Teaching Over One Million Students with CS50's Carter Zenke

In this interview with Carter Zenke, we discuss Carter’s pedagogical approach that centers playfulness, creativity, and purpose; lessons learned teaching CS50 to over one million students; balancing free exploration with learning content; designing opportunities for getting into CS; the benefits of watching recordings of your own teaching; helping educators find their “why”; and so much more.

Welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either an
interview with a guest or multiple
guests or a solo episode where i unpack
some scholarship in relation to computer
science education in this week's episode
i'm speaking with carter zenki and we
discuss carter's pedagogical approach
that centers playfulness creativity and
purpose lessons learned teaching
harvard's cs50 course to over 1 million
students balancing free exploration with
learning content designing opportunities
for getting into cs the benefits of
watching recordings of your own teaching
helping educators find their why and so
much more you can find relevant links
and resources in the show notes at
jaredoliri.com or by clicking the link
in the app that you're listening to this
on you'll also notice in the description
this podcast is powered by bootup which
is the non-profit that i work for you
can check out our free curriculum and
learn more about our professional
development at budape.org but with all
that being said we will now begin with
an introduction by carter hi everyone my
name is carter i use he and his pronouns
i am a preceptor in computer science
here at harvard which means that i help
teach computer science 50 or cs50 with
david j maylin here computer science 50
like to say is our introduction to the
intel enterprise computer science and
the art of programming it's a course
taught at harvard college graduate
schools around here as well as online of
a few million people taking the class
online and my role is to help train
undergrad teaching staff to design
materials curriculum and so on i do
things both on campus and all nice few
million people taking one course that's
impressive a few people who've
registered
okay we know with online courses not all
of them finish it but we do have some
pretty good retention for what i've seen
so how do you do the grading on that
though like or is it just like they're
able to take it see the content but not
necessarily submit anything yeah so we
do
auto grading for the online courses okay
so it's the exact same material we teach
at harvard but the difference in grading
is that college students will get sort
of maybe qualitative feedback on design
and style like how other code works does
it look pretty and readable whereas
people take it online just because it's
your number of them they get greeted for
correctness like does their code work
does it do what we expected to do okay
yeah that makes sense because when we
were talking before we started recording
we were talking about like the different
type of grading you're doing i was like
wow how do you do that with that many
people like
you can't
so can you tell me the story of how you
got into computer science education yeah
i think i have to go back quite a few
years so when i was growing up my dad
worked in i.t in cyber security and
was really good at bringing me to work
sometimes or to bring me home like
computer parts just like inviting me
into this world of computers and so from
a really young age i think i was lucky
to get to see everything computers could
do and i got to see them in ways that
they helped me do things i want to do
like express myself or like play games
and like be with friends i think
remember playing minecraft and building
my own server for friends to play with
like learning about networking through
that or writing music and learning about
like audio processing through that and
so i saw a lot of ways computers could
be used for all these really creative
purposes and when i got to school like
particularly middle school and high
school i would take computer science
classes like quote unquote which really
like let's use microtalk publisher or
let's use like excel which were
interesting but also didn't really match
what i knew computers could do or what i
wanted them to do right so when i went
to college i had this in my mind of like
i don't want to have a computer science
and i did and even there i saw some
classes i liked like i took computer
science 201 at duke with african i was a
great class and i took some that i
didn't like or more on the theory side
of things and i realized that i wanted
to do something that would help more
people see what computer science could
be and i got involved with a few
education communities on campus a few
classes really that showed me
maybe my role is less to work in
computer science and more to like help
other people hopefully see what computer
science can be so how have you done that
since then so i think
a lot of that has been trying to think
of when i was undergraduate it was an
undergraduate and a lot of what that
looked like was getting involved with
research or
designing curriculum and going to
informal learning spaces and teaching it
so we formed a lot of partnerships with
elementary schools around where duke is
located and i got to really work with
teachers there and learn from them about
what works in their classroom what
doesn't and also how can we bring
