Computer Science Education Week 2024
Every year since 2013, I’ve taken a week of vacation and spent that time volunteering in Loudoun County Public Schools for Computer Science Education Week. This event celebrates Grace Hopper’s Birthday, and, among other things, aims to give every student an hour of computer science awareness and education.
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I regularly volunteer in schools, but this week recharges my soul like no other “vacation” I’ve ever had. This year from December 9–15:
- I spent Monday at Kenneth Culbert Elementary School, teaching the Hour of Code curriculum, showing advanced students the basics of mechanical computation with a Turing Tumble, and teaching K-2 students basics of computational thinking / puzzle solving with Sphero Indi cars. I also read a group of students a children’s book I’ve written entitled “The Second Half of the Chessboard”, which teaches the idea of exponential growth to little kids. Thank you Principal Edwards, Mrs. Decker, and all of the K-5 teachers that rotated through our classroom. It warms my heart to still me an active member of the Culbert community almost a decade after my own children graduated.
- I spent Tuesday and Friday at Blue Ridge Middle School teaching 6th graders a couple of different subjects from my curriculum, including “How I Learn to Program by Typing in Computer Games”, and “How Computers Think: Three Maze Generating Algorithms”. I also spoke for the first time to a 7th/8th grade robotics class on “How Electricity Works” and “Using an Arduino as a Robot Brain”. Thank you Principal Bell, Mrs. Whalen, and Mr. Tompkins for welcoming me into your classrooms.
- Wednesday and Thursday were spent at Loudoun Valley High School. I volunteered in my normal Intro to Computer Science and Computer Science AP classes. I also spoke to classes on Cybersecurity on how ‘secure shell’ works, Cyber-marketing on how Google Adwords and Google Analytics work to promote a business, AP Computer Science Principles on the P vs. NP problem and how we measure algorithmic performance with “Big-O Notation”, a Discrete Math class on Combinatorics, and perhaps my new favorite talk to a Calculus class, “Have you Ever Heard a Sine Wave?”, where I use a DX-7 synthesizer from the 1980’s to program sounds based on sine waves and FM Synthesis. Once we understand how sine waves add to make sounds, I show how mechanical computers were used in the 1800’s for tide prediction and how that same idea (known as the Fourier Transform) they use every day to turn recordings into the music they stream. Thank you Mrs. Cramer, Mr. Powers, and Mrs. Stanley for the chance to talk to your classes. Thank you Dr. Ross for the privileged position I have as both a volunteer TA and parent of current students. And thank you (perhaps most of all), to my friend Mr. Rodney Snyder for 11 years of welcoming me into your classroom on a regular basis. It is my honor to be perhaps your oldest student.
- In addition to my efforts, Mr. Snyder and Mrs. Tenant organize an event where our high school students take a day out of their busy school schedules to go back to their old elementary schools and help with the hour of code curriculum. I’m not sure how many students participated this year, but two students at each of ~5 elementary schools over 5 days is a non-trivial amount of giving back to the community. Thank you to all of those students, including my own sons Anthony, Christopher, and Daniel. Seeing you teach in the same school I watched you learn in is a privilege every parent should have.
Thank you to Zachary Haggard (LVHS class of ’22) for helping me practice and refine my new material and being my ‘roadie’ as we hauled music equipment around. And thank you Nick Grzeda, Supervisor of Computer Science Education for Loudoun County Public Schools for the continued support you give my involvement. If you had told me when I was in high school (class of ‘87), I’d be in 2024 volunteering to teach math classes, still lugging my keyboard amp down hallways, and playing “Hunt the Wumpus” with middle school students, I don’t think I would have believed you. But here we are, and I love every minute of it.
