Tag Archives: Computer Science

CS Education Week is All About Making a Difference

Posted by Chris Stephenson, Head of Computer Science Education Programs

Editor's note: For CSEdWeek this December 7-13, we are encouraging students to try High Seas and Inside Out, Google’s new introductory Hour of Code activities. We’re also going behind the scenes on the Google for EDU blog with stories and resources for the parents, educators and students that champion CS education every day. Stay tuned this week to learn more!

This year, Computer Science Education Week runs from December 7 through 13th and students, teachers, volunteers and organizations across the world will participate in a wide variety of activities and events. Very few people know, however, that it all began with one person who wanted to make things better.

In 2008, Calvin College Computer Science professor Joel Adams attended a regional ACM conference where he attended a session focused on advocating for computer science education. This session inspired him to question why secondary school students in his home state of Michigan had so few opportunities to take rigorous computer science courses when the data showed a tremendous demand for jobs in computing-related fields. Adams was especially concerned because the downturn in manufacturing had devastated Michigan and he believed his students deserved better opportunities and better jobs. Adams collected the jobs and education-related data and made an appointment with Dr. Vern Ehlers, his representative in the United States Congress. Ehlers heard Adams’ message and decided to take action.

Meanwhile, ACM and the Computer Science Teachers Association had been working to raise the profile of K–12 computer science education nationally. Cameron Wilson (then ACM’s Director of Public Policy) happened to be a former staffer for Rep. Ehlers. Following the meeting with Adams, with Ehler’s support, Wilson and Ehlers’ staffer Julia Jester drafted a resolution to designate the week of Grace Murray Hopper’s birthday as “National Computer Science Education Week”.

House Resolution 558 was introduced June 18, 2009. Rep Bart Gordon (D-TN) introduced the resolution in the House and Rep. Ehlers (R-MI) spoke eloquently in favor of his motion as did Jared Polis (D-CO). The resolution passed and was enacted on October 20, 2009 and with the help of numerous organizations, companies (Google among them) and individuals, the first celebration took place the week of December 7, 2009.

The annual event continued to grow and in 2013 it reached unprecedented levels with the participation of Code.org and the launch of the Hour of Code. Thanks to Code.org’s efforts, public figures from Ashton Kutcher to President Obama were talking about the importance of learning computer science. To date, more than 137,683,279 people have gotten a taste of computer science as Hour of Code participants.

As the global conversation about the importance of computer science education has grown, so too have the events. In Europe, Google helped launch EU Code Week which took place October 10-18th, 2015 with more than 150,000 people and 4000 events in 37 countries. From October 1-10, 2015, again with help from Google, 88,763 children and youth participated in more than 3,000 events in 17 countries during Africa Code Week. These are just two examples of the computer science education celebrations internationally.

Computer Science Education Week, whatever the event is called and whenever it takes place, is now a global experience. Everyone is invited to participate, and anyone can make a difference. And you can be sure that you will be hearing more about what Google is planning. But it is worth knowing and remembering that it all began with one man, who wanted to make life better for his students and did something about it.

Stay tuned for more posts on this topic throughout the week tagged with #CSEdWeek2015, on our Twitter and Google+ pages, too!

Google-Gallup research report: Perceptions of computer science reflect and reinforce stereotypes

Posted by Sepi Hejazi Moghadam, Head of Research & Development, K-12 Education

Editor's note: Ensuring the appropriateness, value, and impact of our efforts in the computer science education space first requires an understanding of the issues which broadly impact the discipline, its practitioners and its students. This article is part of our ongoing effort to explore those issues and share our learnings along the way.

Technology is undeniably becoming an integral part of our lives, shaping virtually everything around us. Unfortunately the computer science (CS) behind all of the technology we love isn’t so widely understood. Compounding the issue is the fact that groups like women, Blacks, and Hispanics are underrepresented in CS education and in the high tech workplace. This underrepresentation has been growing for decades and because of it, we simply don’t have enough students--especially those with diverse backgrounds--studying CS to even fill the projected number of computing jobs that will be available in five years (NCWIT). In order to change that trajectory, we need to better understand the current landscape and the factors that led us to this point.

That’s exactly why today, in partnership with Gallup, we’re releasing our second report from an ongoing series of studies on the state of U.S. K-12 CS education: Images of Computer Science: Perceptions Among Students, Parents and Educators in the U.S.

This report explores participation in and perceptions of CS learning by gender, race and income. We surveyed nearly 16,000 respondents, representing students, parents, teachers, principals and superintendents. From our first report, Searching for Computer Science: Access and Barriers in U.S. K-12 Education, we learned about the differences in exposure and access to CS learning and computers between Black, Hispanic and White students. The findings from today’s report show that we have more work to do beyond just providing access.

