Hi Renee,
Thanks for viewing our video and commenting.  As the On Site Director for our grant I can see both pros and cons of remote PD.  The biggest pro is that even during a pandemic we were able to offer high level courses to the teachers through the use of Google Classroom and Zoom.  Our teachers would attend a session with their instructor each morning where they learned a concept and were given an assignment or challenge.  They had time to work on their own to complete the work and then came back together later in the day.  This prevented participants from sitting behind a screen all day and kept the workshop hands on. (Material kits were delivered to the teachers prior to the Institute.) One of the hardest parts of the virtual format was troubleshooting in the sessions that required teachers to write code.  The App Inventor course was more difficult than it would have been in person since the instructor couldn't look at the participants device or code and it was more time consuming to assess.  However, each of our participants had positive feedback and all said they planned to implement what they learned into their classrooms.  Feel free to ask any other questions you might have!

Hi Catherine,

     I'm Traci, the On Site Director for the TAN grant.  Gaining administrator support has been a critical point in our implementation process.  We started by meeting with each district's school and district level administrators in their own schools to explain the grant and begin building relationships, not just email communication.  This laid the foundation for our work.  We also took administrators and teacher leaders to Pittsburgh, so they could see South Fayette and view the pathway they have built and start visualizing what that might look like in their district/school.  Each district then completed the CSforALL SCRIPT training where they formed a team which included a district and school administrator, CS teacher, Regular Ed teacher as well as other key stakeholders, such as counselor or media specialist.  This team analyzed the vision for their pathway and wrote a vision statement, completed an analysis of their current CS program using the SCRIPT rubric and then set both long and short term goals.  These foundational structures let administrators see and be involved in the vision building, planning and implementation process. We now meet with the administrative team monthly to communicate, plan and stay connected in the work going forward. They have teacher leaders that they too meet with monthly to keep communication flowing.  We truly believe that the initial work spent in building relationships with the administrative team was a critical piece in the successes we have had and what kept us moving steadily along during the rocky days of the pandemic.  Feel free to ask any other questions!

Hi Jaime -

Thanks for your kind words and interest in the project! 

Linked here is last year's summer PD offerings, organized by grade level. 

You'll see some of the usual suspects such as Scratch, AppInventor, and HummingBird Robotics, plus some newer areas (for the middle school level) such as Data Science. 

Integration has been a challenge, esp. with the ongoing remote learning in both districts.  Some of the physical tools (e.g., Sphero & Hummingbirds) simply weren't all tenable to integrate as we originally conceived.  But others such as Scratch certainly were.  As far as this element of integration on grades 3-8, our priority this past academic year was for KY teachers to (a) develop & share individual lesson plan concepts integrating CT, (b) align these lessons to KY CS/ tech standards, and (c) submit sample student work for potential CT endorsement using Digital promise's micro-credential platform in computational thinking.  These three elements required peer coaching (can explain more here, if you'd like), but also a collective focus on specific competencies (e.g., using algorithms, working with data, etc.-- by looking at these competencies, KY teachers were more able to unpack CT as a series of interrelated concepts and find out where these may overlap with their own current academic disciplines/ instruction.  For example, a music teacher who was originally only aware of algorithms as a concept began to understand them specifically in terms of alternating musical sequences and had his kids create and remix "looped compositions" in Scratch.

Hope this helps some -- btw, would also like to learn more about your current work and your own overlap with our efforts!  

Shad - Great to get your message!  Your work with KY teachers in the fundamentals of Scratch as well as hands-on work with Sphero has been a huge part of the PD-- excited to connect again this Spring and Summer for Round #2!

Hi Kevin,

     I'm Traci, the On Site Director for the TAN grant.  One aspect that makes our project unique is that each district went through the CSforALL SCRIPT process.  The first part of the training is to identify the values that make such a pathway important for your district.  These values include: Personal Agency/Joy and Fulfillment, Economic & Workforce Development, Competencies & Literacies, School Reform & Improvement, Equity & Social Justice, Citizenship & Civic Engagement, as well as Technological, Social &Scientific Innovation.  Our participating districts identified the top 3-4 values that were most important for their students and wrote vision statements based on these core needs.  This guided their work in setting long and short term goals that are evaluated quarterly.  One common value between our districts was the need for Economic & Workforce Development Opportunities since the decline of the coal industry has greatly impacted our communities.  As a result, the administrators and school leadership teams met with local workforce development groups to open up a discussion that led to some positive relationships.  One district has started a School of Innovation for HS students that offers pathways such as: CS, Pre-Engineering, Heavy Machinery, Law and Criminal Justice, Agriculture and Health Sciences.  It's amazing how the SCRIPT process brought various stakeholders together to plan what is best for kids and the future of work in east Kentucky. The SCRIPT process can be used with any district and will assist the teams in developing pathways that are unique to both rural and urban systems.  We are also very mindful of the cultural capital that the region offers.  The districts are creating their own pathways that are unique to their students and teachers and mindful of their individual resources.  Quinn may have more to add, but I hope this helps in some way.  We would love to hear any tips or suggestions you might have for us!

