Integration through Data Analysis and Implications of CS as a Skill with Anne Gunn

In this interview with Anne Gunn, we discuss Anne’s background as both a CS professional and educator, thoughts on data analysis for classroom integration (e.g., sonification), implications of understanding CS as a skill rather than a topic, our experience helping develop the Wyoming Computer Science Standards, and other topics relevant to #CSK8 educators.

Hey everyone I just wanted to give a
very quick disclaimer before the episode
starts that this interview was recorded
in early January of 2020 so if you're
wondering why when we're talking about
online learning we do not at all mention
Cova 19 that's why now there's still a
lot of great content in here that is
relevant to see us education and I hope
you enjoy listening to this episode
welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is Jared O'Leary in
this episode I interview and gun and is
an instructor at the Community College
in Sheridan County Wyoming she also
works with some school districts in the
local area to help them with CS
integration in the classroom in our
conversation we discuss Anne's
background as both a CS professional and
as an educator summit Anne's thoughts on
data analysis for classroom integration
some implications of understanding
computer science as a skill rather than
just a topic our experiences helping
develop the Wyoming computer science
standards as well as a range of other
topics that are of interest to see sk8
educators now you may notice that my
voice sounds a little different that's
because I am recovering from a sinus
infection and you'll actually hear it
in this interview because it was
literally recorded a few hours before I
got pretty sick so my apology is that my
voice is a little out of it for this
recording before we get started just a
friendly reminder that you can find the
show notes at Jared O'Leary comm and
there should be a link in the
description for the show notes for you
to go directly to these show notes for
this episode where I include a bunch of
resources that Anne and I discuss and
with that let's begin with in
introducing herself so my name is Anne
Gunn and I am currently an instructor at
Sheridan College which is one of the two
campuses of the northern Wyoming
Community College District I teach
computer science programming and web
development online essentially a hundred
percent online although I have some
classes that meet once a week in a
hybrid format Sheridan County in Wyoming
is a bit unique because we have these
remarkable philanthropic organizations
that try to take active roles in various
aspects of the community and one of them
decided a few years ago that they really
wanted to support computer science
education so they've funded my position
at Sheridan College as both an
additional instructor of
pewter science and as a liaison to the
school districts so I have this
appointment where my time is split
basically 50/50 between teaching college
students community college students and
mentoring primarily high school and
middle school teachers and the students
so I get to actually spend time in a
classroom with high school students even
though all of my college students are
online and that helps with the sanity
quite a bit because teaching solely
online is a really difficult task just
as learning online is a difficult task
so if I remember correctly you were us
yes professional and you switched over
into CS education I was wondering if you
could share the story of how you got
into computer science education I've
essentially always worked in the
software industry the first half of my
career I was in the business side of
software doing tech support sales that
kind of thing the second half of my
career I promoted myself to an
entry-level programmer and became more
and more technical and wrote software
for a living and now in the third half
of my career which I always intended to
have I'm teaching programming to others
this really was always my intention in
some vague way when we moved from New
England where we were living to Wyoming
and we had to choose a community the
deal was we would go someplace small
enough for my husband but large enough
to have some kind of college so there'd
be some hope of being able to teach
computer science eventually so three
years ago I went from being a freelance
programmer full-time to being what I am
now which is an instructor and school
district liaison full-time with a little
bit of software development work still
as a freelancer on the side sounds like
you have a really interesting balance
between working with a wide range of
people and in different things being
able to get in a classroom and and work
with students is really is really a
pleasure for me I'm very grateful to the
high school computer science teachers
who let me walk in and do the fun easy
part
which is figure out why the codes not
working and try to explain
obscure things to students without
having to do any of the classroom
management or grading it's it's just a
huge privilege and probably the most fun
I have all week is is those few hours I
spend with the high school students yeah
and you refer to debugging as like the
fun part of coding and I I feel the same
way like it's like this fun like problem
trying to solve but I know a lot of
people are very frustrated with it and
as we've kind of talked in person in the
past like debugging is one of those
things where even if you don't want to
do it you're gonna do it right so I'm
wondering like how do you frame
debugging as a fun thing or people who
are kind of hesitant or about it or
afraid of it you know it's that's a
really good question it's interesting we
had a conversation with one of the math
instructors so I worked very closely
with a colleague Mark Toni and so we are
together teaching computer science at
Sheridan College and we had this chance
hallway conversation with one of the
math teachers the other day and she was
talking about a student and saying and
saying oh well he'll take oh say ten ten
in the spring and then he can take this
other class in the fall and and we were
saying well yeah but he's got to get
through cosig ten ten before he can you
know count on taking this other class
and she said oh well he's in calc 2 I
mean he's smart he can do anything and
and we both had this reaction like hit
the pause button why is that statement
wrong you know why does why is that
assumption that somebody who's smart is
also going to be good at coding and I
finally came up with the fact I was
thinking about a student I have who is
in exactly that same situation you know
he's in calc 2 as a freshman at college
he's super smart the difference is he
wants to be right he always wants to
know the right answer and do things the
right way and he gets really frustrated
when things don't work and one of the
chief aspects of enjoying coding is that
you have to enjoy solving mysteries and
you have to take some sort of weird
pleasure in figuring out why you were
wrong yeah what programmers say to each
other all the time is they they sit
from their keyboard and they look around
the room and with this huge smile on
their face they go oh I'm an idiot and
the thing is you have to you have to
just get this kind of weird pleasure
from going that looked like it was gonna
work and here here's why it was just so
wrong right that's the personality trait
that's the that's the sort of mindset
you're trying to cultivate and I don't
think I have the perfect answer for that
yet in class when I'm with my high
school students I model this behavior
because when I can't figure out their
problem right away
it's it I just expressed to them how
cool that is
and what a great deal this is that they
have something that I can't just look at
and figure out like okay now let's have
some fun
in my online classes that's harder but
