Twice a year, you can expect a newsletter sent to your email inbox to keep you up to date on Computer Science in West Hartford. In Fall, it was all about CS Education Week and exciting things we planned for this year. In this newsletter, we are proud to share what has happened, opportunities for students, and ways you can start learning computer science too.

If you have any questions about what is here or if you just want to talk CS, reach out to Jackie Corricelli. Talking CS and meeting new people are some of her favorite things to do!

Envision CS Team Members include:

• Bristow MS CTE Teacher Dawn Anstett
• Smith Principal Ashley Callan
• District Computer Science Curriculum Specialist Jackie Corricelli
• Hall HS School Counselor Jessica Evans

• Elementary STEM Curriculum Specialist Mary Lestini
• Assistant Superintendent Anne McKernan
• Conard HS CS Teacher Noah Mealy
• Webster Hill Library Media Specialist Joseph Tavera
• Curriculum Specialist Zachary Vose

In Fall 2023, we met as a team to develop a vision statement and district goals. Below, we've included a slide deck "Summary of Work" and a Google Doc that explains our work in more detail.

We will convene again as a District Team in April 2024. We plan to meet twice a year as a District Team and annually with our partner districts (Farmington and Glastonbury) to hold ourselves accountable for goals.

• Develop a collection of ideas for PreK-12 Computer Science Curriculum Integration and begin work toward bringing those ideas to reality. This document will be called a PreK-12 CS Pathway. It will involve feedback from Envision CS as well as other key stakeholders.
• Create and offer free in-house asynchronous training for teachers to pass the Computer Science Praxis and become endorsed to teach computer science.

Starting in Fall 2022, the team of Elementary Library Media Specialists started working with Jackie Corricelli to develop lessons that teach library media and computer science standards at the same time to students. Right now, all grade 3 and 4 students enjoy computer science as part of their learning through their specials time in the library. Students in grade 3 are writing algorithms to find their "just-right" books and are also learning how to use good vocabulary while troubleshooting common issues that happen while using a computer. Students in grade 4 learn about what the system to organize books in the library has in common with how the internet work. Jessica Tamaccio, Joseph Tavera, and Amy Vlosky-Finley were proud to present about their work during CSTA New England and have continued their work this year to include all elementary school grades. Ask students about their learning!

Human Behavior in a Digital World is a course developed from scratch to integrate computer science and social studies at the same time.

This course consists of 4 units:

1. Developing a Digital Mindset
2. National Security and Cyber Warfare
3. Voting, Elections, and Fraud
4. Evaluating Nature of Money

Justin Boucher, Jessica Blitzer, and Dan Marcoux worked with Jackie Corricelli during Summer and Fall 2023 to create this course. It is running at both high schools for the first time in Spring 2024 and is very well-received!

Our eclectic team consists of:

• Jackie Corricelli - District CS Curriculum Specialist
• Jim Crabb - Hall HS World Language Teacher
• Lindsay Goltzman - Quest Teacher at Braeburn & Whiting Lane
• Jamie Kaminski - Bristow MS Art Teacher
• Brittany Leghorn - Bristow MS Social Studies Teacher
• Derek Palmisano - Hall HS Science Teacher
• Joseph Tavera - Elementary Library Media Specialist
• Jessica Tamaccio - Elementary Library Media Specialist
• Amy Vlosky-Finley - Elementary Library Media Specialist

We are about halfway through our prep work and we have done some interesting thinking about what computer science integration might look like at each of our grade levels. We hope to run this CIT again next year with the same goals in mind. By the end of next year, our team will be ready to take the Praxis!

CS Ambassadors are high school students who recognize that not all students feel welcomed to computer science and want to do what they can to fix this. High school students apply to become ambassadors.