computer science into classrooms and so
i got to build some relationships there
as undergraduate and afterwards i went
on a path of wanting to be a teacher and
did my master's in education at harvard
and then later on just took this job
teaching cs50. so your approach to cs
education
is very different than what tends to
occur in like the k-12 space like in any
kind of subject area so when i was
looking at your website you kind of
forefront playfulness creativity and
purposeful yeah i'm curious like for you
what do each of those mean to you and
then i got some follow-up questions
about them sure i think at the time that
i was making that website i was reading
a lot of mitch resnick's work and he has
you know the project passion peers in
play yep that really resonated with me
and i was thinking about that in the
context of my own
experience with computer science when i
was younger and i think i particularly
resonated with the idea of like
playfulness and when i was working with
computers really when i was younger i
didn't have like a problem i was trying
to solve i was just using them to build
something like to make something happen
whether it was music or a server for
friends to play on and that for me is
sort of exemplifies what it might mean
for things to be playful and creative
like just tinkering on things and trying
to make something actual like people to
play with too and then purposefulness
came in i think particularly as i got
more involved with education communities
i think and thinking about the ways that
well one education sort of reflects the
inequities in society and justice is
there and so one like how can we show
people computer science can be used to
help address things and to take action
and really make things better in the
world and more recently even thinking
about people who are in different
disciplines and maybe won't do computer
science how can we show them the
computer science of purpose in their own
discipline too so a few things are
purposeful but playfulness and
creativity mostly came from mitch
resnick honestly and think about my own
experiences too yeah and if anyone
hasn't listened to the interview that i
did with him i'll include a link to it
in the show notes but yeah that
definitely makes a lot of sense like i
was in a session with mitch yesterday
where he was talking about things and so
like just like hearing him talk about it
yesterday and then hearing you talk
about it now i'm like okay yeah i can i
can see that alignment yeah you've had a
variety of experiences both as a student
both as an educator like in formalized
informal and kind of like a mix between
the two in terms of spaces i'm curious
that this is a broad question like if
you're designing an ideal learning
environment that can be anywhere like
what would you do to center those three
words within that space i think i have
seen and i've heard a lot about this
idea of a studio and i love the idea of
a studio and for me i think a studio is
a place where people can
be united under one kind of common
purpose for their learning that's kind
of purposefully vague but they get to
bring their own experiences and own kind
of flavors to what it means to approach
that mission and they tinker on their
own things they talk to each other they
build community together and i think we
often associate studios with spaces so
like for example here on campus we have
a brand new building for computer
science it has a lot of quote-unquote
studios there where we have tables and
chairs and like state-of-the-art tech
and everything and that's nice as a
studio but i've also seen like teachers
in dc public schools who are teaching
computer science and are using their
classroom as a studio where people can
come in during lunch after class before
class and just work on things together
so i love that idea how does that
compare contrast with maker spaces i
think it's pretty similar from what i've
seen in maker's faces like i think yeah
very similar ideas there cool yeah
because when you're describing it it's
kind of reminding me of it but like with
a maker space like there's so many
different variants or flavors of it that
it's like when somebody says it it's
like well let's see what it looks like
and how does that compare to some other
ones like the makerspace that was in my
school was different than in other
schools yeah i like the
idea that there's like a lot of
diversity in maker spaces and a lot of
diversity studio can be and you can
really tailor it to people who are
actually showing up there and doing what
they want to do yeah i think that is
extremely important but is often
not found in formalized spaces like
whether it's k-12 or in higher education
classes that i've worked in or with or
been a part of like most of them it's
like we're all going to create the same
thing and have the same outcomes as
everybody else even though we all have
different interests needs desires etc
yeah so teaching cs50 this spring we
have a little bit of that which is that
the course is divided into different
problem sets where everyone's going to
make the same problem set essentially
going to solve the same problems we try
to have some differentiation there we
have problems for people who are more
comfortable and people who are less
comfortable and sort of give them like
some differentiation there but i think
one thing that i want to think about is
