 Welcome everyone. Welcome. Welcome. Good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon from wherever you are joining us as we wait just about a minute to let people trickle in. We would love for you to introduce yourself in the chat so the chat is going to be on the right hand side of your screen. And if you don't see the chat tab look in the bottom right hand corner and you'll see a little chat icon just tap on that to open it up. Once you find it head to the chat. Introduce yourself. Share where you're joining us from share your role in the your district or your school and or grade level that you teach just so we can get an idea of who we have today. And like I said we're going to wait just a minute or so to get started to let everyone trickle in. I see you Jed. Hi Jed. Pallie Pall from Osage. I saw you last week. No I didn't. Did I? I think I did. And welcome Vicki. Jodi's a third grade teacher from San Francisco. I love San Francisco. You still live there. I saw Dan Thomas scroll by. Oh we have a bonjour. I wonder if we're being joined from France. Could be French Canadian. Oh very sure. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me that Brian. Oh good morning from the Philippines. Thank you for joining us. Well I saw Hawaii. I can't keep up. I know there's a lot of thought I was scrolling fast but I'm not. We have New Zealand and Texas Honduras Georgia. Thailand. Arizona I love this. North Carolina Mexico my goodness they just keep coming and coming this is so great we love how diverse of an audience we have tonight. Well welcome everyone. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and get started because we have so much amazing content to cover tonight. So today tonight wherever you are you're going to meet a computer science expert Brian Aspenall. And during our time together Brian will share about the history of computer science and the importance and benefits of teaching it in your classroom. Now at the end of the session we are going to share a variety of seesaw lessons that will help you integrate computer science into your classroom. And we're also going to be giving away 10 copies of Brian's book when passion meets project. So a few housekeeping items before we get started. If you have questions during the session that you would like Brian to answer there will be a Q&A session towards the end. Please go ahead and click on the Q&A tab and ask them there. This ensures that we won't miss them. And if any questions go unanswered we will reach out to you and answer them after the webinar. Now other comments or ideas can be put in the chat tab that you all are using right now to introduce yourselves. And if you have the option or if you don't see the chat because you still haven't introduced yourself reminder go to the bottom right hand of your screen. Tap on that little chat icon and you're going to notice that there's a chat tab there's a Q&A tab as well as a handouts tab where we will be sharing some handouts and links throughout the session. Now this session is being recorded and a link to the recording as well as the handout and some other resources from this webinar will be shared in a follow up email in about 24 to 48 hours after the session is complete. Now you all have introduced yourself so who are we really quickly my name is Allie and I'm a training in professional development specialist here at CESA. I'm a former fourth and fifth grade teacher as well as a reading interventionist and an instructional coach and I live in Denver, Colorado. I was trying to see if I saw anyone from Colorado but again everyone was introducing themselves so fast I missed it but so excited to be here and I'm really excited to also have my colleague Cheryl with me today and she's going to introduce herself. Thanks Allie. Hi everyone my name is Cheryl and I'm also fourth grade teacher former fourth grade teacher from California. Originally from the 808 I see you Hawaii but now I am in Atlanta, Georgia and at CESA as a learning experience designer developing some amazing collections that we'll get to take a look at today. Thanks Cheryl. So now who's our expert Brian. Brian Aspinall is an educator and best selling author and is considered one of the brightest STEM innovators in education. He's the founder of Code Breaker Inc. an organization whose mission is to engage students and amplify voices of passionate educators like all of you I'm sure who believe that all students can achieve if given a fair chance. He travels the globe and leading professional development programs that inspire educators to create curious seeking individuals in classrooms built on a community of trust of risk taking and a freedom to fail which I think as an adult I even sometimes need that reminder. He was awarded the Canadian Prime Minister's Award for teaching excellence for his work with coding and computational thinking and his enthusiasm thought leadership and approach to building capacity within STEM education is why we have invited him to speak with us today. So welcome Brian and take it away. Thank you very much friends. Hello world. My name is Brian Aspinall. This is teaching seventh and eighth grade up here in beautiful Ontario, Canada. And for the last five I've been teaching at a variety of faculty of education across. My wonderful friend and to get this party started. I want to give one away. So I've got a free Marty robot for anybody here. All you have to do is tweet. I got this. Find your own free trial. Hey Brian, sorry to interrupt. I think we're having a little audio trouble. Yes, sorry about that. His now his audio is catching up to us. So there we go. You back with us. Okay, we'll give him a minute. However, I did catch from that that there is a free giveaway tweeting out to him. So when Brian comes back and joins us we will definitely make sure that he re shares that giveaway since that sounded like a really awesome free chance. So appreciate you all bearing with us. Wow, we have some audio. Oh there we go. Awesome. Welcome back Brian. Oh sorry about that my friends we you know, when you live in the middle of nowhere as you know we're talking about equity and all things education so I have very limited access considering I'm the the code or actually three internet streams coming into my house trying to magnify it all so are we good now. We are. I think that the audience would probably love if you want to hop back and share that giveaway because I know I got excited when I saw that. Thank you. Here we go. We're giving away a wonderful Marty robot simply tweet why you should win. Tag this restaurant at code breaker. Don't forget to use the hashtag code breaker. And if you can't wait to get a free trial on us at code breaker. Marty. I got to go back in time though. I remember graduating high school in the mid 90s and this is what a 10 hour playlist looks like you remember joining Columbia house quitting Columbia house trying to buy 12 albums for a penny and thinking you were out smarting the system. Kids these days have no hard how hard it was to actually make a playlist. Do you remember why to K 1999. And if you're on this call and you don't your Gen X and you are way younger than me so why to K was the end of 1999 and we weren't sure if computer scientists had allocated for the last two digits of the calendar year or simply the first two software was written in the early 1990s. We weren't sure if the calendar clock was going to roll over from 1999 to 1900. It was a wild time to be alive. I remember 1995. Oh I was trying to study at the University of Windsor here in Ontario. And I had to hand in code over this sound you remember dial up Yahoo chat was all the rage. We were telling students don't talk to strangers. I'm going to let the sound bite finish. Because it's just as annoying today as it was in 1995 but fast forward now look how far we've come we literally message people on the Internet and get in their car. We literally message people on the Internet. And go sleep at their house. Uber and Airbnb are two of the biggest companies in the world. They don't sell their own product or service. In fact they figured out a way to monetize and empower members of their community to go out and monetize their services. And monetize themselves as far often or as far little as they want. And there's a lot of value to that philosophy if we apply it