Conard CS Ambassadors include:

• Alice Araya
• Jules Capone
• Rachel Deka
• Claire Flynn
• Rachel Haimes
• Collin Hudson
• Kusum Karki
• Katherine Lafferty
• Mia Maldonado Gomez
• Jawahir Mohamed
• Azul Montiel
• Sean Morley
• Elin Morris
• Miles Moynihan
• Voytek Quaraishi
• Christopher Rauch
• Ursap Raut
• Pratiush Regmi
• Kris Rimal
• Harini Sridher
• Lucas Steadman
• Serena Van Der Hulst
• Jacob Weissman
• Harshil Yerrabelli
• Sophia Zheng

Hall CS Ambassadors include:

• Arelys Ballestas
• Corliss Chen
• David Crespi
• Clarice De Seixas Correa Araujo
• Alex Espinoza
• Lauren Fressola
• Benjamin Kosovskiy
• Akshaya Radhakrishnan
• Priya Sinha
• Aarohi Tolat
• Katherine Tsang
• Vitalina Veriienko
• Eden Witten
• Laila Zaffou

One of CS Ambassador's first major project was creating a video to help students see the different CS course options available to them in the following school year.

In addition, each high school chose a separate grade level and school to provide extra support. Hall students chose Smith STEM Elementary. Conard students chose Bristow MS.

In October 2023, students worked with Mrs. Alison Foley to create binary bracelets with Smith families. CS Ambassadors met for several periods during the school day to set up supplies so they were ready to go for that night.

During December, both Conard and Hall CS Ambassadors organized a CS Fair for students. This involved creating trifolds for each course, encouraging club participation, and being present during that week in December to help out students as they were learning more about their CS course options.

Both Hall and Conard staff were super understanding in the cafe as we took over a whole section of the cafe for a few days for each fair and as we met in small teams to prepare for all of our work this year.

Raffle prizes were donated by the CTE departments, social studies departments, math departments, CS teachers, and administration at both schools.

Conard CS Ambassadors first want to thank MARCUM LLP for supporting their field trip from Conard HS to Bristow MS. MARCUM LLP made this trip possible by funding our transportation as well as allowing us to purchase Micro:Bits and Mini-CuteBots.

It is also important to note that this happened as a result of 10 students volunteering their time and believing in this project. The following Conard CS Ambassadors had this great idea, created plans, tested the devices, and prepared for the event: Jules Capone, Claire Flynn, Kate Lafferty, Jawahir Mohamed, Sean Morley, Voytek Quraishi, Chris Rauch, Harini Sridhar, Jake Weissman, and Harshil Yerrabelli.

Check out this video celebrating their work:

• In Spring 2023, adults in our district were asked to fill out a survey about computer science. 378 adults responded to the survey.
• At the same time, middle school students and high school students in computer science classes were also surveyed. We had about 50% of our high school students in computer science represented via the survey data and less than 10% of our middle school students represented.
• Those surveys combined with district data were used to create this investigation of where we were last year in computer science.
• Our analysis uses the CAPE Framework. CAPE stands for Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience. It is a convenient way to organize data results. Typical data analysis looks only at student experience, but there are so many more layers to that. This framework shows these layers.
• The 2023 data is available online here. Also, here is the report as a PDF.
• If you would like a customized slide deck for you to be able to share (there is school level data on the site!) please let me know. If you would like to have me attend a faculty meeting to talk through this data and CS with your team, reach out!
• We expect to repeat this in the 2027-2028 school year.

Capacity (are there enough human resources to teach CS?):

• We have a two-fold increase in adults who said they attended training and we have moved from 1 teacher to 4 teachers district-wide who are endorsed to teach computer science since 2021.
• 87% of elementary school respondents, 94% of middle school respondents, and 95% of high school respondents believe that computer science integration is possible.
• This shows that we have a need for increased training related to both integration and passing the Praxis.

We looked at the class of 2023 and found the students who opted to take at least one CS class in high school. We then investigated the source elementary and middle schools for each student. We compared the students who opted to take CS to the populations at each school.

• Compared to 2021, every elementary school sent a higher percentage of students on to take computer science, between 14-36% MORE, to be precise.
• The majority of students were recommended by teachers to take computer science.
• Not all students are recommended equally. This shows a need to continue helping all students feel welcomed to computer science. We believe that integration in non-CS areas should help as well.

Participation (whether a student opts in to taking a class in CS):

Not every student who is recommended to take CS at the high school level will do so. This data is focused on who opts in and why.

