
And those little things, if you can make the effort,
or if you're already going to an event, or maybe you get paid to go to an event
because they need more chaperones, just trying
to be aware and keep your eyes open for those opportunities.
That will go a long way for you.
And then, lastly, here on this slide, building traditions.
You can see there we have quite the group of students
who dressed up for Halloween.
And I have a couple different pictures over the years of Halloween costumes.
We even-- it became such a thing that last year
we did a Phineas and Ferb themed costume.
And I got to be Perry the Platypus.
And it was just really funny.
And so building those traditions and finding things for students
to be excited about, they will, in turn, just become more excited
and celebrate each other more.
So moving on to engagement, we talked a lot
about the different strategies for kids getting excited about your class
and signing up for it.
But what do you do with them once they're actually in class?
And these are some strategies for ongoing student engagement.
I've already shared some of the strategies
I like to utilize building relationships and the phishing quiz.
And you can find these links, again, in that resource document
I shared at the beginning.
Or if you need to go click on the slides in the website,
you should be able to get to that resource page as well.
So diving a little deeper into the topic of engagement,
the thing I want to focus on today is industry partnerships.
And that is a huge untapped resource in a lot of schools.
And I think mostly because it does take a bit of effort to set up,
but I think it can be worth it.
If you live somewhere where maybe you don't feel
like you have a lot of tech companies--
I'm fortunate I live in--
we've coined the phrase Silicon Slopes for here in Utah.
And it's somewhat turned into a tech hub with a lot of startups.
And if you think you live somewhere where you don't have a lot of those tech
company resources, I would challenge you to just go
to any company or organization that you have and ask about their tech.
We're living in a time where nearly every company is a tech company.
And it would be fascinating for students,
especially if it's a local business or organization,
to understand how tech plays into what they are doing on a day-to-day basis.
And another, probably, thing that you haven't thought about
is your Department of Transportation.
If you're in the United States, every state
has a Department of Transportation.
This top picture right here is actually my students at the UDOT,
Utah Department of Transportation, Conference.
And you don't initially think, oh, I'm going to take my computer science
students to an engineering conference.
But engineering is all about problem solving.
And we have fiber optics that are running all over the state.
There's some really intense networking going on.
There are databases to maintain and traffic systems to program.
And there's so much crossover that the students always have a great time.
And if food is involved, that's, honestly, the only criteria you need.
And teenagers will probably have a great time is if you feed them.
But anything like that, if you have the opportunity
to take your students to a conference, they're going to love the free food,
and, especially in the vendor hall, if there's a vendor hall, the swag.
And then it's opening their eyes to all of these different opportunities
and possibilities of this tech world that they are just barely dipping
their toe into at the school level.
So again, industry partnerships can look like a few different things.
You could have industry partners come into your classroom as guest speakers.
But if you have access to busing, like I said,
students love field trips, especially if there's food involved.
And a couple of ideas if you're wondering where to start.
One of the first field trips that I took my students on,
and this is quite a big group up here.
We actually had three schools in our district
that were doing these industry visits together.
So instead of me just taking a handful of students,
we would fill up a whole bus, because we worked together,
and we collaborated with other schools in the district
to bring even more students to these opportunities that we set up.
And one of the first ones that we took our students to
was actually a tour of the district tech facilities.
We wanted to show them kind of the behind the scenes of how
their tech was managed.
And that's actually what this lower picture is right here.
They are in the IT building, and this is where
they were setting up some new Chromebooks for students that they
were getting ready to pass out.
And they did that.
And they also got to go see the server room where all of the servers
were kept for the district.
And as you can imagine, in a district of 80,000-plus students,
there is a lot of tech to manage.
And so it was a lot of fun for them to get that behind-the-scenes look of what
was going on.
That also included a visit on the same trip--
because they were close enough together, we didn't need to take the bus
to a second location--
a visit to our district surplus warehouse.
And most school districts and public agencies
are going to have a surplus warehouse.
And if you've never been to your district's surplus,
I highly recommend it, because it's a great place to find tech for cheap,
or resources for your classroom.
That's where I got some of the tables for my classroom.
