[Music] hello and welcome everyone to CS teaching talks my name is Emily tomford I use she her pronouns um I am a professor of Computer Sciences at reach University hi everybody my name is Monica Mill I use she her pronouns and I'm from The Institute for ADV in Computing education formerly known as CSD research.org well it's wonderful to be here Monica I'm so excited that we're able to finally go in and record this first podcast it's been a long time in the making yes it has been over a year now
yeah well so this is our first podcast episode of Cs teaching talks thank you all for being here we're going to be diving deep into the latest research in the field of Computer Science Education over the next few episodes in each one we're going to choose a specific specific theme and contextualize it within a recent research paper our discussions include teachers and curriculum developers and PD providers and sometimes even the authors of the paper and in each one we're going to end up with th
e big questions to consider and practical tips that you can immediately Implement into your classroom this is our first podcast today that's going to be the intro to our series I am so glad to be here with Monica and I want to turn it over to you first first of all there's so much to do on the path to CS for all on the path to Equitable and Universal CS education why are we focusing on Research so one of our three goals at CS research.org is to Center research on K12 CS education practitioners a
nd this does not imply a one-way Street often in the past that that has that that research is going to be uh created in some kind of lab somewhere and then teachers are told what to do best without research is really understanding the context of teachers so we really want to Center our research on the needs of K12 Educators including conducting research that meets their needs and the needs of their unique classrooms and students sharing research with teachers provides a window into Recent resear
ch findings as well as discussion groups themselves enable teachers to reflect on the findings within their context of the their classrooms and who their students are and then they can choose how they want to use those findings or maybe not because it isn't appropriate for their classrooms also we understand that K12 classrooms are the first dep for the next generation of coders designers and innovators so our goal is to really Empower you with the tools and knowledge to prepare your students fo
r success in the Ever Changing world and ever evolving world of computer science Emily tell us about how these podcasts came to be well this is a long time in the making we only really started to think about podcasts because we got so many requests for people who were unable to join our weekly discussion group and asking if we'd recorded the session we have so many people across the world over the last oh five years we've been doing the the discussion group in some form or another so many people
want to participate but don't have the time or have conflicts or you know don't feel like they would be included in a discussion like this so making the podcast and really kind of encapsulating what the takeaways from each research paper seem to be the natural progression can you talk a little bit more about the discussion groups and who can join yeah so the discussion group really grew out of my favorite part of grad school so I I had done my PhD in artificial intelligence and I loved when a c
ommunity of people especially a diverse Community coming from a lot of different perspectives both disciplinary and personal and you know work-wise came together to really de a paper or a finding or a theory within each of their contexts and I think it made the research really come to life for me and that was just you know in the context of AI but as I got into education and I was working um you know at Administration in county offices in school districts I kind of I brought that back I created
a small local group we met in person and just every week we would choose a paper and sit at a cafe and talk about it and as that grew over the years years and you know the pandemic pushed Us online we started finding opportunities to include more people to do it more often to widen the scope of our papers and so now it exists in the form of a fully open and everyone is welcome online discussion group we meet twice a week Tuesday 5 to 6 Pacific time Friday 4: to 5 Pacific time and everyone is wel
come to come that's whether you're any anywhere around the world whether you've read the paper or not whether you consider yourself a computer science education person or not all you need is interest and a willingness to ask questions because really that's all we do we we ask questions of the paper we interrogate the ideas and our practice and we don't always come to conclusions but I think there's value in the questioning great thanks and do you have to read the paper in advance no it is recomm
ended if you wish to come absolutely prepared to look at the paper but there's always people there who have not and we spend the first few minutes summarizing the paper and its findings to bring everyone up to speed I know reading an academic research paper is not everyone's cup of tea it's not what everyone prioritizes their time on so anyone who wants to come to the reading group we will include you and we will incorporate your ideas whether or not you have read the paper great thanks and why
podcasts I love a podcast because of how it opens up multitasking really teachers are busy and if our goal is to really get the most valuable conclusions from Research into the hands of teachers we've got to do that in multiple ways so coming to the discussion group is one of them but the podcast is kind of a condensed version of it like the greatest hits the the bits where we take out the things that weren't conclusive or that were off topic so it's like a condensed it's the best use of your ti
me and you can do it while running or washing the dishes or knitting or completing other tasks great so tell us a little bit about these first few podcasts the first few podcasts are great we've specifically focused on subject areas and Frameworks and formalisms that are specific to K5 teaching so we talk about levels of abstraction and how teachers can best be situated to communicate about Computing we talk about centering minoritized students making learning consequential we go into specific p
ractices like Parson's problems and talk about like how different pedagogical strategies can support the diversity of Learners we have in our room and I think it's really great because we get in people who are you know current teachers former teachers administrators PD providers curriculum developers researchers and kind of everyone from the community has a different perspective on it um and I like that we really get to chew on that and come out with you know whether or not the paper was useful
what we can take away from it great thank you and also a huge thank you to you for all the work you've done since 2018 on this this is really incredible as a volunteer just to come forward and and do these things to help support the community so five years definitely reflects a lot of time and dedication and thank you for that by the way these podcasts and the teacher practice briefs come from a partnership between reach University and csed research.org the podcasts and briefs are being piloted
by support from two grants a special projects Grant from the association of computing Machinery special interest group for Computer Science Education also known as ACM sigy and from Amazon future engineer well I'm excited for everyone to dive into the podcasts whether you are a seasoned computer science educator or you're just beginning your journey we are here at CS teaching talks to support you so our commitment is to nurture a strong community of passionate Educators who can learn from the la
test research and grow together so that means that everyone has something to learn so whether you have time to read the paper attend the discussion listen to the podcast or just glance over a practice brief everyone has something they can learn from I guess teaching habits die hard because that's us providing multiple means of Engagement so we'd love to hear from you any questions or feedback or ideas for future themes or how you integrate Research into your practice reach out to us we're at com
ms csed research.org that's comms with two M and we'd love to hear from you great thank you y and a big thank you to our wonderful research Apprentice Jordan Williamson and to you Monica our leader and founder for making this possible and to all of you the csed community are dedicated always curious teachers educ practitioners I'm so excited to get started so let's go learn [Music] something
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