one of the things I try to do is using
zoom and screen share recording I will
work through a problem and sometimes I
know what I'm going to do and I'm doing
a relatively scripted task and sometimes
I just take my heart in my hands and say
I'm gonna start coding this and you get
to see all the things I do wrong now
in either case even if I think I know
what I'm gonna do I will type things
wrong I'll make bugs I'll do I'll hit
some problems that they hit and then you
know if there'll be this pause and I'll
go oh I what's wrong with that and try
to model that joy in the bugging part of
the process yeah but I do think it's a
mindset that people have to cultivate
and I haven't figured out the ideal way
to communicate that online yeah online
adds some tricky aspects to it like you
could certainly talk about a Carol
Dweck's like fixed versus growth mindset
and whatnot but online settings present
interesting challenges I I too love to
model my own debugging practices and
like bugs that are trying to solve so I
saw kids four to five days a week and
every Thursday if I remember correctly
was debugging we're at the start of it
I'd share here's a big bug I was working
on in this past week and here's how I
solved it here's how I'm attempting to
solve it right
I would have kids that go through some
debugging challenges on their own before
resuming the projects informally you
know you know in a formal sense one of
the techniques that I've picked up from
algebra instruction is the concept of
the worked example mm-hmm
so we're it's not just an example that
is you don't just show people three
problems and then ask them to solve it a
worked example involves some sort of
interactions so you've got some some
code in my case and then people have to
for example enhance it or explain it so
so my students work with a lot of code
that is nearly complete or complete but
then they have to change it but then
also I give them worked wrong examples
which is also a concept from algebra
instruction and and so not every week
but probably half of the weeks in any of
my coding courses as opposed to my web
authoring course my students will have
codes that's broken and their job is to
fix it it's really fun because like I
have a smiley face exercise where I can
I have the code wrong in all these
little tiny ways there's like one line
you have to fix but but it's a smiley
face with one eye instead of two or his
smile is upside down and students just
really love that they don't love the one
where I can break a while statement it
only has four or five lines I can break
it in six different ways without even
trying and and they have to figure it
out and one of the things I realized is
I have to make them not only fix it
but tell me what was wrong with it yeah
not only for their reflection but also
it would be easy to just copy the same
code back in because the loops are all
the same but that focus and emphasis on
hey codes broken all the time so let's
just work on our skills for fixing it
that is something I try to work formally
into my classes yeah and I think new CSS
caters can kind of learn alongside kids
when it comes to bugs they haven't come
across or immediately be able to fix and
like guide through some questions and
then once it's solved asking that can
you explain to me how this now works
what do you think was going on before
what do you think is different
and what not and then both people are
learning the initiative we have where we
put si s professionals in classrooms
which kind of parallels the Microsoft
teals thing we invented it in parallel
probably about the same time so I go to
a school district one classroom two days
a week I go to Sheridan High two days a
week and then my colleague mark Toni
goes down to Buffalo for one block
period of the week and the thing I think
that we add most is that it's so easy
for teachers who are using one of the
online curriculum which are great those
curricula are just wonderful but I see
teachers resorting to let's look at the
posted solution and compare your lines
to those lines and what we model and
what we try to get the teachers more
skilled in is the ability to not look at
the posted solution but to look at the
students code and figure out what's
going wrong and some way to fix it which
may or may not end up looking like the
posted code solution yeah and I really
appreciate when they post like here are
several options of how you can solve
this particular bug as opposed to here's
the one way to do it yeah yeah but that
is it's laborious to sort through and
one thing teachers never have is enough
time
Dean tell me a story of one of your
experiences in education that continues
to impact you or informs what you do or
don't do in the classroom when I was a
freshman at college I had the privilege
of taking my first calculus class from a
man whose name was John Kemeny and
Kemeny and Tom Kurtz were the
co-inventors of basic so you know this
was a guy who had he had been a math
professor they had invented the basic
computer language and one of the
variants of time-sharing systems and
then he had become the president of
college but he still taught one class a
semester he had the most remarkable
capacity to listen to a question and
perceive what you didn't understand
about what he had just taught you so
that when you asked a question you
didn't get him repeating what he had
said before as if you hadn't heard it
right
he was able to come around to the side
of the topic that you were on and
explained it in a truly different way
that eventually fed into when I was a
manager I was one of those people who
really liked the seven seven Habits of
Highly Effective People and the one that
I think's the absolute most important is
seek first to understand and then only
to be understood and this is very hard
with with all education and particularly
with the threshold concepts of computer
science to see things from the other
person's perspective and and even if I
can't always do that in my presentations
I try to do that when I'm working
one-on-one students or I'm staring at
their code and trying to leave them
notes that make it make sense from there
make the solution make sense from their
perspective as opposed from my
perspective that has always been
something that I harked back to when I
thought about teaching was was trying to
understand the students problem from
their eyes instead of from mine boy
that's hard yeah but it's such a
valuable approach having multiple
perspectives and providing that in in
the responses can really change things
one of the questions that I have as a
follow-up is how do you encourage
students to find different perspectives
from resources that are not responsive
so for example if they find an
explanation of how to do something
outside of class and let's say it's a
blog post or YouTube video they might
not have the ability to actually contact
the author to gain another perspective
so how would they seek out a different
answer for a solution they're looking
for my problem is not really getting
students to seek out different answers
because the internet is so full of
coding solutions for everything one of
the things that I I do quite
intentionally is try to focus students
on what I think of as reliable resources
so so for example a specific example as
a computer science professional as a
programmer okay you know person who
actually generates code for pay I use a
site called Stack Overflow
all the time but Stack Overflow is full
of old material
it's full of obscure answers to edge
conditions mm-hmm it's also the top one
or two search results on almost any
coding question you can ask and I try
very hard to get my students to not go
to stack overflow as a primary resource
because they don't have the skills to
understand why the answer to a question
there that's a perfectly good answer to
a perfectly good question is not the