to our classrooms. It follows engagement. It follows empowerment. But it also follows student choice. Today's technology is the worst technology our students will ever use. And I always like starting my presentations with this because we're always thinking about the past. We're always thinking about the present. But we never really look to the future especially in education with the exception of always preparing for the next. The school system is the one space we're always talking about preparing kids for more school. And while today's technology might be the worst our students will ever use. It's pretty wild. Here's a Rube Goldberg machine made by six year olds. We're taping paper towel rolls the wall. We're collaborating. We're running marbles through. It's more of a trial and error experience and it's very much maker ed. Now how do we bring this into the computer science space? Well, so happy when it hits the bell. Why don't we kick off with a bebot robot to actually start our Rube Goldberg machine. Pretty wild to be teaching in 2022. We use dashing dot robots to try and pop balloons as an experiment. You know what I love about that video is this idea of letting kids try and try again with these technologies, particularly in computer science. It challenges us to redefine what it means to fail at school. Majority of our students when they're learning to code, their code won't run that first time through. And that moment, that moment of debugging, that's quite often when innovation can begin. And it challenges us to rethink our assessment evaluation practices particularly in math. Math is that one subject area that's usually scored based on a quantity of correct answers. How about bringing our stuffed animals to life using makey makey. My friend here is in first grade in Toronto, Ontario. Or in this case, we have a six year old that wanted to bring her story to life using makey makey and a Cartesian grid system, as you can see on the screen here. We're talking X, Y variables in first grade. And now there's the maker experience. We have to create the buttons, the physical computing part. So she's created two switches to interact with her scratch story. What I love about those kind of examples is that we're shifting more into the physical computing space. For the better part of the last decade, I feel that coding and computer science have almost become synonymous. And we have to recognize that under the big umbrella of computer science, we have a hardware track and we have a software track. And our little people right down to kindergarten can even engage with these robotics and a lot of the physical computing tools that we have with us today. I want to go back and share a story. At my last school, I was teaching seventh grade and eighth grade. And I was coaching the senior boys basketball team and it was January. And where I live in the province of Ontario, Canada, it gets incredibly dark. 4.15 in the afternoon in January. It was really snowy outside. And I was getting text messages from my wife, who's also an educator. We were both teaching seventh grade at the time and she was saying, the road's really bad. You're going to want to get home. And I was driving this beautiful Mazda B4000 pickup truck, which is just strictly rear wheel drive. So at Canadian Thanksgiving, I always say, I'm going to go put weight in the back of the truck so it's not fish tailing in the snow. And then when American Thanksgiving rolls around in the middle of November, I still haven't done it. So when January came, I was not prepared to drive this vehicle through the snow. Rear wheel drive, very, very dangerous. After the student finally picked up after basketball practice around 5.30 that night, I found myself driving as quickly as I could. And I pulled in my wife, a single lane driveway at the time. And I made a mistake because I was in a hurry, and it was quite ironic because I'm only saying to my students, were you taking your time or were you rushing to get to art, rushing to get to recess, rushing to get to phys ed, whatever the case might be. Ironically, I locked my keys in the truck. My wife's bell time started before mine, so she had to get out of the driveway before me the very next day. I walked in the house and I looked at her and I said, honey, I have a problem. And she said, I know. I said, no, no, no, you don't understand. I parked behind you in the driveway and I locked my keys in the truck. And she looked at me and she said, solve the problem. And she walked away. And I said, don't teach or talk to me. It's quite interesting where we teach in the province of Ontario. As seventh grade teachers, I find us trying to sort of unravel teaching to the test in September. Here in the province of Ontario, our students write a standardized test at the end of sixth grade. So their experience at the end of sixth grade is taught to the test, pulling down on the anchor charts, putting that technology away, and quite often being bribed with candy. Then they go home for the summer and they come back to school and they see us in September. So only about two school weeks later, pull the summer aside. We find our seventh grade students wanting to be spoon-fed. They don't want to take risks. They don't want to try new things. They want to be told what to do so they can go and get the grade. Well, that's quite contradictory to the narrative of what computer science is all about, rooted in creativity and collaboration and building on new ideas and engaging in emerging technologies further. I sat down on the couch and I thought, what would my students do in this situation? We talk a lot about inquiry-based learning where I'm from. Well, here's an open-ended project. How in the heck are we going to get the keys out of the vehicle? Let's say it's parked in the driveway or parked in the school parking lot. Most of my students are going to say break the window, but that's not an option for me teaching in January in Ontario, Canada, because it is incredibly cold. I'm just going to quickly turn my camera off. My microphone is still on. Yes, we can hear you loud and clear, Brian. We're going to go straight to audio. Thank you for that. I locked my keys in the vehicle. I thought, what would my students do? I sat down on the couch and I thought, now consider the contact. I'm a part of a very, very large community of people who are connected to the Internet. I got on a computer and I decided to bring how to break into a Mazda B4000 pickup truck. Actually, I Googled it, but I was recently giving this talk at the Microsoft Office in Seattle, and I thought I'd better swap out that Google Slide if I want to be invited back to tour the Minecraft facility. So I threw the big slide in. How do I break into a Mazda B4000 pickup truck? I realized there was a whole series of videos based on make, based on model, based on color, but this video, this video really jumped out at me. You see, here I am sitting on my couch all alone in context, but I realized I am a part of a much larger community. A community of 143,000 people that also Googled how to break into a Ford Ranger and watched this video. Today we're going to show you how to unlock a Ford Ranger. It's locked. Your keys are in there. And what you want to do is take a little tool like this, make a little hook on it about, I don't know, an inch, inch and a half. Okay, so come over to your door and there's a little... Okay, so there's the two holes and you got to pick one, probably this one on the right. Get your little hook in there. Probably. So now what we're going to do is... Now you recognize there's two people here. We're collaborating. One person has the whole camera. Door lock. That's your feedback. And you can see it moving. Pull on this. Oh, come on. Is he going to do it? Is he going to do it? I wouldn't have showed you the video if he didn't. Let's go. My friend saved me $300 on CAA. And you're open. Get your keys. Listen for the next step. And don't do that again. Don't do that again. Well, listen here, my two friends. You two have created a student product outside of school hours. So what I love about this video is I have a media, an oral, a reading and a writing curriculum underneath my Language Arts document here in the province of Ontario. You might call it ELA. And in media, we are to create media using oral communication. And when I first