Shout out to the McNealys! Families that CS together and teach together are inspiring. 

Tell me more about the K-5 computational thinking lessons for the classroom. I see they are aligned to the new Tennessee CS standards. Are these stand alone computer science lessons or integrated? Are you using any national open education resources in this lesson development? I am excited to hear more. 

I applaud your focus on increasing opportunities for elementary students! I am interested in learning more about your focus on teacher identity development. Are there ongoing opportunities for teacher collaboration across the three school districts?

I found your project intriguing as it has the potential to stimulate interest in CS and in particular, careers in the CS field.  I would be curious to know what programming languages you might advocate using at various grade levels.  I am not a computer programmer but am familiar with some of the programming languages available today (Python, Javascript, C+, etc).  Also, how to you train teachers to deliver the CS lessons in their classrooms.  Thanks and great work!

This looks like a great project. I'm sure the kids love the activities you showed.

Have you had much push back from teachers who are not comfortable with computing and/or with giving up subject matter class time for computing? How much uptake have you seen? How much PD would you think necessary for a teacher new to computing to be able to routinely integrate computing content into their classes?

Love the way this is seen as a partnership. What are some of the ways that researchers & district leaders & teachers have learned to work together?

Hi Deborah, we are in our first year so having conversations about CS, what it looks like, and connections with school/district priorities. One goal is to understand each other's context. We are also working together to develop PD that addresses CS integration. I think the PD development will serve as a vehicle to further establish the collaboration and to help us develop school/district plans for CS. I am interested in how research collaborations will look concretely. Thanks for your comment and question!

Terrific project, and thanks for sharing, here on the SFA. I'm curious what steps your project might be taking to connect with industry projects that can inform CT & CS work in K-12 schools. Thanks!

While our RPP district partner (medium size, urban) differs from your rural partners, we are addressing many of the same issues: CS/CT integration at the elementary level, teacher PD, teacher lesson development, economically-challenged students (80% of the district's students receive some form of assistance). Take a look at our video: https://stemforall2020.videohall.com/presentations/1848 and let's find a time to talk.

This is so inspiring.  My family is from Appalachia, so this has all the more meaning for me to watch.  I wonder if there is a way to connect any of your students with students in other places, now that we are so virtual?  We have students in multiple sites and there may be a way that they can do projects together.  If interested, look at our video Just noodling, and either way, thank you for a great presentation.

Hi Eric, thanks for your comments. What a wonderful project and presentation. I love the collaboration and learning across sites. Would like to explore some possibilities in connecting our students with other students. Best,

What a lovely video! It looks like a terrific project. As I watched your video, I wondered about whether any of the PD is delivered online or if it is all in-person. We have a project developing an online PD course in computational thinking for high school teachers, but there might be even greater demand in lower grades. Also, could you describe what you hope to learn from the project's research?

For this planning grant, we hope to learn about teachers' identities in relation to CS, which includes their ideas about CS (practices that define CS), there valuations about CS practices, and their own developing competence related to these practices. A second aspect is about the strengthening of the RPP. Based on what we have learned so far, there seem to be two cases of school districts. We have also identified the constructs of boundary objects, boundary events, and brokers as potentially helpful in our work going forward as we understand these two cases more thoroughly. 

Paul Cobb and his colleagues write about these constructs (drawing on Wenger, 1998) in the context of implementing ambitious mathematics instruction in school districts. I think the ideas are relevant to CS integration at scale. 

Thanks for sharing this project. Can you expound on the types of data this project produces and how that data supports your research questions?