how we can provide more diversity in our
problem sets for students in a given
week so they're not all working on the
same thing at once yeah that's hard
though at the scale that you're at
let's say let's cut it down a bit even
if you had 100 000 students that you're
working with like to be able to come up
with something that is going to be auto
graded that students can also create
something that's meaningful to them i
don't know that's that's hard it is and
at a certain level i think we also want
to make sure people get through a
certain amount of content right and i
love the idea of the studio in the maker
space i think they can be designed in a
way that we make sure people get through
a certain set of content especially
interestingly that at the scale like you
were saying and and so on it's like
we got to make a few trade-offs in some
cases so yeah especially for like a
degree like where you have x number of
credits that you have to earn and
usually within a given number of years
or semesters of time like there's a lot
of constraints that kind of impact what
might be the ideal environment versus
what you can actually do yeah totally
what caused those concepts the playful
creative and purposeful to resonate with
you i think a lot of it just went back
to my own first experiences with cs i
don't think at the time when i was you
know a kid playing on computers that i
was like oh i'm doing this because it is
purposeful and playful and creative but
i think later on as i've gotten to see
some of the frameworks in cs education
like metresnicks or like other ones too
i think i've seen those like really show
up in my own experiences it's been like
this weird affirmation of wow i can see
myself in some of these theories that
i've learned about as i've gone into
education right why do you think more
educators don't actually engage in these
concepts or like mitch's i think to some
extent it's
about their own context and so in some
cases in cs50 i don't think we're
foregrounding like creativity and
playfulness i think in some cases
we're trying to foreground a learning
experience that are still really good
but that is pretty focused on content
right and so for example a new python
a course on programming language and
python and so
what we'll do is we'll design some very
short exercises for students to do and a
lot of the course is going to a lecture
that's pre-recorded and then doing some
exercises later on and i think that's
great for the kind of context in which
an online learner is maybe doing things
but it feels a little tougher to make a
studio in an online classroom so i think
context kind of matters a lot for those
things yeah that balance between
the freedom to explore and to express
and create and then the need or desire
to learn
content
is sometimes difficult when even they're
interconnected or separate into like hey
we're gonna have like a couple of
classes that are very content focused
and then we'll lead to like an
open-ended studio where you create
whatever you want but yeah i don't know
just kind of me thinking out loud i
don't think we would still be talking
about creativity and playfulness if they
didn't help people learn i think they do
like they're great for content right but
i think there are certain contexts like
the online one in which you're trying to
serve hundreds of thousands of learners
and it is sometimes maybe easier and
maybe better to have something that's a
little more on a track of content yeah
so let's double click on that to just
kind of highlight it a bit one of the
things i like to do is think of
something that i'm like very passionate
about and strongly agree with but think
of when i would not do that thing in
education like a pedagogical approach or
whatever so for like these three
concepts when would you not use them or
focus on them i mean i don't want to
sort of
repeat the same content answer but i'm
trying to think of like what seems to be
unique in the online context that makes
me feel like those things are less
possible there and i wonder if it's
because people are coming into cs50 for
example online and they're often
individuals and they're taking the class
on their own there are also people if
you can follow my train of thought here
also people who are taking cs50 who are
building their own community while
they're doing it and they're like taking
it in their own local group of people
who are doing the class and that i feel
like there is some space for those
things to happen but for people who are
taking the class online just looking at
the website just doing the problem sets
it feels like those things are harder to
do and i honestly don't even know if
what we would do to emphasize those in
some cases that's like a question i
would have yeah so some of the
programming languages that i've learned
i've learned informally by just like
watching a lot of videos on youtube to
see other people talking through using x
language in whatever ide and it has been
useful for me to get the content but
ultimately i was learning that content
so i could do something to express
myself and be creative down the road but
in that process it was just more of one
direction i was consuming information
and so i think there's like a time and a
place for that right and i think there
are some different principles that might
really make that kind of more
unidirectional content delivery really
like better and worthwhile as a learning