saw this video, I was actually teaching procedural writing in my seventh grade ELA class. And I remember my students writing the procedure on how to make toast. I was bored. They were bored. But the goal was to teach sequential steps first, then next, finally. I remember driving home one day with a pile of pieces of writing long before the Google Cloud or any kind of cloud space platform. And I had all these paper copies. And I remember thinking, I don't want to assess these. I don't want to evaluate these. They're full of spelling mistakes. Nobody's engaged. And I stumbled upon this video. And what I love about the video is not only did they create the media content using their oral communication, they actually wrote the transcript in the YouTube video itself. So now we have a piece of writing. We have a student product created by two individuals who did so on their own time and uploaded it to YouTube. And guess how many spelling mistakes were actually in the transcript on that YouTube channel? You guessed it, zero, because they published it in an authentic context. But they did this without being asked to do so on their own time. So now we have a student product that we can talk about in terms of assessment and evaluation. I can dissect all of my curriculum in my ELA Language Arts document around this video. I can say 143,000 hits. Let's talk about data management and bias and numeracy. And let's get on Google Street View and figure out where some of these hits came from. You got a referral from Sri Lanka. Let's go look at that country and let's turn on Street View and let's make inferences about their culture and their traditions and the way they live. All of this pulled from some simple video created by two people who probably locked keys in their vehicle at one time. At the bottom of the transcript on the YouTube channel, it said, you'll be able to do this in 42 seconds. And I'm a bit of a gamer. So I took that as a challenge. I yelled at my wife, honey, I got this. I grabbed my phone and I went outside. Feel free to throw an arbitrary number in the chat. How long do you think it took me to actually break into my vehicle that first time through? We have a 10 minutes guess so far. Five minutes. That's kind. I'll take 10 minutes. No, 56 seconds. And I wasn't happy with that. So I locked my keys back in the truck and I tried again. A bit of a sad tire. I hope you're chuckling at home, but let's dissect this for a second. Coding is sequential language. Coding executes one line at a time, just like writing a procedure or just like learning to serve a volleyball or just like learning to do a layup or in this case, just like learning how to break into my vehicle. But the challenge I have for you is they told me I could do it in 42 seconds and it took me 56 seconds. So by definition, did I fail? Or because I was given an opportunity and I was able to do it in the time they told me I could, did I demonstrate some level of mastery? I put that out there because I want to challenge your thinking around grades, especially in elementary school, assigning numerical values to conversations and student work when we're trying to encourage kids to take risks and embrace failure. Currently, most of us live and work in a system in which failure is punished and there's far too much risk in not getting the grade. In my first year as an educator around 2003, I found myself in a seventh grade classroom and a group of boys approached me and said, Mr. A, you study computer science? I said, yeah, boys, I did. They said, why are you a teacher? Of course I laughed. I thought, I don't know, July, August. No, I'm just kidding. It's because I want to engage with young people and encourage them to follow their passions and be creative. And they say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. You show us how to make a game. Now in those days, trying to get a teaching job where I'm from was rather difficult and it was about who you knew more so than what you knew. So I actually marched down to the principal's office. After all, that principal was going to go up to bat for me the following summer to help me get a permanent position. I was only covering a maternity leave from spring break through June. I walked down to the office. I said, Mr. Moore, I'm going to make a coding club. You see, what the heck is a coding club? I said, don't worry about it. I'm going to put it on my resume and you're going to tell everybody about it at staffing in July. I thought I was quite progressive, you know, building a coding club in the early 2000s. And I'll get more to that story later because I actually didn't start the first, you know, coding club movement, so to speak, that we see all across our globe today. Coding clubs actually started in the 1950s and the 1960s. But before we get to that, I want to talk about the infamous pooping baby game. These boys said to me, we're going to shoot poop missiles at the city and your job in the game is to essentially save the city. In hindsight, I wish I had encouraged more females to come to my coding club. We have a saying at our school, it's okay to be where you are. It's not okay to stay there. And that's where I was. But technology, computer science, engineering, still very, very, very male dominated and we need to include and encourage our young females to also enter into these professions, particularly at a very young age. I remember sitting beside these boys and they said, have you ever heard of scratch? I said, no, no, I haven't. Well, in 2003 scratch was an install. It didn't run in the browser like it does today. But in 2003, where I'm from, social media was blocked. MySpace, Twitter was just starting, Facebook, YouTube was blocked. In fact, YouTube still blocked in a lot of districts across the globe. And our USB ports were also blocked. We were indirectly sending a message to our young people that we didn't trust them, but the reality was we didn't trust the USB devices to accidentally upload any kind of virus. We had to download scratch and put it on USBs and then we had to actually install it onto our computer systems. And I remember looking at these boys and I said, boys, do you think you can beat the USB firewall? Man, they looked at me and they said, Mr. A, can you beat the installation privileges firewall? We sort of nodded in unison. We closed the door. We covered that little piece of glass in the door with chart paper that we found so nobody could see what it is we were actually doing. And we went about making a train in the computer lab and we installed scratch and we hid the icon so our IT department didn't know what we were up to. Now keep in mind I was trying to get a job while teaching young people how to break all the IT rule book and allowing them to make a game about a baby that shoots poop missiles at the city. Wouldn't you know I got hired permanent that following fall and I'm not sure if the baby is the reason but the background to this story is what is of utmost importance. This experience in my first year of teaching, I like to say it changed my pedagogy but I didn't have one. In fact I'm still not even sure how to evaluate this experience. You see this was created in the scratch space and I said to them boys how are you making that baby move to the right side of the screen? They said Mr. A it's so simple when green flag clicked change X by one. So I pulled those blocks out into scratch when green flag clicked change X by one and I ran the program and wouldn't you know the baby went plunk one unit to the right and I said boys how did you make the baby go to the right forever? And the second I said that I thought oh my goodness the word forever. I took an entire course on looping in third year university. Are these boys going to tell me I have to put it in a loop and sure enough they said Mr. A you have to put it in a forever loop. So I took 1000 Canadian dollars in student loans hanging out with 12 year olds who are self taught coders learning about loops not two years after I graduated from computer science. I said boys how did you make the baby go backwards now that I have it going all the way to the right side of the screen? I don't see a turnaround block they said Mr. A you are killing us while our students are always 20 steps ahead they said when it touches the side of the screen you have to make the baby go all