Computer Science as a Leaving Cert Subject

Computer Science for Leaving Cert students is finally here! Students from 40 schools across Ireland will be the first to take part in the pilot Computer Science Leaving Certificate curriculum, due to be examined for the first time in 2020. 

The program will be the first of its kind, allowing students to learn computational thinking, to read and write in various computer languages, to design web pages, animations and games, and to learn about the role of technology in society. 

In making the announcement, Minister for Education Richard Burton commented that  “this is a very exciting time for education in Ireland. There is a digital revolution taking place which is having a transformative effect on our economy, workplace, and lifestyle.

“The introduction of this new subject will teach our young people flexible, solution orientated thinking. It will teach them to be creative, adaptable learners”.

Having engaged with the Department of Education during consultation events last year, we are extremely excited to be seeing the work done by all those involved coming to fruition. We’re looking forward in particular to hearing from our colleagues in the 40 pilot schools who are already hard at work preparing to deliver the new course. 

For our part, we look forward to getting involved more directly in the wider rollout in 2020, and look forward to adding Leaving Cert Computer Science classes to our growing roster of evening, weekend and in-school coding and technology classes.

As always, our goal in all of this is to introduce kids to the endless possibilities of a life of IT literacy. Not only are coding and advanced IT literacy growing necessities for professional careers, but they are also a deeply fun and satisfying set of skills to develop. The wider integration of these skills within the context of mainstream schooling represents part of a hugely positive shift for future generations. Indeed, this announcement is a timely and vital support for Ireland’s position as the prominent technology hub in Europe, a position which has already earned us huge economic windfalls through the presence of major multinationals such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook.

While the overall thrust of this announcement is hugely positive, there are challenges to be overcome yet. Resourcing schools and teachers to keep at the forefront of technological advancements will be a major challenge for the Department of Education, while sourcing appropriately skilled teachers in the first place will not be easy.

Another concern which has surfaced is around the possibility that this intervention could do more harm than good when it comes to driving more students to study computer science at third level. This has been the experience in other countries, and is a concern which we shouldn’t dismiss lightly. Dr Mike Brady, the Director of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning in Trinity’s School of Computer Science and Statistics, expressed fears to the college’s University Times newspaper that the subject would become a prerequisite for college-level courses. “I would really dislike a situation where we were turning away really good students who didn’t do computer science. Someone with very good maths or physics or numeracy in general who, for one reason or another, perhaps because it wasn’t available, didn’t choose computer science.” 

While we still await the publication of the finalised curriculum, there is much to be excited about. This announcement marks the latest step in a long-awaited development in Ireland’s education system, and we look forward to seeing where it brings us next.

Happy coding!
 

Leaving Cert Computer Science - One Step Closer

It's been a long time coming, but with the publication by the NCCA earlier this month of a draft curriculum (PDF) it seems as if Leaving Certificate Computer Science might finally be close to becoming a reality. The current "fast track" timetable puts the first exam appearance by the subject in June 2020, meaning it will be available for those entering 4th year this coming September (or those sitting the Junior Cert this coming June and skipping Transition Year). 

From our perspective, there's a lot to like about the proposal. The focus on practical applications is promising, and the 30% of marks allocated to coursework seems appropriate. There appears to be plenty of technical depth in the proposed curriculum, including study of CPU hardware, character sets, algorithmic complexity and sorting and searching algorithms. The course also includes a broader study of computers' impact on society, including sustainable development (this last part seems a little incongruous at first, but as part of a broader approach to including sustainability in all curricular strands it makes perfect sense).

There are also some areas we believe can be improved or need further work. Two in particular jump out at us from this draft of the curriculum proposal. The first is the heavy reliance on group work, which forms the backbone of the practical portion of the curriculum. It is envisaged that in this portion of the course “[s]tudents assume different responsibilities in each project, rotating between the roles of team leader, project manager, communications manager, and programmer”.

There are of course real benefits to group work, but it is our opinion that in the context of introducing computer programming to students for the first time it is counterproductive to give some students an “opt-out” from the coding portion of the assignment. Indeed it appears from the description that only a quarter of students will actually be coding during each 6 week project block. Even with rotation between the roles for each project, it is not at all clear to us that this approach will yield better educational outcomes than individual projects, and certainly not when that is measured in terms of computer science learning outcomes.

The second area in need of attention is not one which is within the scope of this recently published document, but it is an area which will ultimately the determine the success or otherwise of this initiative, and that is the actual delivery of this curriculum. It has long been our concern, backed by frequent communication with a wide range of schools, that most principals intend to either a) not offer the course at all, or b) press their physics/maths/technology teacher into service as a computer science educator. It is our strong view that neither solution is satisfactory.

The latter in particular could do serious damage to the reputation of the course, resulting in teachers delivering the course who, through no fault of their own, are neither skilled nor qualified to do so, and learning outcomes suffering accordingly.

We look forward to hearing what proposals will be brought forward to address this, and engaging with the NCCA and the Department of Education in developing solutions to address this problem.

Overall, with those small caveats out of the way, we are beyond excited that this step has finally been taken. It represents the culmination of literally decades of lobbying effort (for which the lobbyists in question are owed a debt of gratitude from us all), and a major leap forward for our education system. Getting student studying computer science at Leaving Cert level will inevitably broaden the range of individuals applying to proceed to third level education, as well as those who carry the skills of computer science into a wide range of other career tracks.

We look forward to being part of this bold new frontier in Irish education.