experience and i know cs50 in particular
places a lot of value on the production
quality of lectures when i first joined
the team here i learned we had four or
five full-time staff whose job it is to
record lectures to edit them to make
them like beautiful when they're an end
result and so that
was a new way for me to think about what
it means to deliver content and make
that a compelling experience for people
yeah that's cool that's high production
here i am editing all of my videos by
myself
i'm curious how do you design
experiences or opportunities for people
to get into computer science or computer
science education one thing that's been
new to me since i joined the cs50 team
has been kind of the importance of these
metaphors that we have so in the very
first lecture people who have not seen
it spoiler is that david takes a phone
book and tears it in half and tears in
half again in order to illustrate binary
search like trying to find somebody in a
phone book you just hear it in half and
half again and it's a very kind of
dramatic example because he's on stage
like literally ripping this huge phone
book in half but it's also kind of this
thing that people are a little familiar
with at least hopefully if they've like
seen a phone book before and later on to
teach kind of search we'll do looking
behind maybe eight closed doors or eight
lockers and literally manually opening
them one by one by one so trying to sort
of showcase these metaphors that are
grounded in something concrete and that
also illustrates something really
powerful about computer science what i
can help you do and i've noticed that's
been pretty useful in this content
delivery kind of teaching style there's
a book i haven't read yet but i've heard
recommended i think it's called
metaphors we live by have you heard of
that i think i've heard that one okay i
don't know if that informed like the
design of using metaphors and whatnot or
not but i haven't read it so maybe i
should
no and to be honest i'm not sure i'm
also pretty new to things and so i'm
also learning as i go yeah aren't we all
aren't we all
yeah i mean if i ever feel like i've
gotten to a point where i don't need to
learn more then i should probably leave
the field because it's just so much to
learn i'd agree with that yeah when we
spoke before today's conversation you
talked about how you helped undergrads
find their why in education so i'm
curious could you expand upon that sure
so
in my
on-campus role where i'm leading this
course a lot of what i do is help our 80
undergraduate staff and some graduates
to teach you to do well how can they be
good teachers and part of what i think
goes into that job is helping them find
out why they're there teaching cs50 i
think when they first join they do it
because they want to be with their peers
they want to just try it out like they
have a lot of variety of reasons for
being there and my goal is hopefully
that each one of them takes something
away from have that teaching experience
and says i could do
something in education later whether i'm
going to be a full-time teacher whether
i'm going to like help people on the
side like i could do something there and
i think to do that we focus a lot on
community building so just bringing
everyone together doing activities we
had our spring kickoff recently where we
talked about basically why we're there
and what fears we have what excitements
we have and things like that so try and
sort of embed that in a great community
undergraduate staff and then also trying
to find time to meet with them
individually and talk about why are you
here what do you want to get out of
being on staff yeah it was interesting
when you mentioned like find a way to
teach it part-time or something that is
an interesting challenge for cs
education because in this field you
could make double triple quadruple the
amount than you would as an educator if
you were to just go and apply what you
know in computer science and industry so
my degree is in music education it's
like the opposite like it's
most musicians that are great musicians
aren't going to be able to sustain
themselves just making music so
education is like the way to make monies
it's weird having my feet in both worlds
and see like how different that is in
terms of incentives for being or not
being an educator yeah
recently i've been getting to watch some
like industry
talks by people who are in the computer
science industry and are sharing
technologies they've built or things
they've learned and i'm like you're
teaching right now you're working at a
company you're not full-time teaching
but you are sharing a technology with
somebody else you are in some ways if
you were to gear this towards newcomers
like helping them into the field in some
ways my goal is not for everyone on the
staff to not go into tech industry but i
think if they were to do so to consider
what they could do while they're there
to invite more people into it through
teaching in some way yeah that's an
excellent point like you could teach by
creating a youtube channel like there's
a guy that i watch his youtube channel
is called the new boston and he's got a
bunch of playlists on like how to use
whatever language and whatever ide and
it was great for like refreshing on well
c plus plus like what's the syntax for
that or like oh i want to learn swift
let me watch those tutorials etc but