The results show that there’s high value and interest in CS among all demographics, and even more so for lower-income parents. But unfortunately perceptions of who CS is for and who is portrayed in CS are narrow--White, male, smart with glasses. Even though they value it, students often don't see themselves in it. Students who are female or Hispanic, and lower-income students all report lower confidence to learn CS. Our hope is that these findings will inform strategies that encourage more diverse students to pursue CS and increase access to CS learning opportunities for all students.
Here’s a summary of our findings:

Parents and teachers of lower-income students view CS as critical to a student’s future, yet lower-income students are less likely to have access to CS learning in school: 

  • 76% of parents in lower-income groups believe CS should be required in school. 
  • These parents are also more likely to value CS over other required courses. 
  • Teachers in schools with a larger percentage of students eligible for a free or reduced lunch are more likely than other teachers to think CS learning opportunities are more important to a student’s future success than other elective courses.

Image about CS is positive, but confidence to learn it is low:

  • More than 90% of students & parents have a positive image of CS jobs and more than 80% of all populations studied believe CS is used in many jobs. 
  • Yet only half of students are confident to learn CS, and the percentage is even lower for Hispanics and girls. 
  • We found that students who are more confident in their ability to learn CS are also more likely to say they will learn it in the future.

Perceptions reflect stereotypes: 

  • Given the high value of CS among all populations studied, it’s disappointing to learn that many have narrow perceptions of who practices CS. 
  • Students and parents perceive few portrayals of female, Hispanic or Black computer scientists on TV or in movies. 
  • These groups are much more likely to see White or Asian men engaged in computer science.
  • About half of students and 57% of parents agree that “People who do computer science need to be very smart”.

Computer science is misunderstood: 

  • We see that CS is becoming recognized as important, but there is still confusion of how it is different from general technology skills. 
  • Over half of students, parents, teachers and principals do not properly distinguish between computer science activities (e.g., programming and coding; creating new software), and general computer literacy (e.g., creating documents; searching the internet). 
  • This is more pronounced among female, Black and Hispanic students and parents.

These findings highlight the need to create learning environments that work for all students. Increasing awareness about what CS is will require efforts to help students, parents and educators alike fully understand the critical principles of CS in order to fulfill students’ potential rather than limiting them to basic low-level skills. Also, we need to do more to ensure that all students are able to see themselves in CS careers - we’ve got to help them see it, to be it. This will require continued efforts to leverage media outlets to help dispel stereotypes and showcase positive portrayals of diversity in computing.

Uplifting CS education opportunities for all students will require effecting change to the entire ecosystem. A comprehensive set of recommendations from our findings can be found here.

To find out more about Google’s CS learning opportunities and research, visit g.co/csedu.

See through the clouds with Earth Engine and Sentinel-1 Data

This year the Google Earth Engine team and I attended the European Geosciences Union General Assembly meeting in Vienna, Austria to engage with a number of European geoscientific partners. This was just the first of a series of European summits the team has attended over the past few months, including, most recently, the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society meeting held last week in Milan, Italy.

 Noel Gorelick presenting Google Earth Engine at EGU 2015

We are very excited to be collaborating with many European scientists from esteemed institutions such as the European Commission Joint Research Centre, Wageningen University, and University of Pavia. These researchers are utilizing the Earth Engine geospatial analysis platform to address issues of global importance in areas such as food security, deforestation detection, urban settlement detection, and freshwater availability.

Thanks to the enlightened free and open data policy of the European Commission and European Space Agency, we are pleased to announce the availability of Copernicus Sentinel-1 data through Earth Engine for visualization and analysis. Sentinel-1, a radar imaging satellite with the ability to see through clouds, is the first of at least 6 Copernicus satellites going up in the next 6 years.

 Sentinel-1 data visualized using Earth Engine, showing Vienna (left) and Milan (right).

windfarms.png
 Wind farms seen off the Eastern coast of England

This radar data offers a powerful complement to other optical and thermal data from satellites like Landsat, that are already available in the Earth Engine public data catalog. If you are a geoscientist interested in accessing and analyzing the newly available EC/ESA Sentinel-1 data, or anything else in our multi-petabyte data catalog, please sign up for Google Earth Engine.

We look forward to further engagements with the European research community and are excited to see what the world will do with the data from the European Space Agency's Copernicus program satellites.

Posted by Luc Vincent, Engineering Director, Geo Imagery

The Thorny Issue of CS Teacher Certification

Posted by Chris Stephenson, Head of Computer Science Education Programs

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog)

There is a tremendous focus on computer science education in K-12. Educators, policy makers, the non-profit sector and industry are sharing a common message about the benefits of computer science knowledge and the opportunities it provides. In this wider effort to improve access to computer science education, one of the challenges we face is how to ensure that there is a pipeline of computer science teachers to meet the growing demand for this expertise in schools.