New Grading System at the Academy of Code

Grading students at the Academy of Code has always been something we've tried hard to get right, and generally it's been something we've struggled with. The nature of coding is that the material will immediately click with some students, while others will need more time to engage with it before they are ready to move on to the next concept. Over the course a single term this can mean vast gulfs emerging even within a class of the same age group, never mind one with a 3 or 4 year age spread (as many of our classes have).

In an effort to alleviate the issues this causes (boredom on one side, and frustration on the other) we generally allow a certain amount of leeway for students to progress at their own pace. This works well, and allows many students to thrive, but something we've heard from many parents is that they would like some sort progression for students, so that they always have something to work towards. 

That's why we've introduced our new grading system, as of the start of our summer camps this year. Pictured above are two returning students, who received beginners (white), junior grade I (red) and junior grade II (yellow) bands at the end of their week with us this summer.

This also coincides with our adoption of class booklets (previously we distributed lessons one at a time, as the previous lesson was completed - this was both inconvenient for students, who were limited in the work they could do at home, and also a nuisance for us, as it meant keeping a huge stack of paper on hand, and transporting it to each class!). Class booklets have a progression chart on the back, to be dated and signed by teachers as each lesson is completed and checked. 

For later grades there will also be more onerous grading requirements - the unassisted completion of some significant piece of coding, demonstrating understanding/mastery of specific areas of coding.

We're excited about this, as it will give students a clear, multi-year path to developing their coding expertise with the Academy of Code. Students seem excited too (although perhaps as much for the new fashion accessories and bragging rights as anything else!)

We will have more information about these grades in the coming weeks and months, especially the later grades which will require much more commitment to reach than the first few, and which may also include developing websites, working on hardware (arduino/picaxe/raspberry pi/lego mindstorms), and much more besides. Watch this space!

Gender Balance and Diversity at the Academy of Code

Diversity in IT is tricky. Google make a big deal of their commitment to equality of all types. So do Microsoft (in spite of the odd enormous misstep). Tech companies like Pinterest have been very public about their attempts to improve diversity. Closer to home, there are several women only scholarships available to women entering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) career paths.

In spite of all this, a survey of top tech companies show that tech roles in Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter are filled by only 10-20% female employees.

And we shouldn't be too smug at the Academy of Code either. We have 7 employees, and only 1 female (numbers fans will note that that places us right in the middle of that 10-20% range).

While it's hard to say what exactly we can do to help this situation, we have started by making some efforts over the best six months to ensure that our advertising is more gender neutral. (Mostly this has meant ensuring that pictures used totally misrepresent the actual gender ratios at our courses - we reckon Machiavelli did make some good points...).

But hey, it's worked! At least it's moved things in the right direction (probably - causation is hard to firmly establish). Summer camp aside (and we expect the balance on summer camps is inherently more balanced - we'll know more once numbers for this summer's camps are available), we improved from a steady 16% girls up to 21% in like-for-like classes this term. Adding some girls-only classes (after-school in the Teresian School) has pushed that number up to 29% female. Hopefully our summer camp this year will show another solid step closer to gender parity.

Which of course raises the question - is gender parity the goal? Well, no actually. Not for us. Our goal is to get to a point where gender balance becomes a non-issue. Roughly speaking, this is regarded as being somewhere around a third. In a class of 20, on average you need around 7 girls for them to not be at risk of feeling like interlopers in a class for boys, and that's where we want to be. Whatever the numbers that eventually go on to careers in IT, we think it is a crying shame that anyone would be turned off a potentially amazing career purely because of their gender.

So: here are our numbers. We're working on them. Long term we want to be part of a broader solution, but short term we just want to be part of the conservation. If we can keep our own numbers going the right direction, and get at least some of our female students excited about a career in IT that's a good start. We also hope this might be something of a wake up call for parents. Around three quarters of our students are in primary school. Whatever about industry trends at large, at that age parents are still essentially calling the shots on extra curriculars. So parents - why is it sons and not daughters you're sending us?? If you have any thoughts on what more we can do, we're always delighted to hear from you. In the meantime, we're going to keep working on it. Hopefully we will contribute to a very different kind of IT environment over the coming years.

(Gender diversity is not, of course, the only kind of diversity - we will return to this subject again!)

A Long 16 Months

The class diary was an experiment which, in spite of its success, we put to one side after week 12 of our Autumn 2014 term. It's been gathering dust there ever since. The diary itself was quite well received, with plenty of parents happy to get an insight into what was happening in class, but putting it together became more of a distraction than it was deemed to be worth. New curriculum development took over, as did recruitment, logistics, and all of the other things that go into bringing each Academy of Code term together.

16 months has left a lot of updates unpublished, and a lot has happened at the Academy of Code in meantime. Time for an update, it seems!

Three founders have become two, as Simon has moved on to other projects (and is greatly missed, by staff and students alike). In his place we have added David, Robert, Sarah and Sid, not to mention Daire, who has been in and around the Academy since that first set of summer camps - not directly filling Simon's shoes, perhaps, but doing a fantastic job in their own rights.

We've also added some new students. Quite a few new students, in fact. In Autumn 2014 we had only a little over 20 young coders in our charge. As of April 2016, that number is well over 200.

We've added locations - first the Teresian School in Donnybrook, for after-school classes, now St. Paul's Raheny, for summer camps. Several more schools are also in the mix for further expansion in 2016.

Most importantly, we have been able to maintain (and even increase) the standards which we set down on day one, way back in early Spring of 2014.

As we get busier we find there is more frequent and more interesting news to share, not to mention more exciting screenshots and videos we can pull from our classes to share. All that and more in the coming months - stay tuned!

(Oh, and the summer camp 2016 registration page is now live - we sold out a class earlier this year in less than 60 minutes, so if you have a date in mind, don't delay!)