#346 – CSEdWeek, with Kiki Prottsman

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What is your experience with computer science?
• What are the benefits of computer science?
• What is CSEdWeek?
• How might you integrate computer science into your classroom?
• How can you highlight CSEdWeek?

• CSEdWeek (official website)
• Hour of Code (Code.org)
• Code.org (official website)
• Let’s All Teach Computer Science! A Guide to Integrating Computer Science Into the K–12 Classroom (written by Kiki Prottsman)
• MakeCode Offerings for Hour of Code (Microsoft MakeCode)
• Inside Out 2 (Microsoft MakeCode Arcade)
• Snack Chase (Microsoft MakeCode Arcade)
• Mission to Hubble (Code Ninjas)

#346 CSEdWeek, with Kiki Prottsman

AVID Open Access
44 min

Keywords
computational thinking, CS Ed Week, idea sprinkler, computer science education, powerful learner, flipped learning, make code, AI integration, digital divide, unplugged lessons, Hour of Code, micro:bits, teacher resources, equity in education, student engagement

Transcript

Kiki Prottsman 0:00
Computational thinking, this ability to take a big, gnarly, hairy problem and break it apart into multiple pieces and then solve each of those pieces kind of individually, you really become a very powerful learner and a more confident person. And I don’t know why we wouldn’t want our kids to experience that.

Paul Beckermann 0:20
The topic of today’s podcast is CSEdWeek, with Kiki Prottsman. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes that we can raise the bar for education. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:26
Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:52
I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:53
And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann 0:57
And we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music 1:02
Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:06
Our quote for today is from our guest, Kiki Prottsman in her new book, “Let’s All Teach Computer Science.” She writes, “You only need to be an idea sprinkler to get the process going and initiate learning. Computer science is less about pouring facts into a student’s mind and more about modeling curious behavior.” All right. Winston, you want to go first? What does that make you think about?

Winston Benjamin 1:31
I’m thinking about a specific teacher in my experience, Mr. Liebermann. I hated social studies. I hated it completely, but he never cared about dates and making sure that we all knew what at this time happened. What he also always tried was to act out little experiences. So for me, it was just fun to just be in the class and be like, oh yeah, this is history. This is why it’s fun. And still, to this day, I still am a history buff. I still love social studies global. I still am interested in politics, so I remember him sprinkling that joy of engagement in me. So that’s where that quote brings me. It brings you back to a time when I was learning and enjoying learning.

Paul Beckermann 2:15
Cool. So he flipped the script for you. He changed it from not liking to liking.

Winston Benjamin 2:18
To loving.

Paul Beckermann 2:20
Cool. Rena, how about you?

Rena Clark 2:22
I think it’s because I’m hungry, but I’m thinking about cupcakes and sprinkles. So anyways, I was just thinking about how plain and boring they can be, but you can sprinkle little decorative sprinkles here and there. And how you can glam the cupcakes up. But also just that idea that you don’t have to cover the entire thing for it to be transformative, even magical. I think about when I was first learning about computer science, specifically, since we’re going to talk more about that. I really didn’t know. But rather than feeling like I had to know everything, I just tried on a little bit, sprinkled it out there, and let students be the lead learners, and really learned so much from them, and let them explore, and then kind of take on that leadership role. And I dove into a little bit more with flipped learning. And it was transformational. So, you don’t have to know it all. You just have to have a tiny little sprinkle, and you can glam it up and transform it.

Paul Beckermann 3:20
I love that. Glam it up. All right. Well, we’re going to glam it up today a little bit, because our guest is the Kiki Prottsman, Director of Education for Microsoft MakeCode. We are so excited to have her back again today. She works for Make Code, as I mentioned, an organization that works to increase access to computer science in schools across the United States. She’s an expert in computer science education and the author of multiple books on the topic, including the new book that we quoted at the beginning. “Let’s All Teach Computer Science.” So welcome, Kiki.

Kiki Prottsman 3:56
Thanks for having me again. It’s always good to be here.

Paul Beckermann 4:02
All right, so we’re gonna go back in time here a little bit. We’re gonna talk about computer science today, but I wanna go back a little bit and have you share. How did this start for you? How did you get interested in computer science?