then like even this podcast is a way to
also
help be in education without necessarily
being in education like there's many
different ways that you can do that yeah
totally i would certainly hope that some
of them go on to
really consider teaching as a full-time
professional and really like spend more
of their time on that but i also
recognize there's a lot of ways to do it
and i'd love to help them do any of
those how has your experiences working
in like informal learning informed your
approach for formalized learning i was
thinking about this and i think going
back to the cs50s dichotomy between
being an on-campus course and kind of
this online course
i've noticed that it's often people who
are taking the course online informally
who catch the things that i would not
have caught in in problem sets or in the
code we write to help check problems we
get emails from a lot of people who are
saying well did you consider this about
this problem set or i tried it this way
and i don't know if you all considered
that i would do it that way you're like
you're right we didn't consider that and
so it's interesting for me because i
feel like i learn a lot from the people
who are doing the class not at harvard
and students who are taking the class
just online informally is that just
because it's a larger sample size some
more eyes on it and they're able to give
more feedback i think yes i wouldn't be
surprised if it's a function of sample
size one thing i wonder about too is
whether i think people take the class
into such different contexts i think we
have people who are taking it at like
in another country and there's no
possible way for us to know every single
person is going to take to class or
engage with the problem sets and when
they do it's like oh it's always
surprising i
worked in a district where previously
every year it was the same lesson the
same curriculum you just pulled out to
your lesson okay what am i teaching on
this day and the district gave it to you
and it very rarely changed however when
i went and did my residency i
interned did a teaching assistantship
with a professor multiple semesters in a
row and it was fascinating to see how he
changed it to meet the like what are we
learning
now what's more relevant today etc and
so
i took that idea and when i went back
into the classroom into a k-8 school i
was just constantly changing stuff every
week was something different it was very
different so i'm curious for you how do
you iterate on your curricula or
coursework we're constantly doing that
we'll even change things probably
through semester if we need to part of
it starts with just getting good data
and for us
we're actually kind of lucky because we
have a pretty big sample size of
students who can give us feedback so
with that we get a lot of input on what
worked well what didn't work well and at
least for the on-campus course which is
still quite large about 700 students we
asked them after every problem set what
did you learn and like ask them to
reflect on that and we can kind of by
looking through that figure okay here's
what they actually learned here's what
we thought they would learn and see
differences between those things
and then with that data we will go off
usually in the summer and try to make
some pretty big changes either to
problem sets or the structure of the
course and we'll all come together as a
staff to talk about those and then even
during the fall when it comes up we will
in a given week sort of treated like
this unfurling of the semester where we
can go ahead and just change things a
week before we're going to introduce
them in some cases are there archives of
prior classes available yeah so we keep
all of the course materials kind of in
their own website and a different url
will take you to those past classes so
if you do
you do 2020 slash volusia 229 so you can
see
the past iterations and what i've
learned is we've even had a whole
cdn that is full of past materials and
past resources from 2008 onwards like
the course has a history to it that i've
only been here for one year of but it's
really interesting to see how
everything's changed over time that
would be interesting to study or even to
have like anyone involved with the
iterations kind of narrate over like
here's what we changed and why we
decided to do that like being a
curriculum nerd that would be
fascinating
yeah i think there might be some videos
up there of
david and my colleague doug who was in
this role before i was and they were
talking together about just why they
made some changes one year which is
fascinating i think i watched a few of
them i should watch more of them too but
they're out there if you're interested
yeah i'll have to check that out i'm
curious if we were to zoom in on
yourself how do you iterate on your own
abilities whether it's like as an
educator or just in computer science one
thing i've been trying to have the nerve
to do is to watch my teaching recorded
so
my classes are recorded for people who
can't come in a given day i need to
watch it later which is great and it's
also a great feedback tool it's also
painful to watch yourself in some ways
it's really useful like i know after
we'll give a lecture which david does
we'll debrief afterwards and then in the
coming year we'll watch those lectures
again and talk about what we want to do
differently in the fall so it's very
helpful and for me i'm trying to do it
