High Technology for High Needs Students: A year of programming in the Bronx - Meg Winston Ray

A programmer and educator will talk about effective collaboration for secondary computer science education using Python. Meg Winston Ray is a teacher at Bronx Compass High School. Errol King is the creator of Beta the Game. They worked together to teach programming concepts to 9th grade students over the past school year.

Transcript

1. High Technology for High Needs Students: A year of programming in the Bronx
2. Errol King CEO, Hidden Level Games Educator | Developer @errolking Meg Winston Ray Teacher, Bronx Compass HS Educator | Curriculum Developer @teach_bx_cs
3. Bronx Compass • Real-world Learning • Student interest driven • Seen as partners in learning • DOE Software Engineering Pilot
4. The Students • 12 Students • Interest based group • Video games & coding
5. Hidden Level Games Hidden Level Games is an indie game company focused on developing digital experiences that empower gamers to become creators.
6. Intro to Coding • Intro to CS class ◦ Building interest ◦ Game design theme ◦ Introducing Python
7. Game Development with Beta • Real-world Discussions • Development Cycles
8. Arcade Event
9. Findings Meg’s • Development theory vs practice ◦ smaller cycles • Exploration vs Lecture • Motivation to work Errol’s • Mindful of pipeline ◦ mental models • Cooperative Learning ◦ Using the outliers • Soft Structured Class
10. Educator Problems • Demonstration of Success • Content & Training • Real-World Connections • Pedagogy Awareness • Meaningful and accessible feedback from tools • Context is not always a formal CS environment ( collaboration ) Developer Problems
11. Mini-hackathon! How can we make computer programming accessible, engaging and useful to all students? http://bit.ly/1vUt920
12. Presentations
13. Q&A