Kiki Prottsman 4:17
You know, now I think it was luck. My dad actually was very interested, and still is interested in all the newest technology as it comes out. So we had a computer in our kitchen, actually pretty much as soon as he could get one. But even before that, he had one, and he started trying to figure out how to program and doing little jobs on the side with programming. And I was sick home from school one day. And he’s a great dad, but he really didn’t love being bothered by youngins. So he sat me in front of the computer with this book, spiral-bound book on Basic and said, “Here, see what you can figure out.” And then, by the end of that day, I mean, I must have been 12, by the end of that day, I’d written a program that, based on your hair color and eye color, could decide which member of my family you were. And I was so proud of myself. I was so excited with what what I’d done. So, I think right then I kind of equated it with magic. It just you’re creating your own magic, and I fell in love with it.

Paul Beckermann 5:27
Very cool.

Winston Benjamin 5:30
I love that. I love that. All right, so your new book is titled, “Let’s All Teach Computer Science.” So that begs the question, Why teach computer science? Why should we teach it?

Kiki Prottsman 5:45
I like to joke that I want to create my own little robotic army. Like I want the power of all students learning computer science. And no, really, it’s because I’ve seen the magic of what it does to people’s self esteem when they learn computer science. And it’s not actually the coding that makes kids feel so powerful. It’s that you can go into the beginning of a year with kids who are always doubting, and you ask them a question, and they say, “I don’t know,”because they’re too afraid to possibly be wrong. And a barrier comes up, and they stop because they’re petrified. And then you introduce computer science in a way that speaks to them. And then at the end of the year, they understand persistence. They understand reading the clues of failure and trying again so that they succeed. And instead of saying, I don’t know, they’re making guesses, and they’re persistent, and they’re applying knowledge that they found one place to another place. It’s just this tool. And when you combine that with the computational thinking that we’ve all talked about now for a very long time, but this ability to take a big, gnarly, hairy problem and break it apart into multiple pieces and then solve each of those pieces kind of individually, you really become a very powerful learner. And of course, that helps you with computer science, because that’s a place where we’re always evolving, and you can’t always rely on someone having solved your problem before. But it also helps in math and it also helps in English class, and it also helps basically anywhere you’re trying to learn anything, and so you suddenly just become a more powerful learner and a more confident person. And I don’t know why we wouldn’t want our kids to experience that. So that’s what drivesmy passion.

Rena Clark 7:45
I love that connection to powerful learner, confident, and I’m even thinking back to your example, Winston, where, you were like, I don’t really care about dates and stuff, but to actually act and feel and understand the why. Because students today, they have so much access at their fingertips for that type of knowledge. And so I’m thinking, even around like the 4 Cs of Education, you were talking about, Kiki, it’s like we can, through computer science, have them be collaborating and communicating and being creative and critical thinking, which I hear every other day from every teacher I work with. “We gotta work on critical thinking skills.” So knowing that’s part of this, I’m wondering, how can we have those non-computer science teachers, those literacy teachers, math teachers, social studies teachers, even PE teachers bring in computer science into their classroom?

Kiki Prottsman 8:38
I used to have a stock answer for this, and I do have many answers also in the book you mentioned earlier, but recently, I’ve kind of been flipping my own script, and I now kind of feel like a good way to get involved as an educator is to start playing with it yourself, and not necessarily because you’re going to bring it into your classroom, although hopefully, eventually, that’s how it goes. But I’ve been looking at this idea of getting teachers to start making games for their students in their subject. So with a simple program you mentioned, I work for make code, and I work for make code because I love it, not just because it’s a job. I’m truly passionate about it. So you’ll hear me say a lot of examples from MakeCode, and probably specifically MakeCode Arcade. But, as an educator, I come from this world too, and to know that I can powerfully make a game that my students can play, that I have tailored to help them understand a concept better, to help them get practice with a concept. And instead of waiting for somebody to get me a rocket math game that my students can play and that they understand, I can make one for them, and I could do it in an afternoon. And I can do it in a playful way with characters that speak to my students. I think that is actually a really great way to introduce coding into the classroom. So yeah, maybe at first, as an educator, you’re the one coding, but then you can present those games to students and allow them to make changes that now, instead of teaching addition, you help them make changes so that it can do subtraction or multiplication, or now that I’m confident in making these games and I see how much fun it is, and how doable it is, maybe I now want to introduce the subject to my students and have them try to make something to get their idea across. So, I’m slowly, kind of leaning away from just start by teaching the kids. You don’t have to know any of it. Just let the kids learn, and you can be there to answer some questions. And now I’m thinking, if you’re not comfortable doing that, just start playing with it yourself and giving them an end product that you made. Once you’re comfortable, it will start working its way in naturally.