answer that they're seeking to the
question the simpler question they have
so I direct them to a site like w3
schools which isn't question and answer
but is you know add a tutorial at a at a
you know simple reference level and try
to get them to focus on doing the sim
trying to find a simple answer to a
simple problem I don't know that I
actually use this exam example in my
classes but if if something you know
could be a zebra or a horse you know
assume it's a horse it's really easy for
you know all of us as coders have always
assumed that there must be something
broken about the environment we're using
because the code is clearly right and
you have to focus on the fact that your
code is probably wrong and so so you're
looking for a simple explanation not an
obscure one
yeah and context matters context does
matter I do encourage students to ask
questions boy that's hard for them we
use slack instead of the standard
college style discussion forum as a
place for students to interact with each
other and with me I'm always encouraging
people in fact I'm I give extra credit
for people who will ask a question on
slack because it's the almost any
student finds it a difficult thing to
put out there in public in front of all
the other people in a class the you know
a question that shows they don't
understand something even though it's
the most valuable thing they can do for
anybody else in the classroom is to
admit that and ask the question but then
I was always that person that the you
know who had my hand up asking the
question nobody else would ask when I
was
a class in person so that hesitancy to
ask questions is is sort of foreign to
me and I have to just keep remembering
that it's true so what are some of the
things that you wish you knew when you
first started teaching computer science
or coding there are some things I now
know that I didn't know before so for
example your choice of textbook at the
college level just makes an enormous
difference
just as at the high school level where
we're now teaching primarily with
published curricula from say code org or
code HS calm or Project Lead the Way
your choice of one of those environments
for learning really makes all the
difference we're so lucky at the high
school level to have this selection of
solid really dependable well-thought-out
curricula and then within that one of
the things I do in my college classes
that I kind of wish the the high school
curricula did a little bit more of I
will through the course of my 15 weeks
take two or three problems and we do
something super primitive with those
problems in the first you know three
weeks and then in the middle part of the
section we'll do an advanced version so
for example I use this textbook that's
not really that's intended to be a
self-study book for for my cosig 1010
and in the course of the semester they
build three different versions of a
battleship game and pretty uniformly by
the time they build the last one they've
really impressed themselves and in my
web authoring class they do an exercise
where they create a National Park page
like about week two I think and then
over the course of the semester they do
more and by the time they do the last
one they've done a responsive grid or
flex styled
CSS styled version of the same page and
they just love that that they can see
their own progress and they look at what
seems so hard and obscure at the
beginning and now that's the easy part
and the message should be okay you're
always going to be learning something so
that the
old stuff is the simple part and in the
stuff that was so hard three weeks ago
you know now seems like all that was
trivial now this is really hard right
and that's the programmers journey when
I worked with people you know when I
mentored young programmers the you know
the phrase I always uses if you're old
code isn't embarrassing you then you're
really not working hard enough because
you're not growing fast enough because
the purpose of old code is to just make
you blush because you'll know such a
better way to do it now yeah and I think
that like you I believe you phrase it as
the coders journey I think that's also
like the an educators journey as well
just if the way that you taught five
years ago versus the way you teach now
it should be very different
you should just constantly be growing
and whatnot yes and I have I have this
experience coming up for your don't
don't tell them this but I have a couple
of students in my kosai ten-thirty class
which is the C++ compiled language class
this spring who took the previous class
more than two years ago one of them took
it for me one of them took it from
somebody else a year a year earlier and
both of them are you know I worry about
those two students versus the people
who've now taken my cosig 1010 because I
you know we do such a better job of
teaching the introductory class now and
it's so much more substantial than it
was when when we began our teaching
journey three three two years ago for me
in three or four four mark that it'll be
interesting to see how those students do
at least they're both local to me so I
could have them come in and if they need
extra tutoring I just happen to be lucky
that they're both here in Sheridan
County where they could get to my school
if they need to but yes old of course
old course curriculum also embarrass one
so you you mentioned in the beginning of
the teaching journey I'm curious if you
were to lose your memory and you had to
relearn CS and you had to relearn how to
code and how to teach like where would
you start and how would you try and
regain your mastery in the those areas
you know that's that's
such a difficult question for me because
I have programmed for so long even
though I'm you know my teaching journey
my final teaching journey is is very
short I actually did my first
programming in probably almost 50 years
ago that's how long I've done it so I'd
like to change the question a little bit
and focus on what I think things what
things prepare you to learn how to code
yeah and to me you can't do anything
better for yourself or maybe for your
kids if you want them to be good
technologists then simply have them
build and make things I mean if you
think about it coding is making things
with your mind but you have to be able
to do things like understand that the
order in which you do things makes a
huge difference and that clarity of
thought and directions and writing makes
a huge difference
I think of coding as communication I
think if I was if I was gonna spend five
years on a desert Isle trying to get
ready to take a coding class when I got
off it you know I would I'd weave
baskets I would build Nets I I don't
know I would do anything that had
process to it I when I look back on my
sort of childhood I spent a lot of time
doing things like you know if we bought
a car I'd assemble it or you know with
the barbecue or you know figure out how
to just put things together and how they
work and you know there's so much
real-world debugging to do particularly
in this day and age where in general it
tends to be you know put your kid in
charge of getting the new router set up
and dealing with the completely obscure
instructions because they have so much
more to gain from going through the
process and you have so much to gain by
offloading that time-consuming
frustrating experience to somebody else
that you know just always lets let you
know the young person around you do some
of this as long as they can explain to
you
why it works which is an important thing
you need to get them to explain to you
what happened yeah I don't know about
learning computer science I think it is
like learning anything that is process
and product oriented the more different
other process and product things I mean
whether you've baked or you so where
you've welded or you do carpentry you