the way to the left by changing its x value to a minus one in other words forever change x by minus one and I did that and sure enough the baby was going back and forth across this grid I said now tell me about the poop missile algorithm and I still chuckle when I say that poop missile algorithm they said Mr. A the poop we hide its costume so it doesn't look to be on the screen and then we show it randomly at the baby's location and we shoot it to the bottom at that point I realized I have a lot to learn I still have a lot to learn but in terms of assessment and evaluation let me paraphrase this experience I have a handful of boys working in an after school club informal learning space engaging with me still at school but outside of school hours I never want to label students or put students in a box but consider the profile of these kids they weren't on the basketball court they'd be rather hanging out with me and doing really cool fun nerdy geeky stuff that I love I said boys let me paraphrase what you've got going on here you have a baby at a constant positive y position translating back and forth the baby reflects itself when it touches the perimeter of the screen the baby moves by changing its value from positive x to minus x the poop missile hidden by default plots itself at the baby's actual x by location randomly which is a little bit of probability and then translates to the bottom of the screen with a forever change y by negative 1 for every poop missile shot and for every poop missile cut with that paddle you get a point, points get stored in variables as the points get higher the poop gets faster they literally said yeah that's about it and in my mind I thought holy SHIT PUN INTENDED you just did the entire strand of geometry without any explicit teaching I remember sitting there that moment going everything I learned in teacher's college is wrong these boys just demonstrated mastery and geometry I can ask them the integer signs in quadrant 3 and they can tell me x is negative and so is y I went home that night I said honey I have a problem and she said I know I said no you don't understand I have all this grid paper photocopied ready to go for tomorrow's geometry lesson but my lesson as good as it might be only focuses on one maybe two curriculum expectations these boys did the entire strand of geometry they started talking about variables as placeholders and numbers in math and they were including probability in this game how do I evaluate this do I have to evaluate this well of course I do well where I'm from the province of Ontario we have a beautiful document that says our educators are allowed to assign a numerical grade for observation, conversation and student product but quite often as we go up the grade that student product carries a lot more weight and those isolated testing environments also carry a lot more weight now if I had pulled these boys out of this club and put them in a testing environment about geometry I don't think they would have done nearly as well but here they are in an authentic context after school learning about geometry by programming learning about probability by programming learning about variables by programming if you can learn the code you can code to learn and this is a perfect example of such it was an authentic context that made geometry completely relevant to them and this was an experience I had in my very first year in an after school coding club and it set me on the path to expose as many kids to principles of computer science as I can because the same thing happened to me when I was in high school so in grade 10 Mrs. Boudre let me create this website project that nobody had ever done before while other students were making this poster and the principal found out about it and the principal actually asked me if I would make the first ever caro district high school website so by the time I graduated high school I had a paid web portfolio which led me to go into computer science just because of that one choice she let me make what would you do if you saw her right now oh my goodness I still talk to Mrs. Boudreau and I'm really proud of that experience I politely was poking fun at Microsoft earlier but Microsoft Canada set up this little interaction I was flown to Toronto and she was but I didn't know and she was behind the wall and they asked me to describe everything I loved about Mrs. Boudreau and it's funny because 25 years later I wasn't describing the content I wasn't describing the curriculum I was describing her character she challenged me she inspired me she made me feel good about myself she believed in me that's what I remember most about Mrs. Boudreau and that's what I hope the boys remember about me during that coding club experience after I went home that day I figured out where the heck Scratch comes from Scratch is that one coding tool that was built by teachers for teachers so it gives us peace of mind with student data I started learning about Reggio Emilia and Loris Malaguzzi the city threw up on these three bullets World War II was a long time ago but imagine giving students control over the direction of their learning of touching, moving, listening and observing but most importantly and again as we go up through the grades this last bullet gets less and less we must provide our students with endless ways and opportunities to express themselves my former school district still to this day has an exam policy in place again we always talk about teaching for more school we do exams because they'll need exams next year we give grades because they'll need grades next year but as we've learned in the last two years the world changes overnight I remember reading more about Reggio Emilia and I came across Jean Piaget and I thought ah! I remember Piaget I took a third year psychology course in university to meet girls because there were none in computer science I remember reading about constructivist learning I remember reading about hands-on learning in a textbook I remember having to apply what I read what I thought I understood about hands-on learning by reading it in a textbook and applying it to situations on a multiple choice test those situations didn't mean anything to me I didn't have any prior knowledge about those experiences so here I am trying to apply my knowledge of what I've read in a textbook about hands-on learning to situations on a multiple choice test that I've never engaged in I remember getting a C minus in the course I thought boy that was hard today Brian, today teacher in me says no that assessment wasn't accurate first of all you made me read about hands-on learning and then apply it to situations that were so far out of context I had no idea where to even begin plus I was never trained how to take a multiple choice test we talk a lot about preparing kids for the next if test taking is a skill it needs to be taught in isolation perhaps I remember reading this quote as well as Papert and I thought I have to meet this Seymour Papert character I soon learned that Seymour Papert was a student of Piaget he studied under that constructivist learning model and I remember reading this quote the role of the educators to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge and the quote stuck out to me for a lot of reasons perhaps most importantly this quote was said before the internet this is not a modern day quote this is not Seymour Papert predicting an era of access this is Seymour Papert prior to a world of access suggesting that classrooms still need to be incubators for startups and inventions he challenged schools and computer labs and said things like we don't go to the pencil factory to use that tool for 40 minutes on a weekly basis as long as you use technology as an event it will never be truly utilized as it should be in practice I remember thinking this is amazing because now we have decades of research about project based learning as we call it today beginning with Piaget's constructivist learning and moving forward to Seymour Papert a fun fact that not a lot of people know the scratch team today studied under Seymour Papert makey makey and little bits were both startups that came under the scratch team so now we have decades upon decades of pedagogical research about hands-on learning with physical computing what I love about Seymour Papert and his body of