Feedback from CSA students

Last week I had Aaron Willford do a "Learner Perspective" activity with my CSA students.  You can find the process here.

I have done this with some subgroup of my students every year since Aaron has offered it.  I choose my CSA students this year because it was my second year teaching the course, I had made changes and I still have some changes I want to make, but I was interested in getting student thoughts.

He broke the results down by hour.



Last year a different person did in my classroom and they were like "here are your results" with nothing afterwards.  I realized I needed to talk through it with someone.  Thankfully Aaron was a captive thought partner.

One of the first things he said was how he felt a big difference between my two sections of CSA.  I, too, have struggled with this.  One hour used to be 36 kids big (now just 30) and the other one is 20.  Aaron even mentioned that the first section seemed almost combative whereas the second one seemed more friendly.  I am glad I am not the only one with this perspective.  I have said this before, but class size does matter.  Having 20 kids allows me to teach and be more responsive in a way I cannot be in my class of 30. 

Another perspective Aaron had was that he only pays attention to the perspectives that had more than 50% of agreement.  I appreciate that to an extent.  BUT if we are to help ALL kids learn, even if 1 kid has an opinion that maybe is an outlier, that can still be considered.  I suppose it makes sense to focus on how can I change my instruction to impact the most students.

This year, I had a lot of "I wonder what the heck they mean by XX" moments.  Aaron could provide some perspective on that based on his conversations with students.  He also recommended I talk to students to get more perspective.  I think that is a good idea in a very structured manner.

Here were some of my biggest surprises and thoughts:

• Students in my 5th hour like to work together, but don't like pair programming.  That is confusing to me.  We actually haven't done pair programming for a while, but we should do it again soon.  I think I need to be more clear on what the expectations are for pair programming.  A few Twitter peeps have made a rubric for pair programming that I am going to start to use.
• 6th hour mentioned the "examples" as being helpful.  When ever my 5th hour struggles a lot, I adjust and do more hand holding with 6th hour.  We might do something together or do a "code-along" or something like that.  I probably need to do that more with my 5th hour too.  I just need to have more extensions for advanced students in my 5th hour.
• Students like test reviews.  I think this goes back to a culture, especially around "AP students" that they think doing a review is a "short cut" to learning the material.   As long as they are still working in class throughout the entire unit, I am ok with giving a review.
• Grading more things.  This came up in both classes.  I think this group is reluctant to do things unless they get a grade for it.  Aaron suggested to have students reflect on their learning for the things I don't collect, and then put their own self-reflection grade in a no-count grade in the gradebook.  I contend that students just get crabby if I don't collect things.  They feel like "why did I do this, if I am not going to get graded on it".  I need to coach them out of that mindset.  For the time being, I think I can do a better job of just collecting more programming tasks.

What's next?  Well here are some changes I can make immediately:

• I think I need to have students reflect on pair programming - I can use Dan's rubric and Aarons google form to collect this reflection.  In general, I think I need to build in more reflection time in general in the class.  One way we can do that is to read this article and use a protocol to have students think through their role in the class.
• I would like to get a bit more meta. I want students to be able to articulate when they are learning.  How they know they are learning.  I have answers to these questions, but I think student's might see some of the class time as being "wasted" because they are spinning their wheels (or for other students, copying and pasting code).  They need to be able to think about their own learning. 
• Talk about what "effective" class time looks like.  I want students to decide what it means to use our class time effectively.  I want to come to an agreement as to what I need to do as the teacher to make effective use of our class time and what they need to do as students to make effective use of the class time.  I think it is also important to be transparent that while they have ideas about learning, which may be valid, at times I will need to pull rank as the expert in learning in the room. 

Ending note: I was talking/tweeting with The Dan Schneider and was lamenting how I have not done enough writing/reflecting this year.  In the spirit of #MTBoS, I decided to #justPostIt and forget about the little details of refining this post.  I started writing this 4 days ago, and now as I am planning my next week, it is time to just post it.

What I am thinking about this year

One of my Code.org co-facilitators asked me this summer, "What are you focusing on this year?", with it being mid-summer I was kind of caught off guard, the school year seemed so far away, but now with the time approaching, I've taken some time to think about the areas I am most jazzed about improving my practice this year.