know I was a fiber person so I taught
myself how to crochet I taught myself
how to weave I taught myself how to do
needlepoint and boy do those things
apply to computer science because it's
all about patterns and and you know
on/off and colors and I don't know it's
just the parallels between fiber arts
and coding well they go far as back as
far as the jacquard loom but they really
they work really well together so what
advice might you give for people who are
struggling to find integration examples
in other subject areas because you've
already mentioned multiple she's only
part-time right now but we have an
educator who is an employee of the
college but does nothing but work with K
through five classrooms doing
integration and integration is so
important because so many topics now and
increasingly in the future are
data-driven so I think I think any kind
of data analysis that you can work into
another class you know there's a lot of
stuff in the in the science curriculums
about collecting data but oftentimes you
collect very small amounts of data
because you you're assuming your
students have to do any kind of math by
hand and I think to the extent that that
you know science teachers or math
teachers can begin to integrate for
example spreadsheets where you can work
in you know you can teach somebody what
the calculation is but then suddenly
they can download a data set with maybe
a thousand entries in it and for the
same amount of work get you know a
really interesting analysis of some
real-world data there's just so much
real-world data out there the hard part
is choosing it right and the same is
true with
social science topics in my kosai 1010
class I have a couple of exercises that
are based on Native American census data
you know at some point you have to sum
average and look at mins and maxes and
so for that I use Native American
population data from the US Census
across States and and one of the things
that jumps right out at you is that the
populations are not where you think they
are that in fact you know there's
there's substantial populations are in
states like Oklahoma and New York as
opposed to Wyoming and Montana and the
thing is that could all be done in a
spreadsheet we happen to do it with
JavaScript but you could look at those
same numbers very easily and that data
is all available and then you can also
work in the obligatory conversation
about how badly the US census data
actually represents Native American
populations for a couple of different
reasons
so it's you know so even though I'm only
teaching the computer science I've been
striving each semester to find examples
that have nothing to do with computer
science they have to do with the world
right and I think that can be done at
every grade level yeah I have a
difference with some of my computer
science colleagues I personally think
spreadsheets are great programming
environments and great places for people
to do data analysis real scientists
often use spreadsheets elimin Airy data
analysis or pre or data cleanup and I
know that social scientists do and so
the fact that it doesn't look like
programming to some people doesn't mean
that you're not understanding you know
the order you have to apply the
operations or you're not having to debug
the spreadsheet when it's not coming out
right
and so I just I really encourage people
to find data sets and analyze them and
you know analyzing them in Google sheets
or in Excel whatever you have available
in your in your school district I think
that's a great way to do things
yeah and we even previously talked about
sauna fiying data I'm wondering if you
could potentially share what that sounds
like and/or what that is what its
like one of the one of the interesting
computer science sort of fields of
research and development over the last
decade or so has been utilizing the fact
that the human ear can distinguish
patterns and gradations of difference at
a much higher level than the eye can
what that means is is that you take data
you've collected digitally so it ends up
being a set of numbers and instead of
trying to do a visualization where you
try to make a graph or you try to make a
pie chart out of something you find a
way to sana Phi it that is turn it into
sound and that can be kind of reefs on
affine so for example you can collect
earthquake data and then instead of
presenting it as as some kind of
visualization you turn it back into
waveform but in in as sound waves as
opposed to earth waves it turns out that
the trained ear can hear differences in
data and be able to distinguish between
types of earthquakes for example simply
by hearing them in a way that seeing
that data either as numbers or seeing it
as some other kind of visualization
wouldn't allow you to do and I'm still
struggling with finding ways to work
sonification into my classroom practice
it isn't that the the libraries are out
there I just haven't found an example
that it's you can fit into a week right
but you know we know this the trained
physician can diagnose different kinds
of heart ailments simply based on the
sound of the valves and so the idea is
to try to take that skill that's
inherent in the human and provide that
particular sense with data that needs
that needs analysis and I'm really
intrigued by that I think it's a growing
field but I I'm still struggling with a
way to work it into the classroom that
you know my classroom and my one week
lessons yeah
if this sounds too abstract for like
elementary teachers this is something
that can be done with young kids whether
it's in Sonic PI or even something like
scratch like in a easy example is you
could take stock market price of a
specific stock and assign it to a MIDI
note so when it's a hundred dollars
assign it to mini note 100 when it's 100
$1 assign it to one hundred one or you
can get in more complicated stuff with
like multiple variables so like assign
certain notes to the cholesterol level
and then other notes too like blood
pressure and just like going to
different parts of health and then
listening back to that and going okay
well how is this person's health data
changing over time and what are some of
the incidents that are impacting when it
sounds very different from other moments
and in one of my favorite example sites
that I usually do show students various
points is the site that Sanne Phi's
Wikipedia mm-hmm wikipedia makes a live
stream of the data about changes being
made available and there's a site that
turns that into both sound and
visualization so that you'll hear one
tone when a new user is created on
Wikipedia and you'll hear another tone
when an article is edited and a third
kind of tone when an article is created
and then there's a certain amount of
volume information that codifies like
for example how large a change and it's
just I sometimes I just turn it on and
listen to what the pedia being changes
that's great it's great white noise you
know it's it's a beautiful it's a
beautiful sound but it is random and
musical at the same time mm-hmm so a lot
of the CS educators that I know don't
have experience in CS as a professional
there are a few people who do like
yourself and like Sandy and I'm Sarah
but some of the people that I've
interviewed on the show but I'm
wondering what are some of the things
that you wish that CS educators knew
about computer science as a profession
and how might that understanding kind of
change the way we approach CS education
it's an interesting question because I
think
soon as an educator starts teaching
computer science they begin to
appreciate the fact that it is a skill
and a practice not a topic but if I was
going to try and convey that message to
someone I would convey it to school
board members and the PT SB and the
folks who manage I guess it's the Board
of Education who managed the curriculum
process standards process because I