Paul Beckermann 11:12
All right. So let’s say we do that, and now I made something, and I am hooked. I love it, and I want to bring more to my classroom, besides just the game that I made, right? So, could you maybe just throw out an example, say, from a humanities class, which is on one side of the learning spectrum, to a math or science class, which is a little different approach? Could you see maybe an example of how that would play in each of those classrooms?

Kiki Prottsman 11:40
Yeah, and the way that kind of looks is, you have this category of classes that’s already kind of STEM related, right? It feels very natural to toss computer science into math or science, for example, because, for one, you already get people who say, “Oh, I can’t do computer science. I’m no good at math.” So people already are equating these things, right? And so there, it probably seems very natural. You could pull a lesson in for a single day. You could take something, in fact, there’s so many lessons that have already been created for free. They’re all over the place. You can just type in computer science lessons for math, and you can get anything from a one-hour lesson all the way up to entire term worth of lessons that’s computer science and math. I know Bootstrap and not the bootstrap that is the language or web thing, but there’s a curriculum called Bootstrap that actually teaches algebra through computer science. So, yeah, there’s plenty of ways to do that. I think the people more get lost when it comes to things like humanities or, like Rena was saying, P.E., right? But there are opportunities there, too. And the thing is that so much of the stuff that happens in computer science is just looking at everyday problems and reframing them. And as we know, educators all the time have this issue of the transfer of knowledge. Taking something that looks one way and having the students understand it when it looks another. This is kind of a meta version of that. You’re taking something that looks one way when you’re already teaching it in humanities, and now you’re putting it in a computer science light and trying to have students do it. So, a concrete example of that might be, maybe it’s something as simple as hitting one of the CSTA Standards around technology and how technology affects culture, right?

And one of the the examples I give in the book is this idea of anachronism. I think that’s what it’s called, where something is taken out of its time and put in another time. Say you’re reading Charlotte’s Web or something. Have the students look at how different that book would have been if social media existed. What if you had Facebook or Twitter or Instagram at that time? What would Charlotte’s Web have looked like? What would that experience have looked like? Or say that you’re studying ancient Chinese history, or the time around when the wall was built, or something of that nature. Think about what would have happened if they’d just been able to text, or if they’d had web pages like, how, how would the world look different if those things had happened in those times, and that doesn’t even require programming, right? It’s valid computer science because you’re talking about the culture and the ideas behind technology, but you can still approach it in a very, very comfortable way, without the coding. Or maybe you want to do the coding, and maybe you want to introduce an activity where students, instead of making a poster project, which, let’s be honest, sometimes those get a little tiring, right? They get a little messy. They take a long time. But not everybody loves drawing and cutting and gluing. So what if you wanted instead to make a little digital diorama? You wanted to use block-based coding, and you wanted to make a game that told a story or a project that people could press the A button and flip through pages on your project. All of these things are very valid ways of including computer science that don’t derail your class and, if done right, they might not even derail your class by a single day, let alone a week or a term. So I like to think about all those kind of outlying ways of introducing computer science that is not just “Okay, let’s learn about loops and functions and all of that.” Those things come too, and quite often when you’re learning them in an art space class, you might not ever even put the terminology to them. You may not actually talk about functions and loops and algorithms and things like that. You’re just using the tool. But then when that student realizes they love it, so they sign up for a coding class later, they get the terminology added then, but they already love the subject.

Paul Beckermann 16:36
And then some of it’s if you have access to the little robots that you can program. What are some of the robots that you can like, what are they called?

Kiki Prottsman 16:44
Oh, man, there’s so many out there. The the Wonder Workshop Robots.

Paul Beckermann 16:48
I think Dot and Dash is what I’m thinking of because I’ve heard of teachers programming Dot and Dash to go across the United States on the trail of the Grapes of Wrath or something. That’s a high school example, but to have the robot do something that maybe isn’t a story or a piece of literature. I was an English teacher, so that kind of connects with me. But yeah, I think there’s lots of ways to work that in.

Kiki Prottsman 17:19
Absolutely.