1. Increase belonging in my classroom.  I think along with this is to think more intentionally about who participates in my classroom and how do they participate with a special focus on under-represented populations.  
1. Levers to pull in this area:
• Highlighting student work and thinking - for highlighting student work, I am thinking of displaying creations in the hall or in technologies outside the classroom.  I also can do a better job of showing student thinking in class.  I pull a lot of ideas from the room, but I want to be more careful on who's voices I amplify in that process. 
• Question of the day - I stumbled upon this deck of questions for students in an advisory class, but I think they could be used in any class to allow students to do some introspection as well as have all-class conversations about topics around identity.
• Provide. Student. Choice. - I need to think about when I can provide students more choices and then do that.  THEN highlighting the different choices students make in a public (validating) way that assigns competence to each student can help students feel a sense of belonging.
• Learn more about introverts - I am currently reading the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cannot Stop Talking.  It has opened my eyes into how much society (and myself) values extroversion over introversion and how we are leaving some fantastic minds un-tapped in that process.  I used to think my goal was to help introverts "become" extroverts, but I need to re-examine that.  I am not done with the book, but I know I need to do a bit more thinking about this.
• Check in with students daily - I think my best year of "connectedness" with students was my first year when I "checked in" student homework by going around the room each day to check it.  It allowed me to say hi to each student and also make a little bit of small talk.  I already meet students at the door each day but sometimes it gets a little backed up and some students take advantage of that time more than others. 
• Talking Points - At a TwitterMathCamp I saw someone demonstrate using "Talking Points" in their math classroom to talk about doing mathematics.  I am wondering if doing something similar in CS about issues of representation in CS classes and industry would help bring awareness to the class about this issue.  I could also see doing this for other topics as well - I think in general adding more structure to classroom conversations can help support all students in having equal voice in discussions.
• Seating charts - Oh seating charts... when teaching math I used to do intentional grouping in heterogenous groups.  When I switched to CS I let students sit where they wanted.  The result was that students got to know less new people.  I also think this lead to some people feeling isolated if they didn't have friends in the class.  This year I am going to do random seating charts every twp weeks.  I think this will allow students to get to know new people but also make it sustainable for me.  I will still allow people to pick partners for group PROJECTS but not for daily work.
2. Data to gather:
• Survey data - This is a little tricky since I feel like asking students "do you feel like you belong here" is a bit off-putting or might lead to inauthentic results.  I also think the term "belonging" needs to be unpacked a bit.  What I want my classroom to feel like is a giant family.  I have had classes that have really gelled like that and it is an awesome feeling.  
• Focus groups - UGH this is a dream of mine.  I would love to get some of my girls together from CS classes and hear their thoughts on belonging in the CS classroom.  Do they feel "othered" in the room?  What deminishes that feeling and what amplifies that feeling?  I would also like to do that of students of color too.  I have no idea of this is logistically possible, but something to look into.
• Student reflections - I am wondering if I could have a day (or part of a day) where we talk about places or communities that they feel like they "belong" in.  It might be that it is when they are with family, or with friends, maybe it is when they are online playing video games, maybe it is when they are in the art studio... I don't know, but I wonder if we can pull out those qualities into the classroom. 
• Student participation - I think there are various ways to measure student participation, all of which I want to explore.  I am making an assumption that when students participate, they feel like they belong. 
2. Increasing collaboration and creativity in programming.  
1. Levers to pull:
• Consider where, how and when to involve more project based learning into my courses - Initially I was thinking of calling this more "Project Based Learning", but really my goal in doing more project based learning is to get at this collaboration and creativity piece.  I don't see PBL being the only way to accomplish this.  In both CSA and CSP this year I want to give some more open projects to students.  Whenever I did that last year, engagement went up and I saw students creativity shine through a bit more.
• Provide. Student. Choice. - Sounds familiar, I know, but it seems to fit here too.
• Raise the ceiling - Provide tasks and projects that allow students to really go ALL out.  This will reduce the "I'm done" effect some students have. 
• Pair Programming! - I am doing it this year with fidelity.  It will increase collaboration, but I am not sure about creativity.
2. Data to gather:
• Reflections - Mainly my own.  I need to think more deeply around a few key questions: How do I know if students were creative?  What does "being creative" look like?  Are there multiple ways to "collaborate"?  Is all "collaboration" verbal?  Who benefits when I value collaboration and creativity?  Who is left out?  What supports can help students collaborate and be creative?  Can I "teach" creativity in isolation?  Should I?  Clearly, I have a lot of questions that still need to be answered here.
• Surveys - Man I love a good survey.  It allows me to hear from all students equally.  In past surveys, students always rank the Unit 3 - Design a Digital Scene as their favorite task.  It is crazy.  It is through this data I am assuming students thrive in collaborative and creative environments. 
• Data from Tasks - I am thinking back to Knowles in how we would look at an assignment and consider what "unspoken" values are being communicated in a task.  I wonder how tasks I provide students with portray the role of collaboration and creativity. 