think one of the things that people have
to appreciate and that teachers in
particular needs support for is that
this is a topic like teaching that's a
journey and that it the field is always
changing out from under us our ability
to understand it grows and then it
shrinks when we don't practice for a
while and then we have to get back into
practice and that unlike math say it's
not going to be the same five years from
now that it is now so for example in my
cosa 1010 class I have I have a week on
events and when I learn computer science
lo so many years ago programmers regular
human programmers didn't really deal
with events you had to be a sis prog to
have to worry about having your code
interrupted by some kind of user input
and now it's like I Drive down the
highway at 70 miles an hour and it seems
perfectly simple to me but 80 years ago
it would have seemed impossible on two
or three levels for me to be going down
a road 80 miles an hour and be in
control well computer science education
changes faster than that now what we
need to teach how we need to integrate
with other things need to change and I
think the teachers have very little
trouble appreciating that I think the
folks who are trying to find those
teachers and get them to take on a new
class and oh well you know you find this
online curriculum and then you'll be
able to teach it or the administrators
who want to just or even the legislature
I love the fact that our
state legislature mandated computer
science education K through 12 but I
don't think they appreciate the ongoing
struggle that's going to that's going to
present in terms of teachers keeping up
with the field and then trying to push
integration down to the K through five
for things that and into the other
classes I mean we know for example that
science is rarely is is done only
partially in a test tube anymore
so at University of Wyoming biology
majors are required to take a computer
science class Co site 1010 and I believe
that's going to be true of every science
the single most self-taught topic for
PhD students now is programming PhD
students of any discipline but
particularly science disciplines if they
didn't know coding when they started
their PhD they find they have to teach
it to themselves the teachers seem to
appreciate the fact that that their
topic is going to change all the time
and they're going to keep having to have
education this isn't a topic it's it's
not US history you know two to nineteen
ten it's it's a skill that both the
teachers and the students have to
maintain and that is also the education
I was going to change all the time
if there's one factoid that people
should know about okay as opposed to
sort of a mindset people should have its
that current employment data says that
almost no matter what professional job
you have right now or you're trying to
get if you can show that you also know
how to program and/or do effective data
analysis with some of the tools like our
or MATLAB or or whatever not only are
your job prospects better but your
salary prospects are much higher and
that we need to be making sure that
people understand computer science isn't
just for programmers anymore the
computer science is going to drive
virtually all science and science
developments and then many of the social
sciences so yes
history
research you're still gonna go out and
you know a certain amount of it's gonna
be reading old tomes but then you're
also going to do a lot of data based
analysis of documents and things like
that so you know that's probably the
thing that administrators and ever and
and other teachers need to know not the
computer science teachers is how central
probably programming and data analysis
are becoming in every field in the
modern age yeah and to jump onto your
mentioning computer science as a skill
it's a skill and a literacy
so like administrators who are mandating
things and like oh we only have to teach
computer science for like 30 minutes a
month or a quarter or whatever it's like
okay but if you were trying to have kids
learn English but they could only speak
it read it and engage in it for 30
minutes a month they're not going to do
it by the end of their k12 tenure the
example Mark Toni always uses is about
is about playing an instrument or
painting yes you know you can paint by
number and produce something that looks
okay but you really not you know you're
not really able to paint that takes
practice it takes teaching your brain
how to see in a different way and the
same with music you can hit a button on
a player piano and it's making music but
that's not really learning how to play
it takes application it takes practice
it takes being willing to be wrong and
try over and over again and that's a
really good model I think for
programming so it takes you get out of
practice quickly it's remarkable if you
don't code for a few months and you go
back and look at and you you look at it
just it takes a while to warm back up
again yeah and so you'd mention Wyoming
support we met for the Wyoming's Cs
standards Review Committee
I'm wondering how did you get involved
with the committee and what are some of
the things that you kind of learned in
that process in terms of how states are
supporting computer science in Wyoming
one of the school district
administrators that I work with on a
regular basis sent out an email call to
people sort of who were involved so the
the public school teachers I was working
with computer science faculty at my
college and
said please sign up to be on this
committee I think the committee
selection is based partly on geography
and pertinent trying to get a wide
selection of different points of view
and so three of us from Sheridan County
were selected there was a person from
industry a public school teacher and and
me from computing from a community
college and I had absolutely no idea
what I was getting in for but it was it
was just it was an interesting
experience it was a worthwhile
experience it'll be interesting to see
how this standard rolls out when I heard
the process was one of consensus and
that we were a group of 40 people I
almost didn't show up as much as I liked
to get people to agree I've always been
a sort of a lead from the front kind of
person and that somebody eventually has
to be the person who the buck stops and
you make the decision so the concept
that we could find some way that 40
people at a time would agree on these
little tiny detailed you know tidbits of
text just struck me as insane and yet
given the right organization given
people of goodwill given time and
patience and the relationships we built
it's not a perfect document but we I
think we did a great job and even when
we were sent back by the Board of
Education for a rather painful review to
try and come up with some change or some
trimming of the document to make it more
digestible it was such a remarkable
group of people who are all trying to do
the right thing together I was I was
really impressed yeah both in terms of
the processes that we went through like
the discussions we had but then the
overall end product I think it was it
was good yes it really was and and it
was interesting the different roles that
people played I mean you came at it with
with a big background in pedagogy and
sort of pedagogical theory the classroom
teachers we had in our subgroup were
absolutely essential in terms of saying
sure but here's the way it is in the
classroom you know and this is what
works in Wyoming and here's the
situation in a school with you know
only 80 kids in k-12 and you know and
and you know they brought real truth and
some of us you know really stood up for
no you have to deal with packets for
example and when you're talking about
network because it's like the atomic
theory you know messages are made out of
little parts and they have to get