In 2013 the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) released Bugs in the System: Computer Science Teacher Certification in the U.S. Based on 18 months of intensive Google-funded research, this report characterized the current state of teacher certification as being rife with “bugs in the system” that prevent it from functioning as intended. Examples of current challenges included states where someone with no knowledge of computer science can teach it, states where the requirements for teacher certification are impossible to meet, and states where certification administrators are confused about what computer science is. The report also demonstrated that this is actually a circular problem - States are hesitant to require certification when they have no programs to train the teachers, and teacher training programs are hesitant to create programs for which there is no clear certification pathway.
Addressing the issues with the current teacher preparation and certification system is a complex challenge and it requires the commitment of the entire computer science community. Fortunately, some of this work is already underway. CSTA’s report provides a set of recommendations aimed at addressing these issues. Educators, advocates, and policymakers are also beginning to examine their systems and how to reform them.

Google is also exploring how we might help. We convened a group of teacher preparation faculty, researchers, and administrators from across the country to brainstorm how we might work with teacher preparation programs to support the inclusion of computational thinking into teacher preparation programs. As a result of this meeting, Dr. Aman Yadav, Professor of Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University, is now working on two research articles aimed at helping teacher preparation program leaders better understand what computational thinking is, and how it supports learning across multiple disciplines.

Google will also be launching a new online course called Computational Thinking for Educators. In this free course, educators working with students between the ages of 13 and 18 will learn how incorporating computational thinking can enhance and enrich learning in diverse academic disciplines and can help boost students’ confidence when dealing with ambiguous, complex or open-ended problems. The course will run from July 15 to September 30, 2015.

These kind of community partnerships are one way that Google can contribute to practitioner-centered solutions and help further the computer science education community’s efforts to help everyone understand that computer science is a deeply important academic discipline that deserves a place in the K-12 canon and well-prepared teachers to share this knowledge with students.

Should My Kid Learn to Code?

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations, Google

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog)

Over the last few years, successful marketing campaigns such as Hour of Code and Made with Code have helped K12 students become increasingly aware of the power and relevance of computer programming across all fields. In addition, there has been growth in developer bootcamps, online “learn to code” programs (code.org, CS First, Khan Academy, Codecademy, Blockly Games, etc.), and non-profits focused specifically on girls and underrepresented minorities (URMs) (Technovation, Girls who Code, Black Girls Code, #YesWeCode, etc.).

This is good news, as we need many more computing professionals than are currently graduating from Computer Science (CS) and Information Technology (IT) programs. There is evidence that students are starting to respond positively too, given undergraduate departments are experiencing capacity issues in accommodating all the students who want to study CS.

Most educators agree that basic application and internet skills (typing, word processing, spreadsheets, web literacy and safety, etc.) are fundamental, and thus, “digital literacy” is a part of K12 curriculum. But is coding now a fundamental literacy, like reading or writing, that all K12 students need to learn as well?

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the devices and applications they use everyday, it’s important for all students to try coding. In doing so, this also has the positive effect of inspiring more potential future programmers. Furthermore, there are a set of relevant skills, often consolidated as “computational thinking”, that are becoming more important for all students, given the growth in the use of computers, algorithms and data in many fields. These include:
  • Abstraction, which is the replacement of a complex real-world situation with a simple model within which we can solve problems. CS is the science of abstraction: creating the right model for a problem, representing it in a computer, and then devising appropriate automated techniques to solve the problem within the model. A spreadsheet is an abstraction of an accountant’s worksheet; a word processor is an abstraction of a typewriter; a game like Civilization is an abstraction of history.
  • An algorithm is a procedure for solving a problem in a finite number of steps that can involve repetition of operations, or branching to one set of operations or another based on a condition. Being able to represent a problem-solving process as an algorithm is becoming increasingly important in any field that uses computing as a primary tool (business, economics, statistics, medicine, engineering, etc.). Success in these fields requires algorithm design skills.
  • As computers become essential in a particular field, more domain-specific data is collected, analyzed and used to make decisions. Students need to understand how to find the data; how to collect it appropriately and with respect to privacy considerations; how much data is needed for a particular problem; how to remove noise from data; what techniques are most appropriate for analysis; how to use an analysis to make a decision; etc. Such data skills are already required in many fields.
These computational thinking skills are becoming more important as computers, algorithms and data become ubiquitous. Coding will also become more common, particularly with the growth in the use of visual programming languages, like Blockly, that remove the need to learn programming language syntax, and via custom blocks, can be used as an abstraction for many different applications.

One way to represent these different skill sets and the students who need them is as follows:
All students need digital literacy, many need computational thinking depending on their career choice, and some will actually do the software development in high-tech companies, IT departments, or other specialized areas. I don’t believe all kids should learn to code seriously, but all kids should try it via programs like code.org, CS First or Khan Academy. This gives students a good introduction to computational thinking and coding, and provides them with a basis for making an informed decision on whether CS or IT is something they wish to pursue as a career.