CSP Feedback, "Belonging", and why I hear "too easy" too much.

I consider myself a fairly reflective teacher.  But in my school there are a lot of "loud" student voices.  There are some students who have been raised to believe that their voice is important and others' who don't see their voice as important. 

While I can observe the class and gather observational data from all students, I get additional data (welcomed or not) from those students with stronger voices.  That makes me really uncomfortable.  On one hand, I value feedback, on the other hand I don't want to modify instruction or curriculum to accommodate purely my privileged students.  I need to know where everyone is.  Google surveys help me get there.  I know that some students still feel uncomfortable with voicing their opinions in a survey format, but at least I hear something from everyone.  

I was really intrigued by this tweet about belonging.

Why are CS students so hard to nudge? A theory for why it’s so hard to promote a growth mindset in CS1 https://t.co/9wXtvTC5A0

— Mark Guzdial (@guzdial) May 7, 2018

In the blog the author says, "We’re going to have to remove the barriers to belonging, self-efficacy, and the sense that students can succeed at CS."

This idea behind "belonging" is something that I have put along "community building".  I did a pretty good job of it in my math classes, and in my smaller CSP classes last year.  This year though, I KNOW I didn't do a good job of it.  

My evidence for this was:

1. Students sat in the same spots all year (their choice each day, but we are creatures of habit...)
2. Students didn't know others' names in the class
3. Some students refused to ask from help from others
4. Some students got super behind

I think in CSP, a huge part of this was a HUGE class first semester with 41 students.  I am NOT letting that happen again.  We should be capped at 36.  I am already at 38(ish) I think next year.  Since administration won't break that into two sections, that means we will be cutting students from the class.  I didn't want to do that last year, and I think all students (and myself) suffered because of that.  I am not letting 39 people down because we won't make another section.  I will let 2 people down who will get cut... but that's a rant for another day...

SO... belongingness... here's how I measured it.  I had students describe their feelings on each of these statements with no "neutral" option.  

When I look at this, I see a lot of things to be proud of.  

• I am happy to see that students felt like they had choices.  This was something I am a very strong proponent of - especially in CS.  Because I am a PLC of one, I am able to insert a TON of choice into the classroom experience.  It is awesome for me - and students seem to see that too. 
• I am actually happy to see so many people feel supported, challenged and successful.  Especially successful.  The number of people who put "strongly agree" for "I feel successful" means that students see themselves of CS.  That's huge.  That's my goal.  Likewise, I occasionally hear that this class is too easy, so the fact that most students reported feeling challenged, also was re-assuring to me. 

I also see some things to dig deeper into.

• While most students felt supported, the number who did not feel supported is much higher than I would like.  I need to see who those students were and look for correlations.  I also think I need to ask this question earlier in the year (perhaps after our first programming unit) to see if there are people who feel unsupported earlier in the year.
• The number of students who felt like they didn't "belong" also is alarming.  Again, I will be checking those students to see how that matches to my perception.
• I also wonder how this breaks down by gender. Since boys out-number girls 3-1, I want to see if looking at female students shifts these numbers at all. 