reassembled and so we each we each took
up a role but nobody took up a hardened
stance and we eventually with enough
patience came to a lot of I think
important agreements I certainly
appreciated the fact that that you were
another person who really cared about
the wordsmithing yeah cuz I think in the
end you not only need to agree on what
you're trying to say you need to make
the words say that right and there's a
level of patience in trying to make the
words say what you're mean again it was
just everybody was contributing in
different places and that's a place
where you and I I think built some
common ground yeah cause like you have
to think through okay what are we
intending what's the best-case scenario
but what's also the worst-case scenario
of this wording right one of the biggest
takeaways I took away from the standard
is I didn't know much about what the
documents were like I didn't know much
about the overall process I believe that
as a group one of the things that
concerned us about the overall process
is that the normal cycle in Wyoming for
reviewing standards documents is nine
years and there are two reasons why that
should probably not apply to the
document we produced one is the topic as
I said before you know this is an area
where things are changing very fast all
the time and the other is it was a first
draft and we I think we all agree that
when our standard is in practice in
classrooms people are going to find
places where it needs to be changed so
I'm I'm really hoping the state of
Wyoming can make an exception for that
document and probably put it on a five
year cycle
unfortunately the cycle for reviewing it
is is over a year so you can't do it too
often but I don't think it should be
every nine or ten years it really just
is too long yeah and when we initially
created the first draft and sent it to
the Republic review there was some
pushback in that there's hesitancy about
whether these were even doable with the
in particular like the k2 and the k5
group right there's just a sphere of
well we don't have enough time we're now
having to add in yet another subject
area onto our plates in a packed school
day I'm wondering what kind of advice
you might give for any of the teachers
who are looking at some of the computer
science standards or just computer
science in general who are hesitant
about it my advice is to try and turn
that around a little bit as I mentioned
before here in Sheridan County we have a
educational trainer who's working with K
through five grades whose job is
specifically to work on integration and
the idea that she's pursuing you know
her background is I think as a second
grade teacher so she's she's a you know
very recent classroom teacher she knows
the people she's working with she's
respected by them and her message and
and the materials she's providing is to
not in any way treat the computer
science curriculum as an additional
topic that should be taught separately
except for maybe just some very very
minor parts of it that in fact
everything about it should be used to
integrate with other topics and enhance
the teacher's ability to educate the
students in those areas so for example
she's using scratch jr. to help them not
only meet the the upcoming computer
science standards but to enhance their
language arts skill one of the skills
students need to demonstrate is that
they understand sequence and that they
can put a story together and tell it in
a way where it makes sense in order and
if you're using scratch jr. for example
to create that story the students
experience is very enhanced because it's
not only it's not just words on a piece
of paper
it's an illustrated story but they still
have to get the basic skill down
of being able to decide what happens
first what happens second you know and
be logical about it I'm hoping that the
computer science curriculum can almost
disappear into the other curriculum
areas you know except for those few
areas we mark that need to be assessed
separately the skills enhance other
areas they shouldn't have to detract a
lot from the classroom instruction in
other areas now that's a very idealized
college teacher you don't guarantee kind
of way to say that I my feet are not on
the ground in K through five but that's
that's certainly the hope and I think
ten years from now and this conversation
will be much easier to do because
teachers who are going to come out of
colleges of education over the next few
years are going to likely have some
experience with computer science and are
gonna see models of ways of implementing
in it but right now there's the issue of
well how do we get the professional
development for all those teachers and
how do we do certification and other
forms of support so I'm wondering what
you think the state in particular could
do to kind of further assist with this
process to get to that idealized version
of CSM k12
I don't know what it can do what states
in general can do I can speak a little
bit to what Wyoming is doing and the
clarification that has come down so it's
interesting I work with classroom
educators mainly sixth grade and above
and I teach classroom educators in my
classes they they have begun voluntarily
over the last couple years going ahead
and signing up for classes even though
they weren't sure what the credentialing
picture would be and I find that they
their questions are much more often to
me about credentialing so this used to
leave me feeling very helpless but I
have tried to understand the
credentialing picture as it's developed
in Wyoming for classroom teachers who
are adding the computer science
curriculum to their integrated K through
five classroom instruction they don't
need any additional credentialing which
doesn't mean
they don't need additional training our
school district was somewhat ahead of
some other school districts in terms of
implementing a lot of computer science
stuff anyway and so we're trying to stay
serve on the leading edge and I
certainly hope that the school district
will share some of that wisdom and
experience with other people around the
state in trainings and presentations and
that kind of stuff but for either
pullout special teachers or for any any
teacher of computer science six through
next few years those teachers are
supposed to get a computer science
endorsement and there's been a lot of
misunderstanding about that there
unfortunately like my field as a whole
there are many different things going on
at once a lot of good work is being done
but on different timescales and so one
of the things that's been confusing is
that there are some things that are
being talked about now that probably
aren't going to be ready for a few years
and then there are a few things that are
being talked about that are ready right
now and that teachers and school
districts can go ahead and start on so
for example in what for them is rather
lightning speed the professional
teaching standards board last spring
reworked the computer science
endorsement requirements for computer
science teachers so effectively six
through 12 and went from a twenty seven
credit endorsement down to a 15 credit
endorsement that could specifically be
delivered all those 15 credits could
specifically be delivered by community
colleges so they really tried to step up
I think to making the credentialing the
endorsement more achievable and
achievable more locally yeah and some of
the difficulties that credentialing
institutions have kind of gotten into or
just credential in general were
sometimes offering classes to teachers
that are great for your undergraduate CS
major but really don't have a lot of
relevance to somebody who's teaching
computer science in an integrated manner
to a kindergartner so yeah you might be
learning like the basics of how to
construct a program and like an IDE like
eclipse or something but you're never
