Bridge Day, Teragrid
A Special Event for Teachers
June 26,2009
The secretary of education and the president want transformational learning. We have examples of transformational learning in the high performance computing fields. But a lot of people are still stuck in an analog world as we move into the future of digital. Computational thinking is something that has to be considered. Truthfully we have closed our eyes to new types of learning in many ways through the era of no child left behind and we have left teachers stuck in the mud , stuck in the shallow end of computing if they compute at all.
Many teachers are stuck in the shallow end in the world of computing. Poor professional development and or awareness raising has been one problem. But another problem has been that women and girls traditionally have not been a part of the computational sciences. That is a part of the problem.The Teragrid outreach EOT want to start an initiative to bring computational thinking into the K-12 schools.I am not a computer scientist, or a computer science teacher, but I have been fascinated by the supercomputing field since I accidentally stumbled into it, at the end of my classroom teaching career. We don’t want the learning to be accidental or gone missing for all teachers. So we created a special bridge day for them.
Do you think most teachers know? Do you?I did not!
I went to the Access Center in Arlington, near the NSF building and found that I had no idea of the new ways in which technology was emerging. I have been involved ever since, I try to make myself useful to help teachers bridge the gap. I hope that I don’t annoy the PhD’s in the field when I point out to them that some teachers are still standing in an analog world, with students who have grown up digitally. What I mean is that we want teachers to be better prepared to share content and knowledge using a variety of methodologies and deep knowledge. There are outreach groups in NCSA and in the various labs. But most teachers do not know the programs. We have been restricted thinking well we will teach the AP students. Meanwhile the rest of the world improves their outreach to all students
We need broadening participation in the computer sciences.
American children are capable of learning at substantially higher levels — many at levels previously expected only from those pinpointed by the education system as especially gifted or talented. Evidence of this has come from research in cognitive science, educational achievements of other countries, and pioneering efforts in American schools. After years of research and tons of documents, it is clear that the children educated in this country can learn more, faster, and that technology can be the key to higher levels of achievement. But we must not wait until high school to start the kinds of thinking that are needed.
When computer technologies and the vast resources of the Information Superhighway are introduced into academic settings, children get excited. They dig in and begin to locate information, and in the process they learn — not by memorizing or regurgitating, but by doing. They become archaeologists unearthing hidden treasures of times gone by and trying to figure out how past civilizations lived. They learn about the environment by collecting data and comparing their findings with others online. They improve writing skills by asking questions and expressing their views to others — both subject experts and peers looking for answers. They consume what the Information Superhighway has to offer, but they frequently add to its resources with their own creative efforts, making additional resources available for others to use or simply enjoy. But few are doing computational thinking. I have been exploring ways to teach computational thinking with Bob Panoff at http://www.shodor.org There are many examples of curriculum for middle school on the site.
How to Transform and Race to the Top with Computational Thinkng?
I am sure at times I make real scientists unhappy. I ask questions, pursue the reason that teachers don’t know HPC high performance computing, and are afraid, or not aware of it. I cringe when someone tells me about the latest greatest 2.0 application , but I do find them useful. I know about the participatory culture. But we need to bridge a gap .Supercomputing is a whole different arena. I would give you a definition , but the definition changes with the technology.
Here is what wikipedia says about Supercomputing.
“A supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer
So what’s the Teragrid?
http://www.teragrid.org
While you are working along with 2.0 applications and 3.0 new technologies are coming in the high performance computing areas that will change the face of technology. Many of the projects we learned about are in research mode, but each has some component to serve education. An example is the science gateways. But first, lets define Teragrid.”http://www.teragrid.org”
TeraGrid is an open scientific discovery infrastructure combining large computing resources (including supercomputers, storage, and scientific visualization systems) at nine Resource Provider partner sites to create an integrated, persistent computational resource.
Deployment of TeraGrid was completed in September 2004, and as of April 2006 provides over 100 teraflops of computing power and over 3 petabytes of rotating storage, and specialized data analysis and visualization resources into production, interconnected at 10-30 gigabits/second via a dedicated national network.
TeraGrid is coordinated through the Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG) at the University of Chicago, working in partnership with the Resource Provider sites. Funding for TeraGrid is provided by the National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure. Access to TeraGrid is available through scientific peer review, at no cost, to any academic researcher in the US.
We used a variety of methods to share , to excite, engage, involve, immerse, and let teachers evaluate some of the rich offerings we have within our programs.
They did everything from practicing the use of algorithms, learning methods to make problems visual, to solving computational problems using models.
The teachers saw little Fe, a parallel computer and had hands on with it. It was demonstrated. Furthermore they were introduced to programs that they could use
in their classrooms.
Jan Cuny’s Scaffolding forBig Ideas in Computing
1. Computing is a creative activity that draws on a wide variety of fields, such as the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, social sciences, business, and the arts.
2. Abstraction is a central problem-solving technique in computer science.
3. Algorithms are the essence of computational problem solving.
4. Writing programs is an integral part of solving computational problems.
5. Theoretical and practical limitations affect what can be solved computationally.
6. Computing enables and empowers innovation, exploration, and the creation of knowledge.
7. Computing drives and is driven by economics, culture, society, and ethics.
Some resources:
Concord Consortium www.concord.org
WebMo- www.webmo.net/index.html
CMIST (computational modules in science teaching) www.nrbsc.org/cmist
NDSL resources for K-12 Teachers http://nsdl.org/resources_for/k-12.shtml
HPC University www.hpcuniv.org
Open Science Grid www.opensciencegrid.org
CSERD http://cserd.nsdl.org
National Science Digital Library (NSDL) www.nsdl.org
SciVee- www.scivee.tv
Shodor a national resource for computational science education www.shodor.org
Ralph Regular School of Computational Science www.rrscs.org/k12.shtml
And you thought being able to do a Ning, a Wiki, and being in the cloud was awesome? We wanted to share our resources.
The Education Program?
We did in wonderful ways.
Transforming High School Computer Science:
CS / 10,000 Project
Jan Cuny National Science Foundation
6/10/09
“If we are to build a globally competitive 21st century workforce and maintain our leadership in IT innovation, there is no stage in the academic pipeline more crucial than high school. It is true that students begin to lose interest in computing much earlier, probably in grades 4-5. Yet engagement programs for middle school students will not be effective if those students have no further opportunities during their four years of high school. Likewise, new and reinvigorated college computing programs cannot have a significant impact if there are too few interested and qualified students to show up at their doors. There are clear indications that college programs are already impacted. Since 2000, the percentage of incoming college freshman who intend to major in computing has decreased more than 70%; for women, the figure is closer to 80%. While some universities believe this trend may be leveling off or even turning around, the HERI data – a survey of incoming college freshman which has been extremely accurate in predicting degree attainment after four years – declined still further in 2008, with just 1% of students intending to major in computing. ”
“High schools are key, yet they teach computing inadequately. Historically, computing classes taught keyboarding, and were consigned to Vocational Education. Surprisingly many schools continue that designation, which often, though not always, results in instruction in a very basic computing literacy course on a track rarely taken by college-bound students. A student in LA described the computing course at her high school as, “It’s like they make them type… the students actually just type stuff and then they copy it and copy, paste, copy, paste.” With the exception of the Advanced Placement (AP) CS course, few high schools offer any computing courses with college preparatory status.”
Put Your Toe In the Water and Dive In
You may be lucky enough, or determined enough to experience some hard fun at the SC09 conference in Portland. http://sc09.supercomputing.org/
You can learn about the education program here.
http://sc09.sc-education.org