But anyways, the students, it was really important for them, and really valuable
for them, because they got to go see, oh, this
is what happens to all of the technology when a lab gets rotated,
or when I turn in my Chromebook and it doesn't get reused,
the district then sells it to the public.
And for students who are on their way to college, or maybe
they don't have a device at home, being able to buy a Chromebook for $30,
or even probably even cheaper than that.
I'm trying to think how much they might cost.
But it's really cheap compared to what it would be to buy new.
And it's a great opportunity if they need parts,
if they're building a computer.
So just some things to keep in mind.
If you're trying to think of fun ideas that maybe you don't have tech companies
or companies around, you can just utilize
your district, utilize your school, and the resources you already have.
Even the IT folks who we were visiting had a great time.
If you think about it, a lot of time they
are dealing with students who are trying to get past the filters,
or trying to break into the system and change passwords,
and change their grades.
And so they get to see a lot of the negative side of the network
and what's going on.
And it was a lot of fun to bring students into their area,
where they got to brag a little bit about themselves and what was going on.
And maintaining that good relationship with my tech department
is definitely really important to me, because if I
want to do something cool with cyber security,
or I do esports for my students, like there's
so much value in maintaining those relationships
and showing the students how much work goes into making all these things work.
And then before I leave this slide, I even had-- this is another thought
that I had.
The tech at my school, he came and was a guest speaker for one of my classes
once.
And before he was a tech at the school district,
he actually worked for a tech company during the Y2K era.
And he came in and told us all of the stories
about what it was like to work at a tech company during Y2K,
and how everyone was worried that at midnight everything was going to reset.
And this tech specialist, who's at my school,
is literally next door to my classroom and is a valuable resource
that I had right there.
And I'm sure--
I'm always surprised at how willing and excited people are
to speak to my students, because I see them all the time.
It's nothing-- it's not new and novel to me.
But they're excited to come in and see a classroom.
They're excited to come in and share their expertise, because a lot of times
they don't get that opportunity to brag about themselves or what they do.
So if thinking about finding a guest speaker is maybe a little intimidating
or all of that extra legwork, I actually even made an assignment one year.
I put students in groups.
And I said, this group, you need to come up with one guest speaker.
Between the three or four of you, I'm sure you
can find someone, one of your parents, one of your parents
knows somebody, someone at your work.
I put the onus on them, and we picked out all of the dates.
Every Friday that we had class, we're on an A-B schedule.
So every Friday that we had class was guest speaker day.
And I was really impressed with who the students came up with.
I didn't know what to expect.
It was a-- I was taking a gamble, opening this up
to them to find the guest speakers.
And they really delivered.
And I think that's something if your students are old enough
and you want to try that, I think you would be pleasantly surprised.
And then if you're looking at the resource page that I shared before,
there is also on there a link.
Amazon also does virtual guest speakers.
So if you're ever in need of a guest speaker,
I would totally go and fill out that link there and request one
for your classroom.
I've done it before.
And it was really interesting to hear from somebody
who works on the back end of Amazon.
And it's really a good tool if you are struggling to find somebody,
or maybe you only need one person.
You don't need all your students to find a guest speaker.
But really, this industry partnership helps the students
make that application connection.
There's a lot of theory going on in the classroom.
And sometimes we can do hands-on activities like the PC teardowns
that I showed earlier.
But in all reality, it's making that connect from the classroom--
I'm in school-- to the actual workplace, the real world, for the students to see,
oh, I didn't even think about working for the Department of Transportation,
or I didn't even think that I could do network engineering for a school
district.
There's so many connections that can be made
that I think bringing in these industry partnerships
to get some different perspectives and help your students
make those connections is a really valuable thing that's
going to make them remember your class and what they learned there.
So I do want to jump into curriculum and outcomes now,
and why I believe CS50 is the best AP CSP curriculum.
I'm a little biased, but that's OK.
That's this whole conference.
So hopefully, since you're here, you're convinced as well
that you think this is a great curriculum for your students.
But I've been teaching computer science principles since 2018.
And I have been using the CS50 curriculum
exclusively in my classroom since 2022, and even before that
for students who needed extension or were looking
for something to challenge them.