going to use that with your K through 2
kids right and that's where I think you
know what I haven't heard in Wyoming is
because those K through five teachers
don't need an additional credential what
I haven't heard is a statewide approach
to the professional development that
they need I think that integration in
the classroom is very tricky it's really
critical because it's now declared to be
out of the credentialing pathway I do
have some concern that that might make
it ignored when in fact in some ways
it's the harder and more critical
problem I mean what we what we've said
all along here in Sharon County is you
know we're firing on all cylinders and
we're rolling out computer science
education and rolling it down to the
elementary level we're gonna have an
ongoing problem that as students get to
the high school suddenly the classes
that work two years ago don't work
anymore because they already know that
stuff and we're seeing that I mean we
have this problem that we have
sophomores taking what would have been a
senior class and their final experience
in computer science at our high school
well they're taking it as a software now
and so suddenly you know and maybe their
junior years filled up with the classes
but by senior year they're ready to take
another program in class and so we've
had to add yet another AP class on top
of that and that's the problem you want
to have is for the skill set coming up
through the elementary levels to be
driving high school teachers to
distraction in terms of always having to
move their practice farther up the
evolutionary scale but I I do worry
about how that's being rolled out
particularly in the smaller school
districts now wde though aiiowing
department education has an effort
funded somewhat by a microsoft grant may
be fully by microsoft grant to try to
work with all school districts and help
them plan and help my hope there to be
some amount of consistent approach to
rolling out the elementary level do you
know is I mean I would think I mean this
isn't like you said this isn't teaching
computer science this is teaching
computer science integration in the
classroom is there a is there an
accepted curriculum for that are there
online programs for teachers to to get
professional development in that area is
there even a certification or degree for
that I'm not aware of any certifications
or degrees there are a lot of people who
are approaching in different ways like
in the PD that we do we can't possibly
go in and find examples in every subject
area for every standard for every state
that we're working in right so what we
like to do is okay here are some
examples of projects in here are some
examples of how you could potentially
integrate these projects but now let's
kind of unpack how it relates to the
standards that you are working with and
let's kind of create our own lesson
plans related to this and so that way
you can integrate it into your classroom
and use it tomorrow if you wanted to but
that's just kind of one approach right
because that that's one of the things I
always forget about you is that you're
not just I mean you don't do that much
or any teaching of computer science
directly yourself you're in a company
that's trying to provide just the kind
of professional development I was just
talking about right yeah and yeah like I
used to be in the classroom I'm doing it
was a k-8 coding classes but now I'm at
the nonprofit doing all the professional
development stuff and curriculum right
and so you probably have a much better
perspective on how on housed counties in
Wyoming in school districts and states
around the nation are honored are trying
to tackle that integration problem which
I think can be done so well but but is
labor intensive I think students could
benefit from being done well they could
benefit so much but I just don't see it
isn't computer science taking away from
the classroom experience of the student
it's the burden it puts on the teacher
to figure out the integration that
enhances the student experience that
does seem like a hard problem to solve
over the next few years
yeah and really well in what way so like
there are districts that I know of who
are claiming that they're doing computer
science for all or coding for all and
like little of all these wonderful
we're doing but then when you actually
look at it in practice they are spending
like 30 minutes a quarter on it and it's
like well okay just because you spend 30
minutes a quarter on it doesn't mean
you're really diving deep into the stuff
so the quality of what you're doing is
is not enough right so you mentioned
that multiple times like see us just
being a skill that's constantly changing
and whatnot and that adds pressures on
to like you said before some of the high
school teachers who are like okay well
now what was a senior class is now going
to be like an entry level class and I
need to create more content for those
upper divisions education in general has
a really high kind of like dropout or
burnout rate I'm wondering what advice
you might have or how you kind of take
care of yourself to kind of prevent that
kind of burnout when you're in a field
that's just constantly changing and
asking more from you I mean that's my
whole career is is even though I'm doing
it in teaching now you know there are
two things about me I've always worked
in a field that was changing out from
under me and programmers don't usually
burn out because they get tired of doing
what they've done programmers as
professionals quit the profession I
believe primarily because what they knew
two years ago isn't worth much now and
they have to go through that whole
learning experience over and over again
I like to learn in fact it's probably
the only thing I'm actually good at I've
never been super topic obsessed or I'm a
good writer I think an editor but
otherwise I don't have you know a super
skill in one area I've never been I'm
not a real conventional programmer in
the sense of you know just like diving
deep into one particular technology I
like to learn and so the field of
programming of coding of technology has
always worked for me because I don't
have to do anything for too long I can
just always be starting over again and I
think teaching is like that you have to
suck up and deal with the fact that you
know you're always refining you're
always creating you're always having to
add something new but it also keeps
things interesting I'm one of those
people who puts a lot of stress on
myself so I'm always stressed my
solution to that is to try really hard
to find one
a week that I actually take off mmm and
to either get outside or to make
something or do something so you know
digging in the garden teaching myself
slowly slowly how to so you know making
something beautiful is is this is just a
fix for many ills and you know once or
twice a year we go on vacation and we
completely unplug you know I'll be out
in a place that not only has no cell
connection it has no electricity it has
nothing for me I think that's really
really critical is to just get totally
away and usually you know in setting the
outdoor stuff do something that's kind
of scary
because there's something about being
scared that really like makes you focus
on the moment instead of thinking about
like what you have to do when you get
back yeah I think essentially hitting
the f5 to refresh is a valuable thing to
do throughout the year yeah yeah yeah
it's hard though especially when you
have a lot of deadlines and yeah it is
her but I've also changed career I mean
I've been in the same field but I've
also completely changed careers twice
now that gives it a certain freshness
yeah yeah what do you wish there's more
research on that might inform what you
do in the class I'm gonna say something
kind of embarrassing I don't know if I
wish for more research or if I wish for
