Computer Science Connections: An Interview with Susan Evans of Technology Access Foundation
Susan Evans is a teacher and curriculum developer at the Technology Access Foundation in Seattle, Washington – and she is passionate about engaging people in computer science across multiple contexts. Designing lesson plans for elementary STEM programs, teaching high school CS courses, hosting professional development, and conducting research pilot studies, she helps people of all ages to cultivate connections with CS, by both exploring its personal relevance, and experiencing its broader implications. “The whole goal is to bring STEM to students that might not have otherwise had such an experience.” On the research side, Susan is a member of the CS Principles project, organized by the College Board and the National Science Foundation (NSF), “to create a curriculum for a new high school AP course that is appropriate for general students.” Susan’s involvement includes collaboratively teaching a pilot CS course at the University of Washington this year. With such breadth of experience, Susan has plenty of ideas and teaching strategies to share. Here are just three approaches from Susan that the ScratchEd Team chose to highlight.
Strategy #1: Code Diving
Instead of direct instruction, Susan has been tinkering with a reverse approach to project creation that focuses on CS topics and gets students in her TechStart program to dive right into examining code. “Trying to figure out how to connect intro CS has been kind of interesting. Last year, they had a cool project, but the CS connections weren’t made, and they didn’t learn the more challenging, problem-solving, computer science-y things. I tried something new this year. The first project was a ton of Scratch code and they had to go in and edit something really small to make it their own. I was really excited about this because in the past, I’ve gotten stuck in the details of, ‘You have to learn this, and then this, and then you can do this big project.’ This way, we get students excited from the beginning rather than waiting to get excited.”
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Strategy #2: Collab Challenge
Through the Scratch Collab Challenge, Susan helped students to connect computation with community. Launched by the Scratch Team in February 2011 as a means for stimulating collaborative projects, the challenge invited Scratchers to make a team project that creatively incorporates three sprites chosen by the Scratch Team. Submissions from Scratchers all over the world, including Susan’s students, were uploaded to the Collab Challenge Gallery on the Scratch website. The challenge promotes teamwork, project sharing, remix culture, and feedback. Halfway through the challenge, each project received feedback from members of the Scratch Team, and Susan’s students were surprised to experience their work being viewed and appreciated by a wider audience. “Some of my students were ecstatic that other people commented on their projects. ‘Look I have nine views! I’ve never had more than one!’ They were so excited.” Susan posted a video of her students explaining their project here.
Strategy #3: CS Trips
In her high school CS program, Quasar, Susan drives her students towards computer science, literally. “It’s nice because our non-profit has a van. We’ve done all sorts of trips. They went down to the University of Washington for Jeopardy. They showed the Jeopardy episodes with IBM’s Watson, with a big, huge audience. I’ve also taken them to two programming competitions, and we’re going to a third.” The field trips help Susan’s students appreciate real-world contexts of computing and envision future applications, “to see the connection to CS in any career that they take.”
