Transforming High School Computer Science: The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) - DLS Talk by Daniel Garcia, UC Berkeley

Hugh Dempster Building (6245 Agronomy Rd.), Room 110

Please Note:  The date of this talk has changed.

Speaker:  Daniel Garcia, Teaching Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Title:  Transforming High School Computer Science: The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC)

Hosts:  Steven Wolfman and Rachel Pottinger, UBC Computer Science

Abstract:

BJC was chosen as one of the initial pilots for a new, upcoming non-majors "Advanced Placement: Computer Science Principles" course to broaden participation in computing to traditionally underrepresented groups.  The goal of the "CS10K" effort is to prepare 10,000 new high school CS teachers to teach the AP course by 2016.  We were funded from the US National Science Foundation to provide summer workshops for 100 HS teachers nationwide, and 100 more in New York City.  Both the College Board and code.org have featured and endorsed our curriculum.

This talk will introduce the AP CS Principles framework, our BJC course, the engaging, blocks-based Snap! development environment (based on Scratch), our year-long edX course, and some of the things we are doing to move the needle and bring fun, engaging, and powerful introductory computing ideas to the world.

Bio:

Dan Garcia is a Teaching Professor (aka Senior Lecturer with Security Of Employment) in the Computer Science Division of the EECS Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and joined the faculty in the fall of 2000. Dan received his PhD and MS in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2000 and 1995, and dual BS degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1990. He was chosen as an ACM Distinguished Educator in 2012.

He is active participant in SIGCSE (having presented every year since 2001), and is currently working with the Ensemble computing portal and ICSI Teaching Privacy research projects. He serves on the ACM Education Board, the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles Development Committee, is the faculty champion for the local CSTA chapter, and the faculty co-director for BFOIT, a wonderful Berkeley K-12 outreach effort.

He has taught (or co-taught) courses in teaching techniques, computer graphics, virtual reality, computer animation, self-paced programming as well as the lower-division introductory curriculum. He is currently mentoring over seventy undergraduates spread across four groups he founded in 2001 centered around his research, art and development interests in computer graphics, Macintosh OS X programming, computational game theory and computer science education. He recently co-developed a computing course for all freshman engineers, as well as a full course renovation of the venerable introductory computing course for non-majors, "CS10 : The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC)".