I also have heard from students this class is too easy.  That infuriates me.  Mainly because I feel like we have substituted "rigor" for "quality learning".  They are not the same.  I literally have students who would rather blow through this material in a semester.  We have other teachers who do that in other content areas which is their choice... but then I think students come to expect that from all AP classes.  Just the other day I was trying to talk some struggling math students into taking AP CSP and they were super interested in it except for the "AP" part.  It was a turn off.  If I called the exact same course CSP, they would have done it.  Any way, here's the results of the survey. 

Kinda surprising!!!  Given all the feedback I hear about this class being too easy, that's not everyone's experience.  It is pretty obvious to me that the vocal students are not in the majority here.  Yes, 31% say it is too easy, but only 2 students seemed actually mad about how easy the course is. 

I actually anticipated more "too easys" given that was what I heard the most of out loud. 

I asked students who felt like it was "just right", "too easy", or "way too easy" two follow up questions.

1. I sometimes hear that "this class is too easy". Do you agree or disagree? Why do you think people say that?
2. Is having a class be "too easy" a bad thing?

Here are some sample responses to the first question:

• "I think it's easy because there's no homework. We usually judge classes on how much homework they give out because most of us can figure the in class stuff out but having a lot of homework ads stress and makes the class "hard".
• It depends on what you put into the class honestly. Sure, some things might be on the easier end, but you can definitely make it harder for yourself depending on what you want to do (especially with projects). For example, our hangman game definitely could have been made in an easier way, but we challenged ourselves and made it harder, which also allowed us to make a more complex game.
• I disagree because there will always be time to challenge yourself like on projects and some code.org levels. The second semester material is much harder, however, it is more interesting. 
• The only reason you hear that is because of the students who take this class tend to be accustomed to high level classes.

Here were some sample responses to "Is having a class be "too easy" a bad thing?"

• I don't think that it is, I think it allows students to focus and do their best work but I think it makes some student lazy. I don't think that the class needs to move faster because time constraints were honestly the most challenging thing. I think students should just be challenged to implement code in a more complex way. 
• Sometimes i felt that this was a very bad thing as we would just be sitting in class not knowing really what to do after we finished projects so we would just work on homework for other classes
• Not really it's not good to have all these "hard" classes having a class that doesn't give that much homework but is still interesting is good.
• Definitely not! This class honestly allows you to take your own route (especially with creativity). Like I mentioned before, it depends on what YOU want to get out of the class. You get what you put into the class. Plus, it's sometimes nice to have a bit of a breather if we're having a few days designated for work time for projects. 

 Reading through all these, I noticed most people who reported it was "easier" were ok with having an "easier" class.  I also noticed a larger push back on the idea of it being "too easy" from the kids who felt like it was "just right".  Students who said it was "just right" spoke passionately about it not being too easy and how "too easy" isn't always a negative.  In many ways, this re-affirmed my course of action with AP CSP.  I am on the right track.  Projects are a great way to differentiate.  I need to make sure STUDENTS come up with a MVP as well as 3-4 extensions.  Adjustments will be made, but it is, at it's core, a solid course.

Finally, as if the world wasn't already telling me to be cool with the course, 3 of my former students have come back and said "wow, AP CSP made my first college CS course so. much. easier."   That feels good.  Students are having better experiences (and, I would argue, feeling that they belong) in college CS classes because of AP CSP - that's a win.

What Ethical standards SHOULD be in place - EthicalCS Day 3

After the weekend, I wanted to put a bow on everything we had talked about.  Going back to this tweet, and more specifically, the whole thread...

I've been wanting to talk to numerous people in this and related fields (eg @lizthegrey, @LeaKissner, @avflox, @anildash, and @amac just to name a handful out of dozens) about this question: Is it time for enforceable ethics in CS?

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) March 19, 2018

... I asked students to develop their own code of ethics for computer scientists.

First, we warmed up with this 60 Minutes video on The Coming Swarm which raises the issues of AI in the military.  It is very different from the data story we were talking about before, but it still (explicitly) raises some ethics questions around computer science.

