Tech EDGE: CS4NE with Special Guest, Robert Dyer

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11/04/2024 Added

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CS4NE, Computer Science for Nebraska - with Special Guest, Robert Dyer. University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Technology (Tech) Education In Digital and Global Environments (EDGE) Innovation in Teacher Education College of Education and Human Sciences | Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education

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[00:00:00.071](upbeat music)
[00:00:06.390]Hi, and welcome to CS4NE
[00:00:09.630]and today, we're talking about Hour of Code.
[00:00:11.760]So can you tell us a little bit about Hour of Code?
[00:00:13.830]Yeah, so, Hour of Code is just a big worldwide phenomenon
[00:00:19.350]or activity that classrooms can do
[00:00:22.290]and even not classrooms-
[00:00:23.940]Mm-hmm. But to just get students
[00:00:25.890]exposed to computer science and coding.
[00:00:28.500]And so, there's lots of fun opportunities that you can do
[00:00:31.320]that are just short activities that you can involve,
[00:00:34.980]do with any classroom.
[00:00:36.510]And Hour of Code was started by code.org.
[00:00:38.850]I think it's important.
[00:00:40.020]Yes. Yeah, I'm the regional
[00:00:41.070]partner for code.org, so I do have to mention that,
[00:00:43.530]but it's delightful.
[00:00:45.120]What they do is, they design a special activity every year,
[00:00:48.630]although you can also access the previous year's activities,
[00:00:51.990]and the idea is really, as you just said,
[00:00:54.660]introduce kids even if there's no computer science
[00:00:57.740]in the school, just give them a taste,
[00:00:59.850]give teachers a taste,
[00:01:01.050]and that's really important. Yes.
[00:01:02.790]Then see how it goes, how engaged students are,
[00:01:06.570]and then think about what might be the next steps,
[00:01:09.150]because 15 years after we started Hour of Code,
[00:01:13.110]we're, like, looking for what's next
[00:01:16.500]and it's not enough just to do an hour,
[00:01:18.180]but it's a great way to start.
[00:01:19.950]Yeah. And we have one here
[00:01:22.020]in Lincoln, so we're gonna talk a little bit about that
[00:01:25.950]with Robert who's going to be here momentarily.
[00:01:29.490]But I do want to say there's a great tradition
[00:01:33.240]in Lincoln doing it both in classrooms
[00:01:36.480]and outside of classrooms.
[00:01:37.900]Yeah. And it's a great moment
[00:01:41.790]for parents to see how kids do that
[00:01:44.190]and that's why we love the community events.
[00:01:46.080]But for teachers, obviously, the advantage is,
[00:01:48.330]the teachers get to do that as well.
[00:01:50.250]So it doesn't replace doing computer science in schools-
[00:01:53.850]No.
[00:01:54.810]In any way, shape, or form,
[00:01:56.460]but it does do an introduction, it does help explain
[00:01:59.940]to parents a little bit what's going on.
[00:02:02.160]So, let's talk to Robert.
[00:02:05.370]So, Robert, can you tell us a little bit about yourself
[00:02:07.440]and your role at UNL?
[00:02:08.760]Sure.
[00:02:09.930]So, I'm currently an assistant professor.
[00:02:11.760]This is my fifth year here at UNL.
[00:02:14.220]Before coming here, I was actually an assistant professor
[00:02:16.170]at a university called Bowling Green State,
[00:02:17.790]which is over by Toledo. Oh, okay.
[00:02:19.860]I was there for about six years, I believe.
[00:02:22.980]Here and there, I guess, I was essentially doing
[00:02:25.950]software engineering research.
[00:02:27.060]And so, here, I generally teach kind
[00:02:29.100]of the lower level software engineering classes
[00:02:31.140]as well as some of the upper level ones as well.
[00:02:32.950]Awesome, awesome.
[00:02:34.890]So what initially sparked your interest
[00:02:36.540]in computer science education?
[00:02:38.430]Well, so, my path to computer science in general started
[00:02:42.000]when I was, I think, in middle school
[00:02:43.890]and I was kinda very fortunate.
[00:02:45.600]My dad had the opportunity to purchase,
[00:02:48.240]like, used computers from his work.
[00:02:49.860]So he bought one and brought it home
[00:02:51.120]and he had no clue what to do with it.
[00:02:52.532](Kimberly chuckles) He gave it to me.
[00:02:53.970]I didn't know what to do with it.
[00:02:54.930]And so, you know, I was very curious,
[00:02:56.940]so I just started playing with it
[00:02:58.440]and trying to figure out what to do.
[00:02:59.610]And I also had an aunt that worked at Microsoft.
[00:03:01.950]Oh. And so, she was not
[00:03:03.720]a technical person.
[00:03:05.130]She managed real estate,
[00:03:06.630]but she was able to buy all of their software for like $5.