work is he was a mathematician who encouraged mistakes in math a subject area traditionally scored based on a quantity of correct answers we like to talk about collaboration being a 21st century fluency here's a video from the 70s where kids have to collaborate because somebody has to hold the cable but what's unique about this particular video this isn't about learning to code this isn't even about coding to learn it's about coding to learn mathematics they're doing geometry they're changing variables they're making spiral art hashtag steam not stem they're trying to replicate what other students were doing and they haven't touched a textbook they're getting immediate feedback from the environment which is very much a regioemilia theme and if we use technology as that third teacher it frees up our own time to conference with other students who might need it Seymour Papert and his team created the first block based coding language called logo around 1968 this was the first quote unquote block based coding language used in schools and it wasn't a tool to learn to code it was a tool to code to learn in 2D geometry and let's say hypothetically now I'm going to paint or tape an equilateral triangle on the floor of my classroom and I'm going to have students walk that triangle and use their steps as a unit of measure and there's a reason steps is the unit of measure in the scratch platform let's say I've taped a triangle down now and it's equilateral and I'm going to have some diagnostic assessment with my students what's perimeter I hope they tell me they're going to walk on the tape what's area I hope they tell me it's the tiles inside of the tape great now my friend over here Johnny why don't you come up why don't you walk the first leg of this triangle and tell me how many steps it is and of course little Johnny is walking the first leg of the triangle we've got now a kinesthetic math experience I've got students up and moving and exploring perimeter using their own feet he says 11 okay Johnny now what's the perimeter of course Johnny thanks for a second 11 plus 11 plus 11 33 and of course yes that's correct great is there another student in the room that came up with 33 but used a different strategy now the goal here while teaching about math is also to show that there's more than one way to solve a problem and that gives us an opportunity to discuss efficiency particularly in a computer science makerspace kind of experience another student might say well 11 times 3 is also 33 and because it's an equilateral triangle the side lengths are all the same that's correct great okay now listen Johnny I need you to go and get on the computer and draw the triangle to scale using your steps the first block of course is going to be forward we can't change the English words we can only change the numerical values so I want you to go on the computer I want you to do forward 11 of course Johnny gets on the computer and hits forward 11 and runs the program sure enough the turtle draws a straight line it's working Mr. Pappard says now listen we're not dealing with right-angled triangles so it can't possibly be a right 90 what do you think that angle is going to be and without hesitation Johnny says 60 and I think a lot of you at home are probably thinking the same Mr. Pappard says I don't know but that's the beauty of these programs we get to try and try again if it doesn't work so go ahead and try Johnny puts forward 11 right 60 runs the program and it does not look like it should it does not look like the triangle on the floor Mr. Pappard says well that's strange after all we are dealing with equilateral triangles and the sum of three angles in any triangle is 180 degrees and if these three are all the same they must be 60 but this is actually a part of his lesson this is his teaching practice now he says I don't know Johnny why don't you go get back on that triangle and try that again so Johnny walks back to the triangle it's taped on the floor and he says yeah it's still 11 Mr. Pappard says okay great well let's turn your body now and as Johnny begins to spin Mr. Pappard says now hold on a second did you turn your body acute or obtuse well I don't know what that means was it less than 90 or was it bigger than 90 and of course little Johnny is looking at the floor and he says you know I think I actually turned bigger than 90 you know that wooden protractor we all still have in our classroom closets that we used to use on the job board and we don't know what to do with them but we can't bear to throw them out they would get out that protractor and they would put it down on the floor and they would say how big was that turn and just by looking at the floor they realized together you have to turn your body 120 degrees in order to construct a 60 degree angle because there's 180 degrees in a straight line and 360 degrees in one full rotation so what I love about this activity is we encourage students to try we encourage students to make mistakes we encourage students to learn from said mistakes change variables and try again and we didn't touch a single textbook and we didn't touch a single worksheet but more powerful than that supplementary angles that's far beyond Johnny's curriculum he's learning about curriculum far beyond the grade level he's in because he's engaged in this kind of an experience those things taught me that in a world that changes overnight the only strategy guaranteed to fail is not trying something new a lot of this comes back to how we build the culture's communities in our own classrooms a very very similar experience happened to me recently I was teaching an 8th grade math class and the Canadian penny went away we still have the Canadian penny in circulation our country just doesn't make or produce the penny anymore because it takes more than one cent to produce a one cent coin these students in their 8th grade year that's their last year of elementary school where I live before they graduate to high school so I thought it would be a wonderful wonderful momento to come all that penny the penny stamped the last year it was minted the year that graduated from 8th grade truth is we were studying probability it happened to be April 1st and I was following a numeracy framework as my district told me to do I remember giving every student in my class a penny and I said get out a piece of paper and flip a coin and make a t-chart and I want you to tally if you got heads or tails 24 students in my class so in theory 12 should have got heads and 12 should have got tails after all that's my theoretical probability that I'm supposed to teach to 12 and 13 year olds and somehow I'm supposed to show them that the more times I flip this coin the closer the data set gets to 50-50 well it's nearly impossible to flip a coin hundreds of times in an isolated 40 minute math class it's unfortunate that we let time and bells dictate when learning begins and when learning stops I remember turning on the smart board and saying all right we're gonna flip this penny 50 times I remember turning on the radio I was feeling very progressive I opened my classroom door I remember walking to the very first table and there was two girls sitting there who were reading books and I said girls like what are you up to what are you things gonna happen if you flip this penny and I remember them saying Mr. Ray we just want to read you've probably found a student just like that in your class and it's like wow I really need you to do this math but there's probably more value in that book it's way thicker than any book I've ever read what do you think would happen if you flip the penny 50 times and I remember Rebecca saying to me well Mr. Ray it might be 25-25 it might be 23-27 but I tell you one thing if I perform this experiment 50 times and I put the data set aside I did a Canadian quarter and I flipped it 100 times chances are that data set is closer to 50-50 because I performed the experiment twice as many times I remember looking at them going ah speechless ah 93 and I walked over to the next table and there's a kid with a ziplock bag he's like Mr. Ray there's no more pennies I want all these pennies I'm collecting pennies and in my peripheral I can see another kid whipping a penny and I'm like I have to do an accident report this went way better in the teacher's college guidebook I read on