Thanks Traci! So in what way could you say a CS pathway in particular for an east Kentucky district could be unique? Does the CS pathway reflect specific aspects of the economic and workforce opportunities in the area?

Hi Kevin,

In addition to Aileen's explanation of their pathway model, our teachers are allowing students to identify and work toward solving real world problems through their CT/CS projects.  For example, one group of students worked with a local donut shop to make donut cutters in the shapes of letters or numbers.  They worked with 3D design software and their 3D printer to get the designs just right.  The owner was happy to communicate his needs with the students and they were passionate about getting the prototypes as accurate as possible.  We have also seen the excitement for students as they work on entrepreneurial projects.  The CT/CS skills allow students to imagine themselves starting businesses that can improve the economy and provide needed goods or services for their community.  By introducing students to CT/CS in Primary grades and building upon those skills each year, they will be ready to take higher level CS courses in HS.  I am the Director of Digital Literacy for Bit Source, a software development company who trained former coal workers to code.  These guys are now software developers who have shown that tech jobs can happen in Appalachia.  While the structure of the South Fayette pathway could be replicated in any rural or urban area, we are working hard to design lessons that address the individual goals of our districts.  

Hi Lance,

     I'm very familiar with The Challenger Learning Center in Hazard.  Tom Cravens and I work collaboratively in offering Remake Learning Days in east KY.  We also work together in offering support to an entrepreneurial education program in our region.  Thanks for suggesting closer collaboration between the Center and our grant.

Hi Channa!  Thanks for stopping by and for your great questions.  

In addition to support from core project team members, district tech leads and resources like "boosters," we'll be relying on a cadre of STEAM/CT teacher-leaders from each district (several teachers from each of the 10 schools) to be able to provide peer support in lesson implementation.  By next fall most/all of these teacher-leaders will have visited South Fayette School District, attended/TA-ed the 2020 and 2021 KY summer institute, and have designed / implemented / led at least some CT activities in their class.  And as Quinn may have mentioned, to date, 8 among them have earned a micro-credential (during the pandemic, no less) that demonstrates their competency in teaching about data or algorithms in their classroom.  

The district leads have also created a CT lesson capture tool that would support standards-aligned lesson-plan sharing.  Answering questions in the submission form may help teachers reflect more explicitly about CT competencies that are they would be promoting.  Using lessons from the lesson bank (from a near peer who can be contacted) might support teachers in their implementation as well.  We will see.  

An important measure of success of the program is whether there are healthy beginnings of a durable pathway by the end of the project.  We'll look for evidence, e.g., that: standards-aligned integrative CT lessons were created, implemented, and placed into an initial curriculum map; progress was made towards each districts' CSforAll SCRIPT vision and goals; the summer institute will continue to occur after the project; teachers and leaders maintain intentions and have concrete plans to continue and grow in their practice.  

Kentucky very recently revised their technology standards to be very similar to ISTE's, including a dimension of "computational thinker."  Their CS standards (although not required by all teachers) are fairly new as well.  We have consulted these standards to design the Summer Institute courses, boosters and lesson capture tool, hoping to support teachers in their efforts to align with them.  

Thank you again for your questions.  

Best,

Emi (co-PI)

Hi Liz,

Thanks for stopping by, and for your question!  In some classrooms, we hope to conduct some student surveys similar to what Aileen and Dr. Cassie Quigley (University of Pittsburgh) have been doing in their PA Smart project.  We'll be discussing this possibility with our partner districts, especially the survey sampling and topics, after the upcoming Summer Institute where teachers will have designed lessons for next school year.  At that point, we will have a better sense of what activities are likely to be implemented at which grade levels (& dosage), which would give us a better sense of which students to survey about what and why.  

I completely agree with you about the SFSD team, Toby!  We've been so fortunate to have them as mentors and partners.  Congratulations on your huge successes with the IC4 project -- the excitement and engagement of the participants jumps out of the page through the video and lively comments.