[00:03:09.944]Nice. So she bought pretty much
[00:03:11.040]everything they made and just shipped it to me and was like,
[00:03:13.657]"Here you go."
[00:03:15.300]So I spent a lot of time just kind a looking
[00:03:18.390]at the stuff that I had
[00:03:19.590]and trying to figure out what to do with it.
[00:03:21.570]And so, I really kinda had to self-learn
[00:03:23.970]and self-teach myself,
[00:03:25.590]and then eventually, you know, I got to school at Iowa State
[00:03:29.880]and realized that,
[00:03:31.297]"Okay, there's, you know, a little more
[00:03:33.060]to how you can learn this."
[00:03:34.560]Right? So it's not just you get something
[00:03:37.140]and just bang your head against it until you try
[00:03:38.760]to figure it out. (Kimberly laughs)
[00:03:39.593]Yeah. You know, there's a way
[00:03:40.620]to actually be taught it and learn how to do,
[00:03:42.930]you know, computer science.
[00:03:45.420]And so, really, you know, over the path of my undergrad,
[00:03:47.820]I got, you know, a lot of really good teachers
[00:03:50.220]and they kind of inspired me to start thinking
[00:03:52.230]about teaching computer science
[00:03:54.090]and that's why I wound up where I'm at essentially.
[00:03:56.430]That's awesome.
[00:03:57.480]All right
[00:03:58.800]So, what is Hour of Code,
[00:04:00.270]or in Computer Science, Education Week?
[00:04:02.670]So, CS Ed Week is really all about trying
[00:04:04.920]to teach computer science
[00:04:06.150]and get people involved in computer science.
[00:04:08.040]It's all about, you know, trying to enable teachers
[00:04:11.100]and really anybody that wants to teach computer science
[00:04:13.620]to be able to do that better,
[00:04:15.360]to encourage people to learn about computer science.
[00:04:18.120]The Hour of Code is kind of a related event to that.
[00:04:20.820]So the Hour of Code is really trying to get people
[00:04:23.160]to try computer science.
[00:04:25.080]And so, the idea is that they basically have a website
[00:04:27.960]and they've got a whole bunch of activities on there.
[00:04:30.060]You can go and you can sit down,
[00:04:31.440]and most activities are aimed
[00:04:32.520]to be done in about an hour, roughly.
[00:04:34.920]And they're really designed for kind of,
[00:04:36.810]you know, younger people.
[00:04:37.800]So, anywhere from kindergarten up to a high school age.
[00:04:41.040]And the idea is to really just get you in there
[00:04:42.750]and get something that's fun
[00:04:44.160]and kind of, you know, interesting,
[00:04:45.690]and get you doing something that's really computer science
[00:04:49.320]that feels more like a game in some sense.
[00:04:51.120]So a lot of these activities look and feel like a game,
[00:04:53.910]but underneath, you're actually learning
[00:04:55.380]these basic computer science techniques and...
[00:04:57.694]Yeah.
[00:04:58.527]So the idea is to get you exposed to computer science
[00:05:00.060]and kind of see what you can do with it
[00:05:01.470]and try to get you, you know, encouraged
[00:05:02.970]and interested in it so that hopefully, eventually,
[00:05:05.460]you would kind of continue on with it
[00:05:06.660]and want to do it, you know, when you kind of get
[00:05:08.640]to college and things like that.
[00:05:09.930]Absolutely, yeah.
[00:05:11.820]So what's the goal of computer science, and Education Week,
[00:05:15.930]and Hour of Code here at UNL?
[00:05:18.870]So, I think specifically for us,
[00:05:20.430]we're really concerned about trying to get, you know,
[00:05:23.010]the pipeline of students more diversified.
[00:05:26.550]So we have a lot of students in computer science.
[00:05:28.860]We can always have more, obviously,
[00:05:30.390]but, you know, our biggest concern right now
[00:05:33.000]is really in terms of diversity.
[00:05:34.860]If you look at, like, the gender diversity,
[00:05:36.780]it's not as diverse as it probably should be, right?
[00:05:39.270]So if you look at the population in Nebraska,
[00:05:41.250]it's pretty close to 50 50 split.
[00:05:43.260]If you look at the population of our students,
[00:05:44.940]it's nowhere near that.
[00:05:46.098]Yeah.
[00:05:46.931]It's definitely gotten better over the years, right?
[00:05:48.630]So before I got here, I think it was down as low
[00:05:51.480]as, like, 10% of our students were female.
[00:05:53.003]Oh, wow.
[00:05:53.836]Now, I think we're up to 20, 22% or something,
[00:05:55.860]so we're improving it. Yeah.
[00:05:57.150]But our goal is to try to get it up
[00:05:58.260]so that it's closer to, you know, parity
[00:05:59.970]and kind of represents the population of Nebraska.
[00:06:03.030]And so, the easiest way,
[00:06:05.460]or, well, it's not really that easy,
[00:06:07.140]but the way we're trying to do that
