The Utah Exploring Computer Science Initiative - Discussions

  • zack.alvey
    Points of View: Telling a story with data (instructional day 10)
    Posted: 3 Sep 2014 - 12:27 by: zack.alvey

    This lesson was really fun, it is one of my favorites. We had our papers to draw on and students had fun drawing and making lists and comparing the different ways to look at data. It took them a little while with the journal entry to know what to write, I had to give them examples. But once they started getting it they came up with some great ideas that we wrote on the board. (see image of board, can you find the japanese students' entries)

    2 comment(s)
    Tags: Curriculum, ECS, Q&A, Unit 1: Human Computer Interaction
  • zack.alvey
    Computer Buying Project (instructional days 3-4)
    Posted: 19 Aug 2014 - 12:56 by: zack.alvey

    The kids really liked this project and had lots of fun researching different computers. One thing I would have done differently that would have made it better was to make sure to explain the Interview assignment from the previous day and focused on the interview question examples. The more questions they asked in their interview the easier time they had putting their presentations together.

    5 comment(s)
    Tags: Computer Buying, Computer parts, ECS, group projects, interviews, Q&A, Unit 1: Human Computer Interaction, Student projects
  • zack.alvey
    What is a computer (instructional days 1-2)
    Posted: 15 Aug 2014 - 13:51 by: zack.alvey

    I gave the first lesson today. I was very nervous how the students would react, but they really got into it and enjoyed the lesson. I had fun too. We had a morning assembly at my school today so I only had 65 minutes to complete the whole lesson. I had them do the journal entry as bell work to save time. I condensed the group discussion time in half, which is good because I don't think I gave them enough direction about how to interact as a group and they were having trouble opening up at first.

    3 comment(s)
    Tags: ECS, Q&A, Unit 1: Human Computer Interaction, Teaching strategy
  • rmurphy
    Greatest Challenge with collaboration and communication?
    Posted: 26 Oct 2013 - 14:18 by: rmurphy

    What has been your greatest challenges in implementing the ECS practices of collaboration and communication in your classroom?

    9 comment(s)
    Tags: ECS, Q&A
  • nallsop
    What to do when you have a substitute in ECS?
    Posted: 8 Oct 2013 - 19:05 by: nallsop

    I have found that when I am gone, my students cannot work on the ECS group lessons/projects.  Luckily I stumbled upon a great post online listing 10 Essential TED Talks that Aspiring Programmers should watch.

    I have had students watch and summarize these, when I cannot be there to guide our class.  The TED talks are listed/linked here:

    http://devbootcamp.com/2013/02/25/10-must-watch-ted-talks-for-all-aspiring-programmers/

    2 comment(s)
    Tags: Q&A
  • gashton
    Unit 2, Day 10-12 Binary Number Systems
    Posted: 26 Jun 2013 - 00:51 by: gashton

    Binary Number Systems Instructional Resources, Concepts and Inquiry

     

    Tags: ECS, Q&A, Teaching strategy, Unit 2: Problem Solving, Data