Winston Benjamin 17:21
I love this. I’m down with the conversation. I’m jiving with it, right? So we’re talking about the teacher who’s thinking about, “Oh my God, computer science. Over my head.” And then now you throw in the hottest topic of the century, AI. Boom! Another grenade into that teacher’s thinking plan, right? What role do you see artificial intelligence playing in computer science, and how might K-12 teachers both bring in AI and computer science in the classroom? Again, like bridging those two similar but different, fearful characteristics, where I don’t know, but I think I have to get into it. So, how can you support that teacher in thinking?

Kiki Prottsman 18:12
Yeah, and I actually really like this topic, and not just because I’m on board with AI. I really do think that AI is this generation’s internet, that the people who understand how to use it and understand how to use it well are really going to fast-forward the things that they’re capable of doing, and the people who are held back from using it are going to have a bit of a tougher time until eventually things roll around. But there’s a rumor out there that people won’t need to learn to code anymore because AI will do everything. I think it’s going to be a while before AI can write programs for people who know nothing about code. You’re going to have to have some sort of an education around it so you know if things are going right or not going right, and you can fix it. But I think that there’s something even a level before that. And that is, I like the idea generation. I have teachers who say, we do project-based learning, but the problem is that my students say, “I don’t know what to make. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do.” AI is great for that. You say, Hey, I have to make a project that contains two loops and a sprite and has this kind of a resolution. And then the AI will say, Oh, here’s five ideas. And then you can say, Oh, that’s good, but I want something that also puts it in a fantasy scenario. And then it comes up with something new, and it can kind of help you expediate that process.

And it doesn’t take all the creativity out of it. You can still do the artwork, if that’s what you’re into. You could still do the music, if that’s what you’re into. But it takes away the, uh, I don’t know where to even begin, which, when I taught web design, that blank page was the thing people were most afraid of. And this helps get rid of that blank page in an artificially intelligent way, so you’re still making the decisions. It’s just giving you some suggestions based on the criteria that you put in, and then as you get into it, a little bit more, man, has AI ever become wonderful at helping to debug. I mean, that used to be some of the the biggest fears of the educator was that there would be an issue in a student’s program and they wouldn’t be able to help figure out where that issue was. But now, if you can just convert those blocks into JavaScript, or if you’re working in JavaScript Python, some text language, and you pop it in there for the AI to evaluate, you can say, “Why is this resetting my clock every time I grab the pizza? It’s only supposed to have the clock change in the beginning?” And it will say, “Well, it looks like you’re putting your clock dot reset inside the function of when it overlaps the pizza. You should be putting it in the main part of your program. And it’s so helpful. It helps get past a lot of those blocks. So I don’t see any issue in kind of managing the way students are allowed to use AI, but I do think that just straight out forbidding AI, especially in the coding classroom, it’s probably a mistake at this point.

Yeah, and maybe we can relate it to teachers when they generate lessons. You still have to be a good educator and evaluate it, and know to debug it, understand the code as a teacher. I think it’s more complex, so that human lens is needed.

I was just gonna say we’re encouraged at Microsoft, for reasons you probably understand, to use AI whenever possible to make our jobs easier, so that we can be productive doing the things we have the specialty for, right? And, man, it can give you just the best start to whatever you need. If you’re writing a report, if you’re doing an email, if you’re doing lesson plans, you can just say, “This is what I want,” and it’ll give you something. And it is so much easier to take something that’s wrong and fix it and make it good, than it is to start from the very beginning and make sure you have all of your “i’s” dotted and T’s crossed. So, it’s definitely a time saver, and it can also be a brain saver, but it’s rarely 100% perfect. Thank goodness.

Rena Clark 22:45
Trying to think the meme I just saw, I don’t want AI to create, do my art, write my papers. I want it to do my laundry and my dishes so I have more time to do art and do writing.

Kiki Prottsman 22:57
As much as I agree with that, I’ve seen that there’s a robot coming out that’s meant for the home, and I don’t think I could, yeah, I’m still terrified of that. No robots in the house.

Paul Beckermann 23:08
It’s like the Jetsons, right?

Kiki Prottsman 23:12
Yeah.

Rena Clark 23:12
There we go. Well, all of this being said, we’re really excited because CSEdWeek is coming up soon. It is December 9 through 14th this year. So if you just want to share a little bit about what CSEdWeek is, for our listeners that may not be familiar, and how teachers might get involved.