It took me a while to get the GitHub approval through my district technology
folks.
But it was really apparent that it's an industry standard tool
that the students needed access to.
And again, in that resources document, I included a link.
I saw in the chat earlier we were having some conversations about permission
slips for students and how GitHub is not COPPA compliant.
And we found it really difficult to get a data privacy agreement on file
with GitHub.
And so I finally convinced the tech folks
to let us have a parent permission slip.
And I've yet to have students come back and not get it signed.
But I would, as a teacher, need to have alternative resources or opportunities
for those students if we couldn't get a GitHub permission slip for them.
So that is something to keep in mind as you're figuring out
how to implement this is the GitHub permission
and the COPPA requirements there.
But honestly, I would probably just end up
manually grading their assignments instead of having--
running them through the submit50, check50 checkers.
So a little bit more legwork on my part, but still
totally worth it so that they have that access to that curriculum
and the lessons that we're doing.
So one of the reasons I love CS50 is the foundational knowledge.
And everyone who's spoken today has talked a little bit
about this, how having that scaffolding lesson over lesson
is really vital to the students having that strong, strong foundation.
And they come out of the class with a much better understanding
than I feel like they did with the other curriculums that I was using.
And I teach this as a full-year course.
A lot of people I know have to rush through it in a semester,
but that does give me a little more time to get through the lessons
with my students, which I appreciate.
Kind of the flow that we follow as we do it is we actually do
watch David's lectures together as a class, but we make an event out of it.
Those are the days-- the students know when it's movie day, or not movie day,
but lecture day.
And I tell them to bring snacks.
We pause all the time so that we can code along with the examples,
because I don't want them just watching the examples.
I want them really understanding what's going on in these examples.
So some of these lectures are kind of long.
And we make them go even longer because we want to go through those examples
together to make sure students understand.
Another example of what we-- as we're going through it together as a class,
I do have some computer hardware, some old parts that I keep on hand
so that when we're watching the CS50T lecture, we can go through
and David's talking about RAM, so I hand out the RAM sticks.
We're talking about storage.
I hand out the hard drives and the flash drives
that have been opened up, that have the actual disks, that show the chip sets,
that show everything that is being talked about so they have that tactile
experience as we're watching some of these lectures.
And this works really well for the students
who need a little extra support, because I'm there
going through the process with them.
I do tell students who maybe feel like we're going too slow,
I give them permission to move ahead on their own with the caveat
that they do have to do the activities with us
when we do things like the pixel art, and they also
have to make sure they're not distracting anyone in the class.
If we're watching a lecture and they're working on an assignment,
and they want to talk to their buddy, that's a no go.
Part of our agreement for you to work ahead
is that we're not interrupting each other's learning experience.
So I love that CS50 gives the ability for us to do that.
Everything I just described really follows the "I do, we do, you do"
education model, where David in the lectures is doing the I do.
Me pausing and going through with the examples with the students is the we do.
And then the sets are the you do portion for the students.
And as was mentioned previously, the levels of comfort for the lessons
also really helps with some of that scaffolding.
And I've even gone as far-- if I have students who are struggling,
who are really struggling, I take it back a step.
And I say, OK, we're going to pause here.
And I'm actually going to have you go do the Scratch lessons first before we
jump back into the CS50x curriculum.
So I pull them off of-- sometimes I'll pull them off.
I'm not taking them away from it.
We'll come back and revisit it.
But then I'm like, let's go do-- let's get some more foundational concepts
with the Scratch lessons first.
And that's a more comfortable place for a lot of them,
because they are familiar with Scratch.
And it's something that they've seen since they were really young.
And I think they're surprised, especially
the more advanced students when we do week zero.
They're like, oh, we're doing Scratch.
And they kind of roll their eyes, like, oh my heck, it's Scratch, right?
And I'm like, guys, this is a Harvard level course.
Don't knock it until you try it.
And they're always surprised at how in depth Scratch can get.
And we go and we look at some of the projects,
and look at some of the underlying code that people have done.
And it's really fun to break their biases about Scratch.
I saw a couple comments in the chat about these shirts here.
I put this picture in because it supported what I talked
about earlier with building traditions.