• CS enrollment in both high schools is increasing. Looking at the Class of 2023, 28% of Conard students and 31% of Hall students took at least one CS class.
• High school students report that math department presentations and conversations with math department teachers are the top reason they opt into taking computer science courses. The second highest reported reason are conversations with school counselors.
• Reach is the school with the highest computer science enrollment, with 67% of their population opting to take computer science.
• Students who are most likely to accept recommendations from teachers and counselors are those that are least represented. This shows the power within our conversations with students, at home at at school, to help them to see through cultural/social bias and recognize the importance of computer science. We also believe that integration should help with this.

Experience (what CS is like for students):

Students do not experience computer science equally. This data focuses what CS is like for students when they take the courses as well as our passing rates for AP exams.

• Most school years have shown an increase in AP CS A and AP CS Principles participation. Even with this increase, our passing rates continue to be stronger than state and national averages for both AP CS Principles and AP CS A.
• The majority of student survey responses at the MS and HS indicate that students feel like they belong, are liked, are interested, and feel confident when taking computer science courses.
• Not all students have the same experience. Not all students feel equally liked, interested, and confident. Interestingly, females for example, are still more likely to report that they do not feel like they understand as much even while they are more likely to academically outperform male peers. Another worry in our data is student boredom. We acknowledge we will need to scale up some course experiences as our younger students' experience with CS improves.

Takes about 10 hours of time. Might be a fun summer break activity? To get started, create a free account on IBM's SkillsBuild learning portal.

In Connecticut, we adopted both ISTE and CSTA Standards in computer science. ISTE offers professional development that includes information about tools, ideas to inspire project-based instruction, and formal certifications. Click here to learn more!

CSTA stands for the Computer Science Teachers Association. There is a national and local chapter you can join for free. They content-related professional development for teachers who are experienced or new to computer science. To learn more about these opportunities click the CSTA image or here.

The national conference is in July and there are scholarships available to attend.

CSTA New England took place in October 2023 at the beautiful Storrs Campus of UConn. The event sold out with over 250 attendees from all across New England. The Connecticut CSTA Chapter organized the event and West Hartford was well represented. Several people from the district attended to learn AND we also had a few people presenting at the conference.

Our presenters included:

• Jessica Tamaccio, Joseph Tavera, and Amy Vlosky-Finley represented our team of Elementary Library Media Specialists as they presented about how they are integrating computer science via our elementary library media specials. When they integrate, they teach BOTH computer science and library media standards at the same time.
• Corinne Byrne and Michael McCarthy represented our first-ever group of teachers who did a CIT focused on preparing for and passing the Computer Science Praxis (5652). Their presentation explained how they used teamwork to succeed.

Reimagining CS Pathways is an NSF-funded partnership with the Computer Science Teachers Association, The College Board, and the Institute for Advancing Computing Education. Jackie Corricelli, our District CS Curriculum Specialist was honored to be selected to be part of this group which includes administrators, teachers, business professionals, and researchers.

The goal is to look at where we are now and prepare for our next steps in CS education including new standards, clarifying pathways, and solidifying partnerships.

To begin, we identified foundational CS content. This is content that all students, regardless of pathway, should have upon graduation. Next, we looked at content organized by pathway. The focus of the third meeting was to organize our results and partnerships.

Please expect to see more updates around this work in the Fall 2024 newsletter.

With two buttons and an LED, the original CE for Babies book explores basic computer logic gates, including NOT, OR, AND, XOR and a Latch. The book uses light sensors to detect which page is open and change the operands accordingly.

Quoting Michelle Obama, "You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen."

Sometimes news and social media feeds can make us feel afraid. The world is changing and technology is a big part of that change. It seems like every day there is a news story about AI or some other developing idea and the these stories are often not very positive. If that resonates with you, consider reading: The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI.

Thank you to Jess Blitzer for this recommendation. This book will help you to see how computer science is everywhere and how by knowing this we can be empowered and use it as a tool to make our world better and to improve our learning. Highly recommend!

Great article from Education Week about how social media is a tool we can teach our students to use well. Great metaphor for any technology or tool. Enjoy!

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