more time to read the research there is
when I do find time to go looking for
research I always learn something like
several years ago I tried to start a
business and get a government grant to
do it to write a math teaching app and
found a whole body of literature on
different ways to teach algebra and
what's effective and what's not and came
up with this concept out of there of the
worked example one small thing like that
can inform and shape your practice for a
long time yeah so I think it is
interesting that even to this date the
computer science community cannot decide
how to teach computer science what to
teach in what order
and in particular what our introductory
topics and what are not
so you know I do occasionally go out and
I look to see what other people are
writing about how you teach computer
science and what I see is a community
that has essentially no agreement
there's a there's a document that comes
out every I know five or ten years from
one firm I think it's the Association of
Computing Machinery about computer
science teaching practices and it just
keeps getting longer and longer because
there just is a longer longer list and
they have syllabi from from you know now
probably twenty five different
institutions and none of them are the
same I don't wish there was more
agreement but it is a disincentive to
spend much time reading when as far as I
can tell we're all making it up as we go
along because that's how I program that
doesn't bother me as much as it bothers
some other people and one of your
questions someplace there's a line about
you know what advice would you give
somebody who is starting to teach
computer science and I you know as much
as you're teaching two years ago is
always going to embarrass you it's
better to start and observe the results
and give your students access because
really you're not teaching you're
letting them learn and if you know a
year from now you know a better way to
present something than you did to this
year's students you still gave them the
chance to learn this on their own
because like any other skill or practice
it's it's every bit as much what they
put into it and what they bring to it as
anything you can give them except the
opportunity yeah and your point about
like finding the time to read the
research that's one of the reasons why
this podcast alternates between an
interview on one week and then the next
week I kind of talk about scholarship
relevant to see us education because I'm
aware it's very hard for people not only
to find time for sitting down and
reading but also even just getting
access to research because there's like
that pay wall to get to it so I'm hoping
that this podcast helps with that what
are some questions that I have not asked
that you might want to
besides learning from my own practice
and trying to observe I really don't
know where and how to find the time to
identify the ideas and influencers that
I should be learning from yeah I mean
that's hard I mean you can find stuff
like TED Talks of people who talk about
Education Ken Robinson's I think is
still the most watched one and that
one's on education and creativity that's
a guy who talked about the factory the
factory model yeah yeah I've seen him
he's good
yeah even like just in your day to day
so like I for a couple of years took
multi classes and the people who were
teaching the classes didn't have any
kind of background in education but the
way they taught how to fight and defend
yourself was phenomenal the pedagogy
that they were using it was really well
done and like I went in and was just
shocked at how good they were as
educators and so I took some of what
they are doing and was going oh I can
apply that pedagogical approach in my
class obviously not the fighting part
not the content but like the how they
approached like teaching somebody
something so even the day to day you can
find people who are doing good things
well and that's the other piece that I
didn't mention about about the chance to
go into the high school classes is that
there is so much to be learned from an
experienced master teacher in her own
classroom they don't they probably don't
think they're doing much but they're
just are doing so much into and then to
add a second classroom and see the
difference you know the things that are
working the difference in the students
the difference in in the behaviors in
the classroom and the progress the
students are making on exactly the same
curriculum it's amazing what a
difference the teacher makes so I do pay
attention to the folks around me but boy
you know it's just you're like putting a
spoon down into the firehose and trying
to get some water out it's just a me
where my people go to connect with you
or the organizations you work with
I'm always available at Sheridan ddu if
you go to share do that edu and in the
search bar you type in gun GU in in I'm
the only one there or you can look
through the website and find the
computer science department and find me
that way
my email is Egon at Sheridan dot edu
because my formal first name is
Elizabeth even though I've always been
called an and IT systems seem to have
lost the ability to be flexible in that
way so my email address is Egon at
Sheridan media which is pretty simple
I do present I'm almost always happy to
present as Jared now knows from talking
to me for a couple of hours I like to
talk and I like to present we have some
outreach materials that we've used to
explain programming to adults for them
to get a little more comfortable with
with what we would eventually teach
students I've done some presentations
with either hands-on programming or
talking about our approach so yeah I'm
available for presentations anybody
wants me to come and speak I'd be happy
to do that I don't know if I'm at the
forefront I think I'm in the fight and
making some decent progress and it'd be
great to share that information with
other people and to access all of those
resources that we mentioned throughout
the podcast such as Sir Ken Robinson's
TED talk information on growth mindset
by Carol Dweck Steven Covey's 7 Habits
of Highly Effective People etcetera
etcetera
you can find those in the show notes in
the description or by visiting George
O'Leary com I hope you enjoyed this
episode and I hope you consider sharing
with somebody else next week I will be
unpacking some scholarship and the week
after that I will be interviewing
somebody else for this podcast hope you
all have a great week

Guest Bio

Anne Gunn was born in Lander, Wyoming, and grew up in Helena, Montana. She went to school in New England and subsequently lived in New Hampshire and Vermont for 20 years before returning to the West in 1999.

Anne has spent her entire working career in the software industry, in both business and technical roles. In 1990, she and a group of fellow employees of Metropolitan Life Insurance were able to spin off Tally Systems, a bootstrap-funded software company. Tally was a pioneer in developing software to help corporations manage and maintain personal computing assets. Anne was on the board of Tally from its founding until 2005 when the company was acquired by Novell.

At Tally, Anne wore many hats, including sales, technical support, quality assurance, product management, and people management. Eventually she promoted herself from Senior VP of Product Management to entry-level software developer in order to have more schedule flexibility and options for where to live/work. Since leaving Tally, she has worked remotely as a software developer on a large variety of custom software projects.

In 1999 Anne and her husband Mark, a freelance engineer, brought their work and their two daughters to Sheridan. They both enjoy the outdoors and, depending on the season, try to get out hiking, biking, paddling, fishing, and cross-country skiing as often as they can.