Something I've started doing--
I get a little bit of funding from my admin when students pass the AP test.
And fortunately for me, since I'm a CTE course, I do get some funding that way.
So the AP funding, I'm able to put towards something cool for my students.
And right before they go in to take their AP exam, I hand out these shirts.
And for two years we did this one right here.
That's what you see these guys wearing right here.
And it has the duck on the back.
And it's a lot of fun.
And then this year, because AP testing is happening in May,
it's warming up in Utah around that time.
So this year, I decided to do a binary duck.
And it's actually a PCSP if you decode the binary on the ASCII chart.
So some fun things going on there-- definitely
worth looking into how you can build some traditions or things that you
can do with your students.
A couple questions coming in--
yeah, oh, great question.
I will share the binary duck.
I can put that in my resources document, for sure.
And yes, the duck T-shirt--
so I usually get the shirts made locally.
There is a company here local that I try and go through for my shirts.
I did do this one through a website called Sticker Mule.
If you've ever heard of Sticker Mule, they do do T-shirts,
and they do them really fast.
So if you need something fast, they can do them,
but they don't give the flexibility of the multiple locations.
I've got the Viking here on the front of the shirt with the duck on the back.
You can only do a T-shirt with something in the middle.
So something to keep in mind, but I'll add that to the document, for sure.
Ooh, great question from Bo.
How much or how little do you use the AP classroom stuff from the College Board?
So we go in, and we set up our College Board accounts
pretty early in the year so that students
are familiar with what it looks like in there and where everything is.
And also, because they have to opt into the test that they're going to take,
I will assign--
and I tell my students I teach my AP and my non-AP course
at the same time in the same classroom.
And the biggest difference is the non-AP kids just don't take the test.
But they'll take a test that I give them.
Everyone's still doing the projects.
But then the non-AP students do not do the College Board videos or the practice
questions.
And I tell my AP students up front, since you're
taking the AP version of this course, you
are going to have a little extra homework.
And you are going to need to watch these videos
and do these questions on your own time.
And then when they come back, I'll try and give them some time
every other week or so.
If I do a practice test, we will go over some of the questions that they had,
or you'll give them time to do stuff in class.
A lot of times these kids are going to finish the CS50 stuff a lot earlier
than my non-AP students do.
And so they have time to do their practice tests
and think about their projects.
I put them on a little more of an accelerated timeline,
but they do have more homework than my non-AP students do.
Eric, great question.
For a 2.5-hour lesson from David, how many hours does it take you,
or how many classes?
It does take more than one week.
It depends on how often I pause.
How often I pause and reinforce some concepts definitely changes from lecture
to lecture, and even from year to year.
If I'm feeling like kids have a pretty good feel for the concept,
I probably won't pause.
But as you're coding along with the examples
and you're walking around, and looking at the students' code,
you'll see what they're struggling with.
And that will give you some frame of reference.
And I've even-- sometimes I will say, all right, guys,
we didn't make it as far as I hoped today.
You do have a little bit of homework tonight.
I don't give a lot of homework in the high school level.
For my classes, I find students' homework time is really
eaten up by some of their core classes, like English, and math, and science.
And I think my class is just as important as those.
But I also recognize that students need some balance.
And so I try not to give a lot of homework,
but sometimes if we don't get as far as I hoped, I'll say,
OK, I do need you to go and watch the rest of this lecture on your own time.
I'm going to keep going.
But I do see some of those questions.
And I will-- I think we'll have time for them at the end.
So I will definitely get to those.
Don't you worry.
So here, actually, I'm going to go back.
This is Ben right here.
Ben was one of my first students to take the course with the CS50 curriculum.
And I asked him to share with us what his thoughts on PCSP were and to give--
if he were talking to a group of new AP CSP teachers who were teaching CS50,
what he would say to them.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- I enjoyed CS50 because it's self-paced, but incredibly in depth.
CS50 piqued my interest in things like human and machine problem solving
and gave me plenty of opportunities to explore both.
To future teachers of CS50, it will be very difficult for some students,
but I cannot stress enough just how worth it that is if they push through.