my planning time not 15 minutes later I had to turn off the radio I lost complete control of the lesson it was far too loud I had to close the door I sat down at my desk not ready to admit I had failed remember it's okay to be where you are it's not okay to stay there I could have used this as an opportunity to model the process of failure and being vulnerable in front of my students but that's not where I was in my own teaching philosophy I had to be right and I had to be perfect all the time I remember staring at that clock going this is what it feels like to hope that recess can come just any sooner any sooner any sooner I remember Rebecca putting up her hand saying Mr. Ray can I go read in the hall it's way too loud in here I remember saying Rebecca yeah fine but write a summary so I know what fuck your rating you know when the bell finally rang for us students to vote for recess Gavin came up to me Gavin was a great student well behaved athletic has a giant student record identified with the learning disability in third grade has an IEP that follows him around wherever he goes he knows it he said Mr. Ray I'm going to teach you I'm going to make you an app so you can teach that better next year and of course in that moment I remember thinking Gavin go sit down before I joke you but I said what do you got talk to me he said well in Scratch Mr. Ray under the operators the green code block there's a pic random I said yeah well if I pick a random number between zero and one and I say zero is heads and one is tails I'm going to make a simulated coin flip art I remember looking at him and thinking that is brilliant IEP when was the last time we retested you he says can I work on it in math class I said heck yeah you can and this was a student now in his 10th year of elementary school Gavin doesn't really do homework Gavin does the game of school well enough so that he can lead the basketball team after school Gavin knows how to stay out of trouble so he can play sports and he knows bare minimum and bare maximum that'll get him through the school days by simply playing the game of school so when he said to me can I work on it in math class I was over the moon joy of course you can a few days go by and he says mr. A it's done and it works we put it up on the smart board and he said go ahead and click on that green flag so I went over the right side of the screen I went over the right side of the screen and I flipped that coin and I want you to look at the variables on the left side of the screen I said holy smokes Gavin that's amazing it actually worked I said why did you flip the coin and he said well if I downloaded a coin flipper from the app store and it didn't flip I would delete it well that reminded me of my purpose and audience curriculum in my language arts document when we're writing stories we have to think about who we're writing them for well it's the same thing in the design thinking process if we're solving problems for people we need to know what the problem is and what they need as a solution before we can even begin the design part he says yeah mr. A I'm using this as a teachable moment whatever mr. A go ahead and click the flag again and I actually clicked on it five times I went wow it flipped twice we're percent one T oh one third two thirds now oh my goodness we're 50 50 after four flips and I stopped after five flips because as we know in theory flipping a coin should be 50 50 but when you flip one coin once three times five times seven times it's never 50 50 and I said Gavin we have a bug he said what do you mean I said this shouldn't it be 50 50 and Gavin looked at me and he said no mr. A this is the experiment so now here I am remembering the pooping baby from 15 years prior here I am standing in front of a 12 year old identified with the learning disability who self taught coder who made me a probability simulator using scratch and he knew the difference now between experimental and theoretical probability so much so I said Gavin what is the turbo button in the bottom right corner he said mr. A you remember that day you said you wanted to choke me I said Gavin I never said that Rebecca said yeah you did we all heard you I said you keep talking you're gonna get a substitute teacher for the rest of the year so what did you do so I took all my code and I put it in a loop what I love about this story is we're still staring at the 20% the tip of the iceberg we don't see the 80% that's where we can play buzzword bingo growth mindset resiliency initiative collaboration rigor all the soft skills if you will and I'm using air quotes I know you can't see me all the soft skills that went into creating this student product those are the skills that are going to make Gavin incredibly successful in life not suggesting this student product is not as successful but if this was an exam experience this product would carry far too much weight he said mr. A I put all my code in a loop so what did you learn Gavin turns out mr. A your theory is right I said what theory is that Gavin he said the law of large numbers if you flip a coin a million times it is 50 50 to some nth decimal place I said what's going to happen if I click the button he said mr. A it's going to ask you to enter a really big number I said what do you want to do he said I want to flip it a million times and as you can imagine I was all for it we entered an incredibly large number at this point he said mr. A I had to turn off the animation it made the computer laggy but keep your eyes on the numbers because you're going to see the law of large numbers happen in real time said the law of large numbers that's high school math Gavin you're in eighth grade with an IEP and a learning disability and here I am staring at an app created by a 12 year old who did so without any explicit teaching to demonstrate mastery of theoretical and experimental probability while using variables which is a component of algebra and by flipping a coin by changing its Y position we're using principles of geometry to create that animation I don't know how else to make my tasks as any more rich and engaging as something like this but more importantly than this experience is Gavin taught me all students can achieve if given a fair chance and technology when implemented properly can be a vehicle used to unlock human potential my name is Brian hospital please reach out on Twitter find me on Instagram thank you so much for joining all of us tonight and being here with you it's always a pleasure for me to share Gavin's story he would be forever proud to know more people have heard it thank you so much Brian for sharing your expertise on computer science all of those incredible stories so everyone stay with us we still have a lot of exciting things coming and so as Brian just showed you computer science is not just coding or computer literacy it is all of these things that you see engaging with tech tools in the classroom pattern recognition algorithmic thinking digital citizenship which I saw someone call out in the chat earlier data literacy and so much more and you're all here because you understand like we do that students need computer science skills to navigate and thrive in today's digital world now I saw a lot of people sharing their suggestions of how they're introducing computer science in their classroom so we are so excited to be able to share some more ideas and be able to share some ready to teach computer science lessons with you today that are inside of CESAW so in your activity libraries in CESAW you now have a CESAW lessons library now what are CESAW lessons lessons are a school or district subscription to high quality standards aligned learning experiences right in CESAW however it's super great to say that we do have five free collections that are available right now to anyone in CESAW and schools and districts can purchase access to the rest of the collections now within all of these collections there are five collections that support teachers with integrating computer science into their classrooms and these CESAW lessons allow everyday teachers to teach computer science concepts with confidence and a sense of joy without having to become an expert and with CESAW lessons students are going to engage in real world computer science concepts through both hands on and digital activities like some of