just on my own it's like oh it's
sometimes painful but also useful
where are the pain points if you don't
mind me asking i think i get a little
bit of like a secondhand embarrassment
like just seeing myself teaching in some
ways i think part of that is just
psychological and nothing's like yeah
just anyone i think would feel that way
at least i hope so yes
and i think other parts of it is like
looking at it and being both critical
and kind of optimistic for the future
like oh i could have done that better
and i think i will do it better next
time by planning ahead for that yeah
i've engaged in
recording practices since i started
teaching and this was like before i even
finished my undergrad like i would
record myself like working with
drumlines and like watch it and whatnot
and when i was a university supervisor
would see like pre-service and
in-service educators like go over the
recordings with them and like walk
through like hey what did you think of
this etc and hands down like almost
everybody is like they feel
uncomfortable watching themselves doing
that so that's not unique to you so it's
very weird watching yourself but it's so
informative like i
have done it so many times now that i
actually feel comfortable doing it and
this is like coming from somebody who is
like an introvert who like would have a
panic attack like initially like
watching that kind of stuff because it's
like oh i could have said this
differently or could have done this
differently but totally you learn so
much from the process and just thinking
of like subtle ways to refine things and
whatnot and it was really informative
for when i was teaching the same content
or lesson to multiple different classes
and i can iterate on each one of those
and like try something different for
each one of the classes and then go back
and watch each one of the recordings to
figure out okay which one worked really
well which one did not so like kind of
having that a b test with the classes
that i was working with was really
helpful for myself yeah i got to do
something like that this semester where
i taught a class on tuesday afternoons
and the same class than the following
morning on wednesday and only the
tuesday one was recorded but it was a
very different kind of classroom
environment between like tuesday at 3
p.m and wednesday at 9 a.m
yeah
and i would have loved to have a
recording of the wednesday class like it
would have been really fascinating to
see the differences there yeah well and
having the different classes at
different times and teaching the same
content is also helpful for realizing
when some things are out of your control
because like i would sometimes have like
three third grade classes come in back
to back and each class would be
drastically different and it might be
because of their home room teacher is
like really awesome at what they do or
maybe their homeroom teacher like gave
this entire class like a bunch of cake
or something before you that came into
your room and then like they just be
bouncing off the walls so it's like good
to have that like to realize oh not
everything that goes wrong is my fault
sure that's a really good point yeah you
want to keep in mind what has surprised
you about your work and when i say work
like think broadly it doesn't
necessarily have to be with this
particular course but just like overall
i'm surprised by this most times which
is people with sort of inherent
curiosity and wanting to learn and the
extent to which they'll go to learn for
example when i was
in more of an informal space like
working with educators and seeing the
ways that the students would ask
questions and really just be constantly
curious was always really surprising in
a good way to me and now recently
working with this course is both in
person and online seeing people who show
up to our zooms at again like 3 a.m in
the morning to be with cs50 and like to
learn content that's freely available
like that is surprising to me in like a
really hopeful way so i've been i think
inspires me to like try to live up more
to their expectations and to do better
for those students who are doing that
yeah that's great it's nice to have
happy and pleasant surprises like that
yeah totally
curiosity is something that i wish we
focused on more or assessed more in the
classroom it's one of those things that
like inquiry-based learning is like yeah
this is great but like do we actually
assess whether or not students are
curious in the classroom and i'd argue
that we kind of as a field tend to pay
lip service to it at times but don't
necessarily follow up and say this is
important and here's why and really
strongly encourage it yeah i don't know
one question i would have is how would
we define curiosity and would look
different for different fields different
classrooms for us we've been thinking
about as we do like assessment how do we
define for example like good design for
code like what does that look like and
that's a challenge yep and similarly for
curiosity i wonder what that would look
like yeah i mean the different types of
projects that you could create or the
different concepts that you can bring
into your
projects like there's many different
ways that you could explore it and then
depending on the context like there's
many different foci that you could
engage in yeah we've offered different
versions of problem sets like people are