[00:06:08.370]is to really just build up the pipeline
[00:06:09.990]of students that come in.
[00:06:11.400]So if we can go down to, you know, middle schoolers
[00:06:13.800]or even down to elementary kids and just encourage them
[00:06:17.400]and show them, you know,
[00:06:18.233]"Hey, this is what computer science is, you can do this."
[00:06:20.580]Right? Yeah.
[00:06:21.413]"It's fun, it's interesting."
[00:06:22.890]And, really, if you have any kind of anything
[00:06:25.260]you're really interested in,
[00:06:26.460]you can probably pair that with computer science
[00:06:28.170]and do both of them at the same time.
[00:06:29.880]Yeah. And if we can get
[00:06:30.713]these people to kind of, you know, look at this
[00:06:32.610]and get interested in it, then ideally, we'll have more
[00:06:35.550]and more people applying to the program in the future.
[00:06:37.560]And so then hopefully, we'll kinda get to, you know,
[00:06:39.930]where it's a little more kind of a balanced population
[00:06:42.240]of our students.
[00:06:43.710]That's awesome.
[00:06:44.580]Yeah, good.
[00:06:46.170]Who else's invited to participate
[00:06:48.030]in this event here at Lincoln?
[00:06:50.460]Everybody.
[00:06:51.390](laughs) Perfect.
[00:06:52.223]Everybody's invited.
[00:06:53.100]So, the event really honestly is open to the public, right?
[00:06:56.370]Anybody can come to it.
[00:06:57.660]It's really designed, for the most part,
[00:06:59.730]for kind of elementary and middle school kids,
[00:07:01.920]but that said, you know, all of these kids are coming in,
[00:07:04.350]they're bringing their parents with them,
[00:07:05.340]and, you know, over the couple years
[00:07:07.290]that I've done this event,
[00:07:08.580]I've seen that the parents are having
[00:07:09.780]just as much fun as this, the students.
[00:07:11.460]That's awesome. Right?
[00:07:12.480]Yeah. And so, it's really designed
[00:07:13.530]to get everybody encouraged and we really do want
[00:07:15.690]to get the parents on board with this as well,
[00:07:17.700]not just the students,
[00:07:18.990]because then if the students have a little bit
[00:07:20.670]of an interest, if the parents also can see that
[00:07:23.130]and understand what's going on, they can help nurture that
[00:07:25.860]and kind of keep them going on
[00:07:27.360]that path to computer science. Yeah.
[00:07:29.206]Absolutely.
[00:07:30.960]So, how can teachers get involved
[00:07:32.700]or support this Hour of Code?
[00:07:34.620]So, they can essentially run
[00:07:36.480]their own little Hour of Code events.
[00:07:38.010]So, if you go to the website,
[00:07:39.480]there is essentially a whole bunch of material
[00:07:42.000]to explain how you set up your own events.
[00:07:44.460]It doesn't have to be open to the public.
[00:07:45.810]If you wanna just do a small event
[00:07:47.250]for, like, your own students, you can do that as well.
[00:07:49.710]And, really, the idea is, you give kind
[00:07:51.570]of a quick introduction to explain what they're doing,
[00:07:53.670]you pick one or two activities,
[00:07:55.050]and then you just help guide those kids through those events
[00:07:57.720]and through those activities.
[00:07:58.950]So, it's actually really easy for anybody,
[00:08:01.560]even if you don't have a lot of computer science background,
[00:08:03.840]anybody can really run an Hour of Code event.
[00:08:06.150]That's awesome.
[00:08:07.050]Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:08:08.670]We really appreciate it.
[00:08:09.840]All right, thank you very much.
[00:08:11.670]Wow, that was a great interview.
[00:08:14.250]I really enjoyed learning
[00:08:15.450]about all the activities that UNL does.
[00:08:17.640]I've never gotten the opportunity to attend.
[00:08:19.950]So, it sounds like it's gonna be a whole lot of fun.
[00:08:21.900]I hope you're coming.
[00:08:23.280]And I think what is really special is that combination
[00:08:27.030]of, we've got the universities,
[00:08:29.400]we've got after school clubs, like Girls Who Code.
[00:08:34.170]We've got lots of businesses coming
[00:08:36.690]and showing what they're doing.
[00:08:37.860]So we've got drones and robots,
[00:08:40.110]and the Hour of Code activities on computers,
[00:08:44.460]and all of this kind of comes together,
[00:08:47.340]and kids are engaged over time.
[00:08:50.040]So, please talk to your students, talk to parents,
[00:08:54.360]send a message, and if they're anywhere in the Lincoln area,
[00:08:59.250]they can come.
[00:09:00.540]And we'll see you next time on CS4NE.
[00:09:04.016](upbeat music ending)

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Tech EDGE: CS4NE with Special Guest, Robert Dyer

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