I asked students to consider "Is automation a good thing or bad thing for wars?".  For the most part, students saw the challenge in this question - it is a "good thing" if we are the ones with the automation, but as more and more people get the technology... it gets iffy.  Through the video and the tweet, I talked about how the atomic bomb was a "good thing" until we saw how horrible it is.  The people who helped create the atomic bomb have some ethical obligation to society, once again, we didn't recognize the monster we were creating.  Cold that be happening right now?

From there we transitioned into talking about ethical oaths.  I gave students this hand out which we read together to connect ethical oaths to something students are already familiar with a bit in the Hippocratic oath.

Looking at Professional Oaths by Kaitie O'Bryan on Scribd

Students were then tasked with writing their own set of ethical laws for computer scientists.  I walked the room while they had this discussion.  It was FASCINATING to watch privilege pop up in these discussions.  One student was adamant that this could be solved if we instead have people pay Facebook to keep their data private.  This started a good conversation around thinking about who all has your data - are you willing to pay all of them?  What does that mean for people who cannot afford to pay to keep their data private?  Is privacy a privilege and not a right?

I could have had 38 different conversations about what students were thinking, but at the end here were some of their more interesting "oaths for computer scientists"

Code of Ethics for Computer Scientists by Kaitie O'Bryan on Scribd

Here were some common themes:

• As we shared them out, it was clear that a lot of the "oaths" were at odds with core business ideas.  They weren't bad rules to live by, but they were also unsustainable for tech companies.
• It was interesting that a lot of students put down something about making terms and conditions easier to read.  This seems do-able and there are precedents for this sort of thing.  Nutritional information was standardized to be easier to read and understand in the US.  Looking at the labeling of cereal boxes gives you the big picture of how "healthy" the food is.  There is also a movement to do this on medication that you get from the pharmacy.  They have labels that are easier to read and again have symbols that show the most important information on it.  There is some movement in this direction with the Creative Commons License labeling. 
• Many students recognized the need to diversify the industry.  It was encouraging for students of all backgrounds (including the white male students) to recognize this.  I realize actually DOING something about it is different than recognizing it, but I think it is a solid first step.
• Students seemed to hold three different stakeholders responsible: corporations, individuals and the government.  It strikes me that this is pretty similar to the financial industry too.  It was a bit surprising that some students placed more responsibility on the individual/consumer.  I wonder if that is the easy way out a bit - to blame the individual, rather than question the system that has led that individual to put be put into that situation.

We shared out some of these ideas and poked at them a bit together.  I had them turn in their sheets so I could read them a bit more.

Finally, after hearing from the Twittersphere, I asked students to complete the following sentance on their sheet of paper:

Ethics in computer science is...

Here were some of their responses:

Next Time Around
If I were to do this again, I think I need to slow down a bit and tell a story and consider a final product.  I thought of the ethics rules as a final product, but students weren't as motivated as I had hoped.  I am wondering if consolidating these into one code of ethics would have helped students fight a bit harder for or against some of these regulations.  I wonder if I could even have them send a letter to a representative, a consumer protection bureau, a researcher, or company to try to convince them to adopt a ethics rule that they came up with.  Perhaps that would make the audience more authentic.

I also think I could down portions of this mini detour.  Having students read the medical ethics and then go straight into developing their own code was a bit abrupt.  I was hoping to prime them a bit for the activity, but I think I should have slowed down and asked students "why do you think this rule was put into place?".  There is a great amount of history behind the rules, and many of them are in reaction to a societal issue, perhaps I could have teased that out of them a bit more.  Then they might be ready to consider what societal issues technology (or the industry) might cause.  I gave them a bit of a list of "things to consider" but some students relied solely on that list.

Another detour of the detour could have been looking at the ethics of the scientists that build the atomic bomb.  Students seem to get the need for ethics in CS, but I think this story might make them see it as imperative rather than a "nice to have" type of thing.

I am curious as to what others do out there!  How do you make ethics come alive in a high school computer science class?  What is fair to expect of students? 

There were certainly times that students expressed frustration that they would rather be programming during this time.  At the same time, I know this is good for students (and perhaps society-at large) to consider as well.