those amazing examples of hands on computer science activities that Brian shared earlier CESAW lessons provide the perfect first exposure to computer science in order to scaffold the skills into other platforms and everything you all need everything teachers need your rigorous engaging lessons is built right into each collection there's printable lesson plans that empower you as a teacher to provide step by step guidance and model computer science skills further for your students I know I was a teacher I was not a computer science expert so those lesson plans are definitely something I relied on so today we're going to highlight just two of the computer science collections that are available available in CESAW although you will leave this session with lessons from all five of the computer science collections so let's start with computational thinking this collection will invite students to learn about and practice the pillars of computational thinking decomposition algorithmic thinking and pattern recognition these cognitive skills are the foundation for future learning in computer science students will practice their new school skills by joining robot one of our lessons characters in an interactive storybook with fun authentic cross curricular activities so let's go ahead and jump into a computational thinking lesson get that up and shared and so this is called this lesson is robot decomposes dressing for cold weather and our computational thinking lessons are designed to be completed in the sequence that they appear in CESAW now as a teacher what you're looking at right now I've already assigned the first lesson in the decomposition pillar to my students I'm logged in as a student so that we can go through this lesson together this lesson starts with robot prompting students to learn with him about decomposes decomposition he says hi friends robot here let's watch rainbow bear and turtle teach us about decomposition so next watch that instructional video as a class in order to learn the needed content knowledge to complete the activities in all of the lessons about decomposition so let's take a look where were we hey turtle hey rainbow bear I'm gonna go outside and play wanna join me oh you bet oh wait where's the good turtle come on where do you think you're going outside to play with you silly well not just like that you're not it's wintertime and it's snowing hard outside what did you say big time outside I haven't seen snow in so long I have so many clothes in my closet I can't even remember how I'm supposed to dress when it snows what will I wear to stay warm whoa that's a big problem let's use decomposition to help us solve it together uh decomposition decomposition decomposition is when you break down something big into smaller parts oh when you break down something big it makes it easier to solve so I'm gonna pause there but the video continues and I love all the love for rainbow bear and turtle in the chat yes they are incredible characters that continue to teach students and model how to use um decomposition in this particular instance now on the next page robot presents a problem he has as you can see and he invites students to help him solve it in this case the problem is robot is not dressed for the cold and students need to use decomposition to break the problem into smaller parts as we continue on to page three robot then invites the class to think about smaller parts of the problem as a teacher you can invite students to stand up together point out different parts of their body that need to be covered when they go outside this sparks whole class conversations that allows for students to share their opinions and add on to each other's ideas which is also really important skill so now the students have broken robot problem into smaller parts their hard work is acknowledged here it says you just use decomposition you broke my big problem into smaller parts now let's solve each smaller part do you see anything you could move to keep my head warm now if this is on a smart board you can move it yourself or have a student come up and move that beanie to cover it on page five of this lesson students then get to put their understanding of decomposition to work you could have students complete this on their own or again if you're whole class the students are sitting on the rug you can have students come up to your computer or the smart board and drag an item on to robot and complete the sentence stem on the bottom it says I used a blank to keep blank warm so I'm going to drag these mittens onto robot and I'm going to say I used a mitten to keep my hands warm and then finally to complete the activity students are going to relate decomposition to their own lives students take a photo of themselves in seesaw just by tapping on this camera button right here tapping on photo there we go of course you can resize it and then students are prompted to use the drawing tools to draw what clothes they would wear depending on where they live so I live very far from the beach in Colorado so the first thing I thought of is the beach because I wish I was there right now so if students live near the beach they could use decomposition to get ready for a hot day by the water with a hat so they can select this tool I'm going to select a yellow sun hat that's going to go over my head color it in I can't forget those pink sunglasses need to protect my eyes students continue by using any of the drawing tools to add maybe a bathing suit some sandals and then students use the microphone right here tap right here to share how decomposition they used it to get ready so they're going to start recording they can record talk about themselves and what they used how the hat and the sunglasses are going to help them and then they'll just tap that green done button when they are done of course then we want to make sure students check or tap on that green check one more time so computational thinking builds the cognitive skills that are the foundation for future learning in computer science now I'm going to hand it off to my colleague Cheryl to highlight the next lessons the next lesson collection take it away Cheryl thanks Ali so the next collection we're going to look at today is mission code this collection is designed to help you and your students build computer science and computational thinking skills in age appropriate ways students will visually code problem solve and explain their problem-solving programming decisions as secret agents and basically they will be using save robots from impending doom every lesson is designed in an exciting narrative format using video which makes the CS content accessible to all students as well as you regardless of experience with computer science each mission concludes with an opportunity for students to practice coding skills through unplugged that means off the device partner activities and this collection is for 5th grade but could be assigned to students that have prior experience with coding in K2 and can also be assigned asynchronously for the older learners but don't worry we're also developing a K2 coding collection which will be available very very soon but let's take a look at the lesson so the first one we're going to walk through is called RoboDog and the phone it will load for us welcome agents to mission code today you and your students will embark on a mission to learn foundational computer science skills through digital and hands-on learning activities first you will get to view your intro mission that debriefs what your task is for today and I'm going to play just a little bit of it for you and in this secret spy intro video you and your students will learn key vocabulary essential to engage in the mission as well as view real-world examples identity scan access granted system start-up we have an important mission for you today agent in order to complete this mission you must learn the secret word the secret word is code check out the secure video to learn more about the secret word code code is directions for computers and computers do lots of things computers help us do things faster they help us do things that are repetitive they make it possible for a so after learning the key essential vocabulary students will then get their breathing of how to begin their mission so as a whole class or independently you can have students