Four sessions up for today.

First one "Certified to Rock: Cleveland's Journey in CS Teacher Prep." Basically a discussion of the pathways for teachers to become CS certified in Cleveland. It wasn't a crowded session and most of the attendees were affiliated with Cleveland's certification programs in one way or another. Then there were a handful of people like me from assorted locations who wanted to hear more. I mention this not as a criticism but to wonder about the composition of conference attendees. It would make sense that most teachers in Ohio would already know this info and it probably wouldn't be of interest to teachers in other states. That would leave people in higher ed, advocacy, or government who might be working on certification or teacher training in their own states. The fact that this wasn't a super crowded session as compared to the direct teaching related sessions is probably a good thing.

The speakers took us through their journey starting in 2014 citing the same reasons as most other states for pushing CS education. They ended up with three pathways. An endorsement which is composed of 6 courses, a PD model and what they called advanced training. I was left wondering if both the PD model, which I think is woefully insufficient is still used now that the endorsement exists and wasn't clear as to what the "advanced training" entailed.

As to the 6 course endorsement. It sounded similar, at least in spirit to what I designed for Hunter College's Advanced Certificate program. They said that programs had to cover both CS content and pedagogy but didn't share details. Their program, like mine was all remote - something that I don't think is ideal for teacher prep but when you have to accommodate teachers all across the state from one location, there really isn't any other choice. I also left feeling that just like in NY, some Ohio institution could offer a really awesome 6 course sequence while another could create 6 joke courses, focus on their state's content exam, and call it a day.

The session also featured teachers who have completed certification sharing some of their work.

All in all, an interesting session for me. I had a few questions afterwards but I was able to find out some more information as the speakers had a booth in the exhibit hall.

For a future conference, an interesting session might be to have four representatives from four different states compare and contrast requirements and offerings.

Next up was "Charting the Course: Building Data Literacy and Data Science Learning Progressions" run by Tiffany Davis, Chris Orban, Jake Koressel, and Mahmoud Harding.

For my money this was the session of the day.

The lead question was "What should students know about data science?"

Some of the things that were brought up was how that in some locations data literacy is already in math and science standards. Also challenges like that in Ohio you can only teach a course in data science if you're a math teacher, other teachers can only integrate data science into other classes.

Also, as part of the discussion, Jake Koressel spoke on data science, data literacy and the CSTA standards, currently under revision.

What made the session so compelling was how it was run. During part of the session, run by Mahmoud Harding, there were cards on each table with various aspects of data science and data literacy. At the tables we discussed what aspects were most important and why.

This lead to a discussion of what was important for all students vs what was important for a student using data science in a career.

The discussion was rich and valuable. At one point, at my table, we were discussing fundamental skills. One person at the table was pushing story telling - something that is indeed important since at the end of the day, it's the story that wins support. I pushed back that having a data BS detector was more fundamental since story telling can be quite convincing yet devoid of facts.

I can't speak to all tables but the table I was at had healthy respectful disagreement, compromise and resolution.

Most importantly, I think most of the attendees left the room thinking about the issues.

Another highlight of the session was that after knowing him online for years, I was finally able to meet Chris Orban in person. Same for another couple of people at the session.

Third session wasn't really for me. The title was "Faith-based and community partnerships to broaden stem access for Youth." I was curious about this session for two reasons.

One, if it was an inappropriate session (it wasn't). I was turned off by the listing of a BOF at SIGCSE. It was titled "All Scripture is Useful for Teaching: CS Education through a Christian Worldview." It was a BOF specifically advertised "for Christians at SIGCSE…" Now, I wasn't actually against the session and considered going to it. I was turned off because right prior to SIGCSE there was a big todo about some sessions being rejected because they weren't inclusive or the language in their description wasn't inclusive. Using the language "for Christians at SIGCSE" to describe who the session was for is certainly not inclusive.

Anyway, that was SIGCSE. Part of me was wondering if this session would be similar.

On the other hand, I figured it would more likely be something interesting and useful, something like "hey, you don't have an after school program, here's how you can partner with your Church, Synagogue, or Mosque to do some cool stuff for your kids and your community."

So, the session was more on the later but was really more of a report on the partnerships that a group at Texas State set up. I didn't feel that I walked away with any actionable advice.

For the last session of the day, I attended "Handy 'back pocket code' and code explanations for APCSA" run by Colleen Lewis and Maria Camarena.

Since I'm not teaching APCS and won't be in the future, I knew that there would be nothing useful for me personally at this session. I also knew that Colleen runs a great session so it would be fun. Also, Colleen made a throw away remark that I thought was really interesting and will likely spawn its own blog post after I'm done with the CSTA posts.

The gist was using the idea of literate programming - that is code surrounded by extensive commenting. Here's an example: link. What was interesting was that different teachers, some who've used the idea and some who didn't had very different takes on how, when, and why use them. Some thought that the annotations could be too busy but felt that annotated snippets could be a great resource for review and reference. Others liked them later in the course when the annotations were more targeted. Still others liked the idea from the get go.

I loved it. I'm a big proponent for teachers having a large tool kit of techniques and pulling them out and using them, customized, as needed. This was just that.

As I said, nothing for me personally as a retired teacher but fun, informative, and I'm betting pretty useful for attendees still teaching CS.

So, that was day 2.

Still to come - day 3, the exhibit hall and hallway track, the reception and party, and a bit on Cleveland.