Kiki Prottsman 23:32
Yeah, yeah. It’s really kind of a promotional event. And Computer Science Education Week was created to help people make a moment for education, for computer science education specifically, in their lives no matter what they do, but specifically teachers, and specifically teachers who just don’t normally teach computer science. They want people to give it a shot, because it used to be that you had to be super educated and high degree in order to do computer science, and it’s not like that anymore. People who’ve never done computer science before can sit down with a program and make something really cool in an hour. There’s a whole website dedicated to experiences like that. So just opening that week to encourage teachers as a community all across the world—it’s not even just the U.S. anymore—all across the world to know this is something that happens during this week. Be part of the global conversation and then give that experience to your students, even if it’s just for a single hour, just do something, let them bond over this. And this generation will then have that in common down the road, when they say, Oh, I remember CSEducationWeek or Hour of Code. Yeah, it’s just there to get people to try it so that they realize it’s not as scary as they think it is. And then maybe they’ll stick with it. And we do, every year, have more and more classrooms that come back in January after CSEducation Week in December, and actually start introducing computer science as part of their classes after that. So it’s working!

Paul Beckermann 25:18
That’s cool. So if teachers want to do this, but they want to make sure that the activities they choose are inclusive and appeal to all the students, not just the ones who see themselves as tech savvy, what would you say to those teachers?

Kiki Prottsman 25:32
First of all, good. Good on you. I think, in general, education has a huge opportunity to either heal that digital divide or make it even bigger. Computer Science even more so because it’s all around that digital space. So everything I do when it comes to computer science, I try to include that—I’m not going to call it a caveat but that viewpoint, that lens to say it’s our responsibility to make sure we’re not making that divide wider, that we really are appealing to the students we have in our classroom. And I think the biggest thing you can do is understand your class, understand your demographic, understand what interests them. And if you don’t feel like you know your class well enough to understand what would resonate with them, then talk to them about it. There’s no reason you have to plan all of this in secret, right? You can ask them what kinds of things they like to do. You can work with them to let them help plan the lessons, so that they’re doing something they feel comfortable doing. But something else you can do is have different things for students to pick from, so that not everybody’s doing the same thing at the same level. And, therefore, there are people just going like a rocket, and some people can barely get off the ground. You have multiple options. So the people who’ve been doing this since kindergarten, or the people who’ve shown aptitude and are already text-based programming can do their thing, and the people who’ve never seen it before have an equally successful experience working in, say, a block-based language or something that is meant for it to be very step-by-step and prescribed.

And then also, don’t overlook the magic of the unplugged lesson. We talked about how seeing computer science in the real world can feel very powerful and help you understand things in a way you couldn’t before. Unplugged, which is lessons that use real world, physical or mental things, and not necessarily coding or being on a computer, it can help you understand things like algorithms by making butter and banana sandwiches. Or you try and find the treasure, and you have these little squares on the ground made out of paper, and you’re following an algorithm to try and figure out which one of them has the treasure on the other side. There are so many things that you can do that already exist in the child’s world. They don’t have to learn a whole new language to participate in it. They don’t have to debug things to participate in it. They don’t have to have a computer to participate in it, just real world activities that they already understand. And now you’re putting that terminology out there, or the idea of persistence, or the idea of debugging, and those are the things then they get to focus on instead of going to the computer lab and starting up the computer and trying to figure out this whole other language for one day.

Winston Benjamin 29:00
I always struggle with asking questions like this, because I hate favorites. But what is one of your favorite CSEdWeek activities? What do you love doing?

Kiki Prottsman 29:11
It gets harder every year. I’ve been involved in CSEdWeek since the beginning, and then Hour of Code since the beginning. And the two are synonymous for most people. CSEdWeek is kind of the impetus to get people doing things, and then the Hour of Code is sort of how. So there’s a website, Hourofcode.com, that has all these activities, and they list these one-hour bites that people can pick up and do. In my life, I have contributed so many of those, and each year, it seems like the latest one is my favorite. This year we are contributing three, which I’m not sure I’ve ever done three before. But Disney and Pixar have generously allowed us to keep our “Inside Out 2” activity that we did with them over the summer, up for Hour of Code this year. So we get to have that, and it’s a bubble-popping activity, starring your favorite characters from “Inside Out 2,” and you get to do that traditional bubble pop game, but you’re coding it. So, you have something that you can just play, if you’re like me, for hours. We’re also working with Code Ninja, who, I don’t know your level of familiarity with them, but they are kind of an out-of-school place where students can go and learn coding. They have a belt system. You go the traditional kind of karate belts in their dojos, and they use MakeCode as well. They use MakeCode Arcade and some other MakeCode products. They have contributed something. They’re working with astronaut Scott Kelly and they created kind of a space-themed game called “Mission to Hubble” that goes on about his experience getting the Hubble Telescope up and out there.