less comfortable and more comfortable i
wonder if something is like well does
the student at least maybe try the more
comfortable problem set but i think
there are other things that are involved
in that like audacity in some ways or
self-confidence and so i feel like there
are ways to do it i don't have enough
experience yet to really know what to
look for as much it's interesting you
say that don't have enough experience
yet and yet like in one semester you
are
directly or even indirectly working with
more students than most educators will
see in a lifetime
yeah that's a little bit scary thing
sorry
didn't mean to emphasize that pressure
no no
no no so i guess speaking of pressures
like there's a lot of pressures working
in the field of education or as an
educator how do you stave off the
burnout that can come with it or work
through those pressures i think there's
always like a new project to tackle with
any course i think there's something you
can always do to improve it and talking
with educators i always know that
they're i want to do this i want to do
that and i think that's an amazing
attitude to have and i think it's one
that sustains people i've also tried to
learn to say no to some things and try
to focus some stuff i'm not going to
make that improvement this fall i'm not
going to do this or that and i'm inside
going to focus on this other thing
because it'll more align with these
values i want the course to have in this
case and that's both freed up some time
for me and i think also allow me to
focus more and make something better
when i decide to make a change do you
have any recommendations for
improving equity and inclusion in cs
education yeah so one thing that we've
been doing here on campus is just
connecting with groups who are already
doing this work and i think if i were to
offer any advice or any encouragement
just connect people who are already
doing this and who have been advocating
for this for a really long time and so
concretely on campus has been connecting
with like women in computer science
groups or groups have been fighting for
representation computer science and
doing more joint events listening
and like making decisions for the course
based off of their advocacy and so i
think more so just listening and taking
action based off of that i like that
what do you wish there was more research
on that could inform your practices or
what you do in cs education going back
to helping educators find their why like
a lot of this job is really working with
a whole bunch of future teachers or
people who are just getting started in
teaching and so i'd love to learn more
about how we train and support new
teachers in computer science
particularly especially people who are
themselves currently students too so
it's like a weird thing for people i'm
working with because they're students
and they're also teaching and they're
brand new to everything that's like a
great place to be in as a person and i
would love to learn more about how to
support people who are in that role and
it's like and right now it's trial and
learning as we go yeah it was like a
month or two ago i was working with the
maryland center for computing and they
did like a little in-service on
pre-service education and like what
higher ed faculty members can do to try
and support cs education within that it
is like basically what computer science
was maybe 10 years ago in k12 space is
like now finally getting into the
pre-service education was like hey we
need to do this thing and we need to do
it like right now so yeah in the next
decade or so i expect this to be much
more common practice and much more
research to come out on that particular
topic that would be a godsend for me um
i would love that stay tuned
yeah and even i think i would love to in
some ways contribute to that i would
love to do more research in this role if
i had more time and so i think if
there's a way for me to help contribute
to that i would love to be able to do
that what's something that you're
working on that you need help with that
a listener might be able to help with
concretely
like ta training programs i know that
they existed a variety of universities
and i got to attend sig c this year
which is really exciting for my first
succeed and i got to meet people who
were designing ta tuning programs there
and that was a super fascinating topic
and i'd just love to learn more about
those see more examples and grab some
takeaways and then apply them here do
you listen to the csv podcast ksm
christensen martinez i have heard of it
i need to listen to it more all right so
the most recent episode at least at the
time of recording for the csv podcast is
titled how to build a ta program and so
they talk about that in that particular
episode so i'd recommend checking that
out that might point to some more
resources well there you go thank you dr
seuss martinez
and i did an interview with her it was
awesome so i'll include a link to that
in the show notes people haven't
listened to it do you have any questions
for myself or for the field a question
that was posed to me recently that i've
been thinking about is what is the
difference between
a really good teacher and a great
teacher and i think we all want to be
great teachers i'm sure there's like a
lot that goes into that and especially
as i've been thinking about trying to
iterate on my own teaching and better
serve you know beginning teachers i'm
