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Narratives and Pathways of Computing Educators

Teaching materials for CEOHP

To make this collection of interviews come alive for students, CEOHP has worked with a variety of educators to develop ideas for classroom activities, homework, and exam problems based on the interview materials.

We welcome suggestions of additions, either to these materials or of new activities to add to the list. We are striving to add the materials to a computer science education repository to provide a broader basis for the use of these materials. We will post more about this as the plan develops.

NOTE: These materials are currently still under review! We encourage feedback to help improve them.

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Essay questions

General description of the essay questions

We have developed a number of ideas for thought-provoking essay questions based on statements from interviews in the CEHOP collection.

Background for the essay questions

In an effort to get students to write across the curriculum, computer science teachers are required to give students essays to write as assessments. One or more questions from the referenced page could be given for one such assessment.

Materials for the essay questions

“Who Is” game with flash cards

General description of flash card game

This activity includes a set of “Guess Who” flashcards, each of which includes clues that lead to the identity of a Computing Educators inn the CEOHP collection. The cards can be used in several ways.

  • As a daily morning warm-up activity where students track daily winner(s) and are awarded a prize at the end of the week.
  • As a canned lesson plan that a substitute can carry out. Because the substitutes for CS teachers often do not know much about the subject, this activity can help the substitute have a successful class where the students are learning.
  • As the basis for having students create their own flashcards based on interviews in the CEOHP collection.
  • As a filler activity during holiday weeks or after completing an exam or other project.
  • As part of an introduction to computer science course for studying the lives notable figures in the industry.
  • In the Careers component of a course.

Background for flash card game

As an activity for advanced students or for interested instructors, use these guidelines to create additional cards. For each additional Computing Educator, select four clues using the following criteria:

  • Clue #1 — fairly general, but specific enough for a guesser to narrow the set of possibilities to two or possibly three educators. (e.g. where do they teach, a notable award they won)
  • Clue #2 — selected from interview excerpts
  • Clue #3 — mention a career goal or passion, or a significant contribution by that Computing Educator. (This information can be taken from the first few paragraphs of the interview overview page from the CEOHP collection.)
  • Clue #4 — something that is unique to this Computing Educator. In practice, this clue should confirm whatever guess a student has made.

The process of creating formatted flashcards can be using an Excel file that contains the data (name, URL, and clues) and a Word file that serves as the template for doing a printmerge. These instructions do not yet exist.

Materials for flash card game

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Jigsaw activity

General description of jigsaw activity

  • Students split into small groups (2-3 students per group)
  • Each group becomes an expert on one of the Computing Educators from the CEOHP collection
  • Each group views the documents and reads / listens to the interview and video clips for their Computing Educator
  • After reviewing the information, the group prepares a 2-3 minute presentation on their Computing Educator (for example using Microsoft PowerPoint) to help them summarize and share the information.

Background for jigsaw activity

A “jigsaw activity” is a teaching technique that divides a normal-sized class into groups of four to six students, each of which is given a list of subtopics to research. In each group, students are assigned a “specialty”, which they research apart from the jigsaw group in collaboration with the “experts” in the same specialty in the other jigsaw groups. Later, the jigsaw groups reconvene and teach one another about their specialties. The strategy encourages listening, engagement, interaction, peer teaching, and cooperation by giving each member of the group an essential part to play. Both individual and group accountability are built into the process.

Materials for jigsaw activity

Scavenger Hunt

General description of scavenger hunt

This activity was designed to introduce the CEOHP collection to participants at the 2011 ITiCSE conference in Darmstadt, Germany. It was tailored to recognize that several individuals from the CEOHP leadership group and many interviewees planned to attend the conference.

Materials for scavenger hunt

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