Years later, I'm still calling back on knowledge
I got from CS50 because of just how unshakable the foundation it gave is.
[END PLAYBACK]
AUDRA YOCOM: So Ben is probably my biggest testimonial student.
He fell in love with CS50, and he was one of those students that I--
I said he was one of the first CS50 students I had in my class
take the course.
And I could not hold him back.
I could not keep him with the class.
He needed his freedom to run with it, because it was that engaging for him.
And he was that interested in the topics.
And so I let him run with it.
And now he's studying computer engineering in college.
I'm super happy and excited for him.
But he is like my number one testimony of this
is really great for those advanced students,
but it's also great scaffolding for those who are still trying
to learn what all of this is all about.
I am going to share with you now some data points.
I have my AP exam scores over the last few years,
as well as my state test scores that I want to share with you.
This is a very vulnerable moment for any teacher who shares their test scores
with other teachers, so please be kind.
But here you can see my scores.
This is just the passing students, so anyone who got a 3 or higher.
And there are, obviously, other factors to consider
here, besides the curriculum that I was using.
Honestly, 2020, I'm shocked that it stayed at that percentage,
because COVID shut us down.
March 13 was the last day of school for us.
And I had to pivot because the curriculum I was using
that year was very device specific.
And all of a sudden my kids were at home with only their Chromebooks,
and they couldn't do the curriculum that we were working on at home.
And so we had to pivot in March.
The AP test is end of April, May, and we had to make that pivot.
And kudos to the students for putting in the work
and still keeping their scores at that point.
And 2021 was definitely a recovery year from all of that.
2020 is the first year that I was using the CS50 curriculum.
And that's like a super proud data point for me that I had 100% of my students
get a 3 or higher that year.
And the hardest part of pivoting was the projects,
because they were working on their portfolio projects.
And everything they had been working on in my classroom,
they didn't have access to on their Chromebooks.
And their Chromebooks couldn't handle the way
that we were making our projects that year.
And so they had to start from scratch.
They had to start over from scratch using--
a couple did Scratch.
A couple were using--
I'm trying to remember--
Mobile App Inventor.
It was App Inventor, or Scratch.
And so we had to really pivot hard.
And that was the hardest part, was they were starting over with a lot
of their projects, because they just didn't--
my students didn't have the same machines that I had at school.
So similar to my AP data here, in Utah, there
are CTE exams that we have to give, a state
test at the end of every CTE course.
And these tests get rewritten every three years,
so it's always hard to know what's going to be on them.
And if a test is poorly written, you are stuck with a bad test for three years.
Passing for this exam is 80%.
And so, again, 2019 through 2021, kind of a rough couple of years there.
But then, again, 2022, when I switched to the CS50 curriculum,
you can see it's just gotten better ever since then
as far as my state test scores go.
Great question, Bo.
"What curriculum were you using before?"
I had tried a couple of different ones--
Mobile CSP.
And they all have strengths and weaknesses.
If you find one that works for you and you really love, awesome.
I feel like that's been CS50 for me.
Mobile CSP was the first one I ever used.
I also supplement sometimes with resources from Khan Academy,
or code.org.
Their unplugged activities are pretty great.
I do like the daily questions on CodeHS.
They do their daily AP questions.
That's a great bell ringer for your AP students.
So again, strengths and weaknesses to a lot--
I feel like CS50 has been the most comprehensive and the best foundation
for my students.
Yeah, 2021 was the big learning year.
To talk about resources, again, I'm just going to skip--
I'll come back to this outreach slide that I'm about to skip over really fast.
Don't freak out, because I know there were questions about that.
But I wanted to bring this back up again, the resources slide here.
That's the link to the page that I was talking about.
That's where I will put the duck image that I
had created, if anyone wants that.
But here's that information.
So I'm going to go back a slide.
There was a question earlier about getting girls motivated and excited.
And honestly, when I first started teaching,
I was like, oh, just being a female computer science teacher in the school
is going to solve this issue, because I knew
that representation and role models are a big part of trying
to fix that disparity.
I quickly learned that is not the case.
You can't just be there.
And it doesn't fix all the problems.