trying to figure out and answer that
question that maybe highlights things i
should focus on as an educator too yeah
that is a really good question i think
the reviewing
your own videos will really help you
figure out long term the difference
between that is like one of the things
that you could do is even reverse
engineer somebody that you feel is a
phenomenal teacher and then try and
compare that with your own videos and go
what did they do that i love and that i
want to emulate or what's something that
they do that i don't want to emulate
that i think i do really well and want
to emphasize some more because like
sometimes it's not just learning what to
do in education but also learning what
not to do and like figuring out that
balance absolutely i've talked to some
educators who when i asked them how did
you get to do what you do like how did
you basically build yourself to what
you're doing today and they were like i
just more so thought what not to do and
tried to avoid that which is really
interesting response to me yeah i've had
some phenomenal educators in my life and
some ones that were so bad that i want
to make sure i'm not anywhere near
approaching education the way that they
work because
i definitely learned what not to do in
those scenarios yeah totally so then the
last question that i have is where my
people go to connect with you and the
organizations that you work with yeah
the canonical url is cs5.harvard.edu
i am not on twitter but you can follow
at cs50 if you are interested in cs50
particularly and with that that
concludes this week's episode of the
csk8 podcast i really hope you enjoyed
this interview as much as i did and i
hope you consider checking out harvard's
cs50 course using the link in the show
notes at jaredaleri.com if you'd be so
kind please consider sharing this
episode with somebody else or sharing
your review on whatever platform that
you're listening to this on just helps
more people find it stay tuned next week
for another episode and until then i
hope you're staying safe and are having
a wonderful week

Guest Bio

Carter Zenke serves as Preceptor in Computer Science at Harvard University, where he teaches CS50 alongside Professor David J. Malan and the rest of CS50's team.

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
- Designing Curricula at Scale with GT Wrobel
  - In this interview with GT Wrobel, we discuss the importance of understanding your “why” behind pedagogical approaches and curriculum design, the internal tensions that arise when designing curriculum used by people around the world, the potential for standards and assessment to be a form of oppression, how feedback impacts the evolution of a curriculum, considerations when designing culturally relevant curricula that is used around the world, aligning curriculum development with professional development, the importance of taking a break to prevent burnout, where we hope the field goes in the next few years, and much more.
- How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
  - In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
- Learning at Scale with Kristin Stephens-Martinez
  - In this interview with Kristin Stephens-Martinez, we discuss learning CS in large classes (e.g., 200+ students), the winding and challenging journey through education and research, recognizing the importance of representation and providing support for underrepresented identities, the benefits of peer instruction, Kristin’s podcast (CS-Ed Podcast), the disconnect between research on education and practice in the classroom, and much more.
- Lessons Learned from (In)Formal CS Education with Grant Smith
  - In this interview with Grant Smith, we discuss the importance of continuing to learn from other educators, what informal and formal learning spaces can learn from each other, how COVID has impacted Grant’s teaching philosophy, our preferences for in-person or virtual professional development and classroom instruction, lessons learned from entrepreneurial adventures in CS education, learning by jumping in and trying new things, heuristic-based learning, and so much more.
- Lifelong Kindergarten with Mitch Resnick
  - In this interview with Mitch Resnick, we discuss misconceptions people have around the four P’s (Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play) in Mitch’s book, encouraging depth of understanding while playing, what has surprised Mitch during his career, encouraging online communication and collaboration without creating artificial engagement, what Mitch wishes we’d see more of and discuss in CS education, our pet peeves with unplugged activities and computational thinking, accounting for survivorship bias with Scratch, expanding our focus on equity and inclusion to include both the “who” and the “how,” the importance of experimenting and learning through play, and much more.
- More episodes related to creative computing/coding
- More episodes related to engagement
- More episodes related to learning at scale
- More episodes related to play
- All other episodes
The book I mentioned, Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
The YouTube channel I mentioned (thenewboston) for learning programming languages
Listen to the CS-Ed Podcast episode I mentioned on building a TA program
Learn more about CS50
- Connect with CS50 on Twitter
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter