Welcome to teaching impacts of technology, Fundamentals.
My name is Dot Simon,
and I'm a computer scientist,
an educator, and a Professor in Education Studies department here at UC San Diego.
But before I tell you any more about me or this class,
let me introduce you to a colleague.
This is Art Lopez.
I get to know Art,
I dont know, maybe around 10 years ago.
Because one of his students came up to him at his school
where he teaches now and said," Mr. Lopez,
how come we don't have any computer science classes,
like kids in other school districts do".
And he thought, that's a really good question,
I need to look into that.
What that led to it was
a great collaboration where Arts started working with us in our efforts
to bring professional development to help teachers
who've been trained in other subjects learn to teach computer science.
In the ways that we think all kids need to know computing,
and Art's been pretty successful.
Here in his district,
at Sweetwater Union High School District,
which is just south of San Diego and just north of the border with Mexico.
10 years later, they now have
computer science courses in every high school in the district.
That is making an immense change in the lives of the students there in terms
of their careers and how they understand that computer science and computing,
really impacts our lives every day.
That got me really involved in this movement which
is popular in the United States right now called CSforAll,
with this picture of my laptop which it's pride of place I only have one sticker there.
I do believe like many people around the nation and around the world that
computer science and computational thinking are things that every student,
every kid, every citizen,
needs to know in the same way that we believe they
all need know reading, writing, and arithmetic.
But it's a real challenge to get enough teachers,
prepared and capable of teaching the kids the computing that we need.
And that is part of the goal of this class.
In this course, we'll be particularly looking at the impacts of computing on our culture,
our social interactions, and safety law, and ethics.
You might be familiar with this purple diagram.
It comes from a set of standards that were recently
produced by an international association called CSTEACHERS.ORG.
Now, we know that whatever country or state you're in might have different standards,
but a lot of them are related to these.
So, we'll use those as a grounding.
How are we going to look at impacts of computing?
Well we're going to be taking a very problem based approach.
I mean we're talking about impacts of computing on our lives.
So, let's use our lives as a place to start.
For example, in this class,
we're going to be looking at the kinds of technology in ways
computer science has impacted us sort of everyday.
And lyft for example,
is an app that might be different one where you live,
where you can use your smartphone and ask
somebody to come and give you a ride someplace else.
So, we are going to start with the problems,
these technologies, these apps that we use every day.
And we're going to dive into the technology that underlies it.
What kind of technologies do we need in our smartphone in the internet etc.
for these particular solutions for our technical problems to exist.
So in this case, one of the things we'll be looking at for example
is GPS and mapping algorithms.
Finally, will always be ending with and talking
about lessons that you can actually use to teach these concepts to students.
So, in addition to the technology that we'll be teaching,
we will always use
freely available resources that you can in turn use with your students.
We'll also be showing you sample lesson plan ideas
that help you teach those concepts to students.
You might be critiquing them,
you might even be improving them or modifying them for use in your particular classroom,
but you'll get an idea of
very specific and actual things that you can go and use immediately.
But it also gives you an idea,
we're not just going to be talking about impacts of computing obviously.
We're going to be touching on a number of
other standards that are important for our kids to know as
we understand the technology that underlies these apps that we use.
Networks and the Internet will come up a lot.
We are looking at data analysis.
Even some concepts from algorithms,
programming, and computing systems.
In the previous slide you saw how we were going to be looking at
getting directions or representing maps on a phone,
requires representation of graphs and solving routing problems.
Who is this course for?
It's really open to everyone.
Although, the primary audience that we are targeting are teachers.
This course might also be of interest if you're a
computing professional and maybe you're interested in
working and helping out in the classroom or doing after school club on computer science.
Or maybe you're a parent and you're wondering which
of my kids need to know about computing.
Really, we welcome everyone here.
And if you're wondering, is this class for me? Don't worry.
We don't have any specific expected pre-requisite knowledge for this class.
Although, you might get a bit more out of it if you know a bit about education,
we'll teach you some of the basics that you need to know if you want.
And certainly, there's no knowledge of computer science or programming expected.
So, are you interested in learning about the technology,
and computing that underlies the things that we use everyday in our life?
And to learn about interesting ways and resources you can use to teach these to kids?
If so, come join with us in this class.