Looking at Facebook's perspective - EthicalCS - Day 2

Continuing on what we did yesterday, I had students turn in their research.  Students had a good range of different articles they read from their options.  I tried to give them a mix of topics for different interest areas.  I was concerned they would find the 3 shortest articles and call it a day, but for the most part students seemed to pick questions that interested them.

Here were their choices:

• Facebook Says Social Media Can be Negative for Democracy
• Big data is going to shape our future cities. Will it treat us all equally?
• Can AI solve the internet's fake news problem? A fact-checker investigates.
• He’s Brilliant, She’s Lovely
• Can Computer Programs be Racist and Sexist?
• ‘Body Hacking’ Movement raises questions ahead of moral answers
• Self-driving cars programmed to decide who dies in a crash
• Amazon refusing to hand over data on whether Alexa overheard a murder

Students filled out this reading guide that asked them to raise their own ethical questions from what they read and also think about who was at fault and who had responsibility to build off what we talked about yesterday.

From there, we listened The Daily podcast of the day which reported on an interview with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. 

It was a nice complement to the previous day's podcast which talked about the Cambridge Analytica side of things more.  

Once again, I created a listening guide to help students stay engaged.  It worked.  It is so clear that you need to put a relevant question that is in the last 15 seconds of what you want students to listen to - as soon as they "get" the last question, they tune out.

One thing I realized is that I listened to these podcasts multiple times to make the reading guide and just to preview them.  Students only heard them once, and while I made the listening guide to help them through the story, it is a complicated story.  At the end of the listening guide, students needed to create a list of "players" or "characters" in this story.  They were eager to put down Mark Zuckerberg, which was fair, but I wanted them to think about who was the individual AT Facebook who actually did something in this story - what types of job titles did they have?

From there we made a character web with how people are connected.  Here was my rough draft.

I wanted student to think about what ethical responsibilities/roles each of these people played.  While I think I talked a bit too much here, I think there would have been an opportunity to have students think about this more themselves.  The tricky thing is that it is a bit of a creative writing exercise - they don't know how companies are typically organized - that there are thousands of departments in Facebook and most likily several of them played a part in this (from sales, to legal, to ad revenue, to the engineers who decide how much data developers have access to... it's a lot).

Finally, I wanted students to see that "using data" has happened forever - in fact, the wise use of data is how Obama was able to put together such amazing campaigns.  They got their data legally, but they used it in similar ways to Cambridge Analyitca.  There is this great MIT Technology Review issue that talks about how big data has "put the soul back into politics" from 2013 after Obama got re-elected.  I showed it to students to A) make the story a bit more balanced, and B) drive home that this has been brewing for a while.  While we were praising big data before, now we are questioning if it is the right thing to do.

On Day 3, I am going to pull away from the data side of ethics and try to put a nice end on the #EthicalCS detour. 

An EthicalCS Attempt - Day 1

Inspired by this tweet (which, BTW, the whole thread is worth reading)...

I've been wanting to talk to numerous people in this and related fields (eg @lizthegrey, @LeaKissner, @avflox, @anildash, and @amac just to name a handful out of dozens) about this question: Is it time for enforceable ethics in CS?

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) March 19, 2018

...and by Saber Khan's #EthicalCS chats on Twitter, I decided to take on a "EthicalCS" detour.  I think it ties directly into AP CSP's global impact piece and seems super timely with the Cambridge Analytica thing going on.

My goals were as follows:

• Bring in real-world situations
• Challenge students' assumptions about ethics in computing
• Show how programmers (and others) are responsible for privacy
• Demonstrate trade-offs with technology

To be honest, I could have made this go in 100 different directions.  There are SO MANY connections to be made here.

Big picture, over the course of 3 days, it ended up looking like this:

1. Listsen to a podcast (then discuss)
2. Have students read articles related to ethics in CS
3. Listen to another podcast (then discuss)
4. Watch a video (then discuss)
5. Develop a "Code of Ethics" of Computer Scientists

I have been listening to The Daily podcast and they had an episode about the Cambridge Analyica story that was concise and, I thought, engaging.  Also learning from videos I have shown, I needed to have a way to hold students accountable to listening.  I gave them a "Listening Guide" where I came up with questions which could be directly answered from listening to the podcast.  We did this in class too which helped with actual completion.

SO... here is how it went.

Day 1: Introduce the Ideas of Ethical CS

On day 1 we listened to The Daily podcast from 3/21.  It talks a bit more about the logistics of the story.  Specifically, it covers how the news broke and who the key players are.  Listen to it, if you don't know the story!

I also had students fill out this reading guide (shown below).  The first questions are all directly answerable from the podcast but I also wanted to give students some lingering questions to think about.





I talked a bit about the difference between "fault" and "responsibility" at the beginning of class.  This was actually something that was raised in my church one week and it really resonated with me.  Will Smith also has a bit on it too, but they take it in more of a personal direction, which, while still good, isn't the direction I wanted to take it.  I described it as, if I find a baby in the middle of a street, it is not my fault the baby is there, but it is my responsibility to do something about it.  I suppose if I knew more about laws I could talk about legal fault, but... I don't.  I asked students to keep in mind "Who is at fault and who has responsibility?" in this story.

For the most part the listening went well with the guide.  After it was done, students discussed the last two questions:

• What was Facebook’s “fault” in this story?
• What was/is Facebook’s “responsibility” in this story?

When reading student responses, it was fascinating to see that most students felt like the only thing Facebook did wrong was not tell the public immediately when the learned that someone had this information that shouldn't have that information.  From most students' perspectives, had Facebook just said "hey, this happened" right away, then they would be in the clear. 

This reminds me a lot of student thinking.  "If I am honest about a bad thing I did, I won't have any consequences".  They were applying that same logic to this situation.  I needed to push back more on this idea of what "bad thing" happened. So, I asked, what was "bad" about this story.  Here were their responses in order:

• Not alerting people their data was stolen
• Selling data after it had been used for academic purposes 
• Not being clear about how the data was going to be used
• Playing on people's fears 
• Note: This was an interesting side conversation about would "playing on people's hopes be any better" - we decided no.

So, we were getting closer to some important ideas. 

That took about 30 minutes total and then I had students take a test.

After the test, students had to choose from 8 different CS-ethics-related articles and fill out a short worksheet on them.

NEXT... reviewing what students researched...

People Different than Me

My church held 4 sessions on Culturally Competency.  As a teacher (and somewhat newer teacher), I have seen a lot of these types of sessions, but this was hands down the best one I have ever done.  It was so well done - very interactive and honest.  In honor of MLK day, I want to share some of that work we did.

One of the activities we did was to take a sheet of paper and fold it into thirds.  We were given 10 M&Ms to place in the center.  This was to represent who I was from an ethnic and racial perspective.

Then we were asked 10 questions.  Some questions included:

• The last person I invited over for dinner was the same or different than me ethnically and racially. 
• The last place I went to get a coffee was owned by someone who was the same or different than me. 
• The last person I talked about politics with was the same or different than me. 

As we thought about those statements, we moved our M&Ms to the most accurate side of the paper.  If the person was different than you, move the M&M to that side, if it was the same, move it to the left.   At the end, this is what my sheet of paper looked like.

That was eye opening.  What was even more severe was knowing that all three of my "different" M&Ms came from the same person.  Specifically, someone who I was dating at the time.  Ouch.

I make decisions that keep me VERY safely inside my comfort zone.  

The true zinger came when one of the presenters, who identified as black, said that her survival and success in this world depended on having all of her M&Ms in the "different" column. 

The fact that I can survive and be successful with all my M&Ms in the "same" column is privilege. 

Now the question is, now what?  I think there is some growth in this awareness, but I feel like awareness is just the very first step.  Is the goal to move ALL your M&Ms to the "different" column?  Is 50% sufficient?  Where do you even start?!

One of the presenters stressed that this is why she doesn't love doing these types of trainings.  To do the work actually necessary to move some of these M&Ms is extremely uncomfortable and risky.  So much so that most people will not do it - even after taking 8 hours of training around cultural competency. 

Right now, for where I am at the "cultural competency" progression, I know raising awareness in myself and in others is a great place to start. I also come back to the idea of "faith without works is dead" which is biblical at it's core, but I think the idea resonates here as well.  I cannot be culturally competent without changing some of my actions.