If this is your first visit to this page, please read the
Introduction
for an overview of what the workshop is about, why it might be relevant
to your teaching, and what other high- and middle-school
teachers have said about the approach.
Here's the one-paragraph flyer blurb about
the workshop.
If you're interested in attending, please
read more and sign up for
a workshop.
If you've already registered to attend, please see
Local Information for directions, schedules, travel
tips, reimbursement rules, etc.
I ran similar workshops in July 2002 and July 2001, as well as condensed versions of the workshop in June, 2000 (8 hours) and January, 2001 (2 hours).
On the first day, I'd like participants to fill out a brief on-line survey so I know how many people teach
high school, middle school, etc, how many people teach what subjects,
and what you're expecting from this workshop.
At the end of each day, I'd appreciate it if participants would fill out
another brief on-line survey (built into DrScheme) to give me some
feedback on what topics made sense to you, what was unclear, etc.
By the way, these forms are interpreted by a CGI script written in Scheme, and I
analyze the data using another Scheme program.
The workshop will run each day from 9:00 AM (8:30 for breakfast) to 5:30 PM, with breaks for lunch, coffee, fresh air, etc. On Monday, please try to be there a little early, to allow time for getting lost, introductions, and paperwork.
| Day | Morning | Afternoon | Evening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday, 7/21/03 | Evaluating expressions; defining variables and functions; design recipe | Booleans and conditionals; another design recipe; symbols | |
| Tuesday, 7/22/03 | Design recipe, version 3; structures; graphics, games, and coordinates | Mixed data types; Design recipe, version 4 | |
| Wednesday, 7/23/03 | Lists and their templates | Lists of complex data | Pedagogic and curricular issues |
| Thursday, 7/24/03 | Trees | Expressions as trees | Applications, databases, Web, CGI, etc. |
| Friday, 7/25/03 | Mutual recursion | Functional abstraction; miscellaneous topics |
The software we're using, DrScheme, is available for free download for Mac, Windows, and Unix.
The textbook I use for my first-semester course, and from which this workshop is excerpted, is How to Design Programs, by Matthias Felleisen et al at Rice University. The book is available in print from MIT Press, but it will remain available on-line for free.
Although Scheme's syntax is extraordinarily simple for a computer language, it is still a new language, and you'll need to learn the vocabulary. Here's my page on the minimal Scheme language, covering spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms.
I've summarized the Design Recipe(s) covered in this workshop, and some additional ones covered in my first-semester course. Use them!
You might also be interested in Jack Crouch's CS1 Web site. Jack Crouch teaches a 9th-grade course on beginning programming, using Scheme, DrScheme, and How to Design Programs.
I've set up a folder for programming examples, many of them developed by high school teachers.
Not automatically. I can give you a lovely Certificate of Participation, specifying the subject and duration of the workshop; for many high school teachers, this has been sufficient to get in-service credit from their school districts.
If the certificate isn't enough for your employer, you can register for a regular Adelphi course, CSC 591 ("Graduate Independent Study in Computer Science"). This has the disadvantage that you have to fill out an application form (ask the admissions office for a "non-degree application") and pay fees, but it'll get you real live graduate credit.
| Credits | Cost (I think!) | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $840 | Complete the workshop |
| 2 | $1430 | ... and develop some lesson plans and assignments |
| 3 | $2020 | ... and implement the curriculum in your own classroom, and report on the results |
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0010064. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.