And then a new thing this year, we are working with a show that’s on PBS called “Lila in the Loop.” It’s a new show that’s come out this last year, since February, and it’s about this little seven-year-old girl named Lila, and her family owns a diner, and she has this pet named Stu, who is, in essence, kind of an embodiment of AI. He’s not a real creature, necessarily. He’s this blue, fuzzy, adorable little thing, but he reacts a lot like AI would, and so the episodes are often some misunderstanding from miscommunication that happens between her and Stu, or someone and Stu, and then she has to figure out how to clean up the mess. It’s very adorable, but we’re working on a junior activity with them this year, so we have educator materials. And by junior activity, I mean it’s low reading. The blocks have very few words in them. They aren’t in categories. They’re all just loose, so that you can easily pick the blocks you need. And you’re making your own “Snack Chase” game. So, it’s up to a four player game, and you can draw your own snack, and then the snacks go flying, and you have to try to collect all the snacks. It’s very cute, and it’s made for, because of the show is for preK, for very young students, and so this game is made for basically preK to second grade. So yeah, those three I’m very excited about this year, but honestly, it’s very hard to find a bad power of code activity if you’re just going to be playing for an hour.

Rena Clark 33:02
They’re always good ones. And now I’m hungry again.

Paul Beckermann 33:08
I’m just focusing on a pet named Stu in a diner.

Kiki Prottsman 33:15
STU.

Paul Beckermann 33:16
All right, thanks for clarifying.

Kiki Prottsman 33:19
Yep, I get that. That’s funny.

Rena Clark 33:21
That’s funny. We started with a quote from your book, but you do have a new book out. “Let’s All Teach Computer Science.” So is there anything else for our listeners about this book? Who is it for? Anything about it?

Kiki Prottsman 33:36
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I would love to. This book is really intended for every teacher, but specifically teachers who aren’t computer science teachers. It doesn’t go really in deeply to running a computer science class or the issues that happen when you’re teaching specifically computer science. It’s really focused on teachers who want to bring some sort of computer science activity into their class, whatever it is. And it talks about the equity of it, or the inequity of not bringing it to students. And I really wanted to do this because we find that—remember how at the beginning of this I talked about how it’s not about learning computer science, it’s about learning how to learn, and all of the empowerment that comes with learning how to problem solve. And when we rob our students of that experience when they’re young, there’s a lot that happens then later in life as a result of that. So if we can get them these experiences as they’re young, build up their confidence, and then bring—I call this the escalator property, or the escalator principle—we want to make sure that we’re bringing students step-by-step to computer science, because if we just expect this child is an artist, they see themselves as an artist, that’s their persona. If we just expect them to flock to computer science later in life, that’s a huge missed opportunity. If we can start bringing computer science to them, they don’t have to change their whole persona to believe they belong. They don’t have to say, “Oh, maybe I’m not an artist anymore. Maybe I’m a computer scientist, and therefore I’ll sign up for this class.” They can say, “Oh, I’m an artist, and we used these tools as part of my art class. These are helpful for an artist. I am still an artist, and I need computer science. I am still a musician, and I need computer science.” And then that way, everybody can feel like they belong. They don’t only have to be the students who have self-selected and come around to this idea of, “Oh, I guess I’m a computer scientist, or I guess I’m a geek.” They can maintain who they are and still believe that they belong, and that’s what this book is trying to get across. The idea that this is our responsibility as educators: to help make sure all students understand the importance of learning how to do this, for whatever they want to do, and that’s why I wrote the book.

Rena Clark 36:25
I love that, and it really touches kind of all areas. Maybe we can throw out some tools here in our toolkit that maybe some teachers could use to help them on that journey.

Transition Music 36:38
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Rena Clark 36:50
So who wants to jump into the toolkit?

Winston Benjamin 36:53
I’ll jump in. Since I’m the voice of the “Oh, I don’t really know what I don’t know,” you can always check out previous episodes of Unpacking Education, where we talk about how to use tech tools in your classrooms, thinking about helping you support computer science and computer science thinking in the classroom. So just look back in and walk on the journey as we help you take these journeys. So check out our past episodes.

Rena Clark 37:20
All right. Paul?

Paul Beckermann 37:23
There’s actually a website for CSEdWeek, so I’d encourage our listeners to check out CSEdweek.org, and on that website, there’s all kinds of great resources. One that I really like is a poster collection of CS Heroes, and there’s some lessons that go with that. So that’s kind of an example of one of those offline activities if you don’t want to actually have your kids code if you’re not quite ready for that. This is a way to introduce them to some of the heroes in computer science and start having them connect to their real world.

Rena Clark 37:57
And I think we’ve already mentioned the Hourofcode.com page, and then we have the MakeCode, or Arcade Make Code. And so Kiki, do you have anything else to throw in here to our toolkit?

Kiki Prottsman 38:08
You know, if you’ve got access to a microbit, microbits are also a really fun way to get into computer science. It’s just something that is quick. It’s really easy to learn. But man, when students make things with their hands and they’re physical and they have lights or sound or things like that, it’s a whole different level of understanding. So, so yeah, that’s mine.

Rena Clark 38:35
I love that.

Winston Benjamin 38:36
I hear that. Well, now it’s time for that one thing.

Transition Music 38:41
It’s time for that one thing. One thing. One thing. It’s time for that one thing. It’s that one thing.

Winston Benjamin 38:51
What’s the last thing that’s roaming around in your brain and making you think? Paul? Rena? What’s the one thing?

Paul Beckermann 38:59
“And.” It really sticks out when Kiki said you don’t have to just be a computer scientist or just be a musician or just be an artist. And I hate the word just, but we can be this and this. We can join things together and bring computer science into the things that we already love. There’s not a limit on how many things we can get excited about. So I love the word, “And.”

Rena Clark 39:27
I like that. Well, I’m going to use your word “just” play. But I really enjoy the idea of play with it yourself. You got me started. Like, ooh, this would be a great PD series, and just have teachers have time to play and make a game for their class, rather than spending time stressing about some of the other things. And I think how fun that could be for them, an enjoyable experience and transferable, and thinking about what did you learn through the process, and what would that be like for students too, when they kind of just are playing. So I love that. Just play with it. Make a game.

Winston Benjamin 40:04
And for me, I think it’s for teachers. Just try it yourself. You ain’t got to be an expert or bring in anything into the classroom yet. Get funky with it. Try it for yourself. Enjoy it. Sprinkle it on your own ice cream, like Rena said. You know what I mean? And then figure out how to sprinkle that to your kids. So, I think that’s a thing that I’m thinking about.

Paul Beckermann 40:27
You’re back to the glam cakes.

Rena Clark 40:31
Well, we went to ice cream. We got to have ice cream, then we get cake.

Kiki Prottsman 40:34
Yeah, I like that, too. Glam up your own ice cream before you try to glam up someone else’s.

Rena Clark 40:41
Before you go into the cake business.

Kiki Prottsman 40:45
I want to add a one thing too that goes back to when you were talking about the sprinkles in the beginning, and how Winston was talking about having that educator who made him love the subject because it wasn’t the focus on the details, the things that most people are going to test you on. It was on really the experience behind it and bringing out that passion. And I just, I love that idea that not everything has to be about the final exam and the assessment, keeping in mind that in the end, these are your young minds that you’re trying to inspire. And just having those moments where we forget about all that. Let’s just be playful with this and realize that we can love it and it can serve us well, whether or not we’re ever tested on it. That that was my one thing.

Paul Beckermann 41:39
Awesome. And we are really grateful that you were willing and took some time to join us again today, Kiki. Thanks for being here.

Kiki Prottsman 41:47
Always. Anytime.

Paul Beckermann 41:49
And this has kind of become a tradition, but when we have Kiki on for CSEdWeek, we have to play this little jingle.

Paul’s Christmas Jingle 42:12
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. CSEdWeek. We’re coding. Those files we’re downloading. It brings us great cheer. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. CSEdWeek. We really do love computer science.

Rena Clark 42:30
Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 42:39
We invite you to visit us at AvidOpenAccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 42:54
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 42:59
And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 43:02
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 43:04
You make a difference.