The biggest thing that I have found to work for my students
is purposeful personal invitations.
I was part-time teaching for the last few years.
I was doing a district position, then I was
working at the state level for a while.
I was still in the classroom, but not as much as I was previously.
And I had to let go of some of my intro level courses
because that's what they hired another teacher to take on while I was away.
And I found that my female students, the number of female students in my classes,
dropped so much, because they were no longer taking those intro
classes from me.
They didn't know me anymore.
It was the story of, I'm that intimidating teacher
that they don't know.
So why are they going to sign up for an advanced hard class with somebody
that they don't even know?
They'd never had this teacher before.
And so this next school year is my first time being full time in the classroom
again in a few years.
And I'm really excited because I'm getting to pick up
some of those intro level courses.
Web Development 1 is a big one that I see a lot of girls taking.
They're interested in web development.
I had-- Computer Science Principles is the one that I get the most in,
but it was still pretty low.
And so I'm excited to pick up some of those intro level courses.
And then anything that I can do--
I'm fortunate that in Utah we have an organization called the Women Tech
Council.
I think it exists nationally.
But they do an event every year called SheTech.
And it is a tech event focused all around girls.
And this is an early picture, I think, from 2017, I think.
It was the first time that I was able to take girls to this conference.
And that's where that purposeful personal invitations-- that's
how I discovered that is what works.
It's because if you send out an email to all of the parents or you send out
an email to all of your students, and say,
"Hey, here's this really cool thing.
You should look into it," they don't do it.
But as soon as I printed out an invitation
and I wrote them on that invitation, like, "Hey, we
would love to have you come to this.
Here's the permission slip."
And then I handed that to them and had a conversation with them about it.
That was the game changer for me.
And so I try and do very similar things when
I'm interacting with the ninth graders.
Have those interactions.
Talk to them.
You can't just have it be available.
And I tell my students this all the time when
we're trying to recruit for our club.
You can't just be welcoming.
You have to be inviting.
Sure, you don't care if anyone comes in to talk to you,
and you'll be nice to them.
You need to go out and get them and bring them in.
You need to be inviting, not just welcoming.
And that has been a big mind shift for me
as I try and do some of this outreach.
Yeah, I will add SheTech, the women council to the reference sheet,
for sure.
I don't teach ninth graders.
Our school is just 10th through 12th graders.
So here's the reference sheet.
I will go in and update that with some of the things that
have been requested in the chat.
But this is what it looks like if you're interested in it.
I did also include in there a Ted Talk from James Veitch.
If you've never watched that, that's a fun one
to show students when you're talking about security and spam.
I would watch before you share it.
There's one part that I do edit out before I share it with my students.
Again, the pixel art design tool, we like to use Piskel app.
That one has a few nuances to not have students log in,
but they can still use it without logging
in, or just use the template that David shared earlier.
That is a super easy way to do it and encourage more collaboration.
I was going to do a GimKit, but we do not have time for that.
But I did want to share with you I did include--
if you don't know what GimKit is, I would highly recommend you look into it.
I try-- this is a way that I prep students for--
our state test is all multiple choice, which is not ideal,
but you do what you've got to do.
I'll take the vocab that they need to be familiar with,
or the concepts they need to be familiar with,
and I try and do a GimKit at least once every two weeks so
that they are getting that reinforcement.
And you can go through the CS50 lectures and make vocab lists out of the lectures
so that your students are getting those concepts reinforced.
Obviously, GimKit and multiple choice, that's a very low level learning,
but that's what scaffolding your higher level learning.
So being familiar with that vocabulary and those concepts
is only going to help them in the future.
And GimKit is the popular one right now.
So I did include there--
I did do vocabulary for CS50T.
If you're interested in that, that's that link there.
That is available for you as well.
I'm going to jump into the chat really quick
and see if I can answer a couple of questions here before time ends.
If you have any questions, please drop them in the chat.
I'm happy to respond to things, or if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn
or anything like that, that's totally fine.
I'll also drop my email in the chat if you want to ever reach out.
Again, thank you to CS50 for having me and for this presentation.
I'll go ahead and add some of that stuff to the resource sheet.
And it was great being here.
Thank you.