watch this or play it whole class and we'll just watch a portion of it today you won't alright are you ready for your mission here we go is to help robo dog robo dog needs to turn off the phone before it rings and wakes the kitties write code or directions for robo dog to get to the phone in time watch out for the sleeping kitties you do not want to wake them drag arrows onto the grid to show robo dog the way test your code by moving robo dog along the arrows to make sure the code works if you make a mistake try again so after students watch the modeling video excuse me they will then as a whole class or independently drag arrows onto the grid to move robo dog past the sleeping kitties to the bone and what's really neat about this grid is there isn't just one way to get to the outcome so at the end students are practicing computational thinking skills sorry if you hear my actual dog outside by looking at different solutions and assessing which way is the most efficient way to get to the bone and they can click the mic here to share which different strategy uses the fewest arrows now every single mission code lesson has an unplugged partner activity and we'll watch a portion of this video hi vid remember we need to move quietly like a spine so no one will catch us we have two steps to the right one two three steps forward one two three four three more steps one two three now move three steps that way one two three now look down oh I think that means something in the sinker object to unicorn yep so students will practice pair programming with hands on collaborative activities such as this one that can be played at home or school now what's really great about mission code is students will reflect and explain their programming decisions using any of the seesaw tools and this is a really great way to close the learning loop and show families what students are learning about computer science as well and for digital extension all of these materials can be printed and kept at centers for your students to do unplugged students of course at the end of every single mission they will celebrate with collectible digital and physical badges and a fun video you can also extend the learning digitally with another partner activity where they can compose the grid hand the device to a partner or work with a partner and the second person will direct the first person of how to get RoboDog to the new place of the bone bone and I'm going to give you a sneak peek what we're developing for loops using scratch and this is going to be available to you shortly in the fall so we start off on seesaw seesaw only with robo clock and what students are doing is investigating music they can click on each audio button and circle the repeated ones you might have identified that song what they are doing is then replacing the notes with loops what does that look like for scratch well students can watch a video that goes step by step of how to use each of the blocks in the block based programming scratch software and then they're doing the same thing they did on seesaw they are grabbing the sound blocks and moving it into loops to create music awesome and this is just a sneak peek of what you're going to get shortly in the fall thanks so much Cheryl now I'm looking at the clock I know we're almost at our time but hang with us if you're able to we're going to have Brian back here in just a minute to answer one or two questions as well as share those lessons and you'll have that opportunity to win his book so if you want to learn more about another computer science collection our digital citizenship collection actually we really encourage you to join us on May 12 when seesaw's Chris Shiner is going to walk us through this curriculum why it's so so so important for students to be safe, kind and responsible when online we will drop the link to register in the chat we just did thank you as well as in the handouts tab for you both spots so one more thing as promised here is the handout with the links to the ten free seesaw lessons two for each collection from our computer science collections simply tap the link and save it to your my library again this is going to be in the handout tab next to your chat and q&a tab it also will come in your follow up email in case you miss it there now if you need more basics on how to use seesaw really encourage you to check out our training page at web.seesaw.me forward slash training and again you will find both of these links in the handouts tab and you'll receive it in your follow up email so as we wrap up today we really encourage you to think about how you can incorporate computer science into your classroom using the seesaw lessons we have provided we encourage you to explore the computer science seesaw lessons collections and test them out in your classroom to see how you can support students to navigate and thrive in today's digital world okay so now we are going to open up the floor we're going to bring back Brian and Cheryl just in case there's lessons questions and we like I said we'll have time for about one or two questions so here we go our first question is how is it best to introduce coding to kindergarteners Brian who cannot read this person has tried google coding and can't see the rest of that but how would you suggest recommending introducing coding to kindergarteners other than seesaw lessons of course those seesaw lessons I cannot wait to use them in my university courses with the teachers they teach the faculty of ed because they're just going to eat it up too which is amazing I would highly recommend students that are unable to read to explore the kinesthetic unplugged coding activities we have a plethora of them at discovergracy.com also csunplugged.org is a great place to go if you're looking for unplugged paper task coding experiences that use a lot of symbols the idea is to teach kids the concepts of the sequential steps and the following algorithms but they don't have to they don't have to read anything great thanks and I know that Cheryl had shared also you know having students practice taking steps and we also as the lessons as you saw have those printable ones so awesome thank you I'm looking to see if perhaps we have time for one more question let's see if we have one come in here we go so which of your books Brian would you recommend for early elementary teachers to start with if you're looking for early elementary activities I would go with two I would go with my book code breaker and I would go with my primary read aloud think like a coder our code breaker team also has three amazing books in a Gracie series that you can find at discovergracy.com those are wicked awesome books that model the think aloud process of computer science but also come with the low tech medium tech and high tech classroom examples great thank you and don't worry we'll be sharing those links in the follow-up email in case you missed them and you also have the recording to watch so I think unfortunately that's all the time we have for questions but again if you had any question that you asked that was not answered don't worry we will get back to you and we will make sure to answer those questions for you so once again thank you all for joining us as I've said we are going to be giving away 10 signed copies of Brian's book when passion needs project and so we're going to be dropping a google form link into the chat it's also in the handouts tab please fill that out and then that's your opportunity and your way to win we will reach out to the winners following this session now to learn more about Brian and stay connected with him find him on twitter at Mr. Aspinol I saw earlier also on Instagram I think it was Mr. Aspinol is that correct and we're also going to be sharing these links as well as other links that he has provided with us his websites Discover Gracie as well as Code Breaker and again we just want to say thank you thank you Brian thank you everyone for spending your morning afternoon evening whatever it might be with us stay tuned for future learn with the expert webinars and if you would like to learn more about seesaw lessons please visit our website web. seesaw.me forward slash lessons and just one more time I know I've said it a bunch thank you for joining us today and we hope to see you again soon here at seesaw thanks everyone thanks Brian