Hacking against Ebola

Like other epidemics, Ebola creates panic, dangerous rumors and unverified facts. Journalists must be prepared, yet unfortunately they often lack the necessary resources and tools that match the responsibility to inform local communities.

To help fill the gap, we’re supporting the Global Editors Networks's #HackAgainstEbola on January 14 and 15. Other supporters include Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), Union for Francophone Press (UPF), and Code for Africa. Follow the two-day event through GEN's live blog and the hashtag #HackAgainstEbola.

Our goal is to help develop the best tools needed to explain the Ebola epidemic. In Dakar, a dozen teams, composed of one journalist, one designer, and one developer, who will work to build a prototype online product in 48 hours.

This is only the final of a three part series. Nigeria's Pan-Atlantic University, Ghana's PenPlusBytes and South Africa's 24.com hosted previous Ebola hack days.

The Editors' Lab has been running Google-supported hack events in newsrooms around the world for the past few years, bringing journalists and coders closer together to explore new ways of creating and presenting the news. World-renowned media organizations including The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais and Le Parisien have hosted hack days on different themes.

The winning team in Dakar will compete against the other winning Editors Lab teams at the GEN Summit 2015 in Barcelona next June.

Posted by Simon Morrison, Public Policy and Government Affairs Manager, London

Teaming up with Oxford University on Artificial Intelligence

It is a really exciting time for Artificial Intelligence research these days, and progress is being made on many fronts including image recognition and natural language understanding. Today we are delighted to announce a partnership with Oxford University to accelerate Google’s research efforts in these areas.

The Oxford skyline. Credit Oxford University Images
Google DeepMind will be working with two of Oxford’s cutting edge Artificial Intelligence research teams. Prof Nando de Freitas, Prof Phil Blunsom, Dr Edward Grefenstette and Dr Karl Moritz Hermann, who teamed up earlier this year to co-found Dark Blue Labs, are four world leading experts in the use of deep learning for natural language understanding. They will be spearheading efforts to enable machines to better understand what users are saying to them.

Also joining the DeepMind team will be Dr Karen Simonyan, Max Jaderberg and Prof Andrew Zisserman, one of the world’s foremost experts on computer vision systems, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the only person to have been awarded the prestigious Marr Prize three times. As co-founders of Vision Factory, their aim was to improve visual recognition systems using deep learning. Dr Simonyan and Prof Zisserman developed one of the winning systems at the recent 2014 ImageNet competition, which is regarded as the most competitive and prestigious image recognition contest in the world.

Google DeepMind has hired all seven founders of these startups with the three professors holding joint appointments at Oxford University where they will continue to spend part of their time. These exciting partnerships underline how committed Google DeepMind is to supporting the development of UK academia and the growth of strong scientific research labs.

As a part of the collaboration, Google DeepMind will be making a substantial donation to establish a research partnership with the Computer Science Department and the Engineering Department at Oxford University, which will include a program of student internships and a series of joint lectures and workshops to share knowledge and expertise.

We are thrilled to welcome these extremely talented machine learning researchers to the Google DeepMind team and are excited about the potential impact of the advances their research will bring.

Posted by Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind and Vice President of Engineering at Google

Launching Code for Germany

At Google, we like to experiment. Today we are experimenting with a guest blogpost from the Germany’s Open Knowledge Foundation.

Many in Europe believe that computer science and the Internet is an American invention. This summer, we decided to prove this idea wrong, launching our program, launching our program Code for Germany.
The feedback so far has been amazing. In the past few months, fourteen labs have sprouted up all across the country, bringing together more than 150 people on a regular basis to work on civic tech, use open data, and make the most of their skills to better their cities.

All told, more than 4000 hours of civic hacking has produced multiple apps and projects. The OK Lab in Hamburg has a strong focus on urban development, and have created a map which shows the distribution of playgrounds in the city. An app from the OK Lab Heilbronn depicts the quality of tap water according to the region, and another from the OK Lab Cologne helps users find the closest defibrillator in their area. One of my favourite developments is called “Kleiner Spatz”, which translates to “Little Sparrow” and helps parents find available child care spaces in their city. Check out the list for yourself to see what amazing things can be built with technology.

This is just the beginning. In the coming months we want to strengthen the various communities and establish ties with officials, governments and administrations. We want to foster innovation in the field of Open Data, Civic Innovation and Public Services and create fertile collaborations between citizens and governments. Our OK Labs offer this possibility.

So far, Code for Germany has been a blast! Let me express my most heartfelt gratitude towards the community of developers and designers who have contributed so much already. Let’s rock and stay awesome!

Posted by Fiona Krakenbürger, Code for Germany