Robotics Initiatives: In 2011 and 2012, Gray led one and two day robotics training workshops for middle and high school students. To get this robotics program started, Gray approached the superintendent of Tuscaloosa City Schools. After speaking with Gray, the superintendent wanted to bring robotics to his schools. They sent out invitations to all Tuscaloosa City Schools to participate. Elisabeth Davis, the assistant superintendent of Tuscaloosa City Schools, said that the district’s relationship with the computer science department at the University of Alabama had not always been productive. She said that from the district perspective, there was little understanding of the importance of technology. With a new superintendent, this changed.

In 2012 and 2013, Gray and his team visited nine elementary, middle and high schools to teach robotics. In robotics trainings for teachers, which are usually for teachers with no previous experience with robotics, teachers learn through both instruction and hands on experiences with the robots. Elisabeth Davis said, “[The teachers] said that [the robotics training] was great, the whole day of PD was hands on, they enjoyed it, that they learned a lot, and they had no idea that this was a lot of what CS was.” Gray and his PhD student Amber Wagner also shared robotics lesson plans with teachers.

Click to watch a video about the robotics program

More information about the robotics program

Amber Wagner on robotics:

A couple years ago when we first started we worked with the local magnet school and we taught two different elementary classes once a week for six to eight weeks, and we were there for a whole class period. We would teach them for the whole class period and they did really well and went on to compete in the robotics competition where they did well. We also did a teacher workshop that semester where we had a whole day where a bunch of teachers came in, we showed them how to use the robots, we sent them home with a loaner robot that they could play with and use in their classrooms. Dr. Gray did something similar last year and then this year, this spring, to ramp up for the competition, we went out to probably eight schools once a week for a class period for six weeks.

Summer Camps: Gray and Wagner, along with Jonathan Corley (a CS PhD student at the University of Alabama) will teach middle school and high school computer science camps this summer (2013). Topics include game programming with Scratch, programming with Java, App Inventor and Robotics. Learn more about these summer camps.

Partners have provided vital financial and motivational support: Gray and his team at the University of Alabama have partnered with the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), UTeach, and local schools. Exxon-Mobile as well as other large companies funded the State of Alabama to increase the presence of AP education specifically. Gray also has support from Google’s CS4HS program and mentioned that this support was helpful in laying the groundwork for his current NSF proposal to train teachers to teach CS Principles. The University of Alabama also provides Gray with facilities. Chris Stephenson, the executive director of CSTA, as well as Tim Bell (the founder of CS Unplugged) gave talks at Gray’s schools and at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama, which increased interest in computer science. One of Gray’s main collaborators is Carol Crawford at A+ College Ready. They collaborate on the current NSF grant to train 50 new AP CS Principles teachers.

Davis on working with the University of Alabama as a partner:

It's a great partnership, it's also a way to get the University of Alabama name out to kids at a young age. It also gets kids ready for whatever they're going into because we've been told by the University specifically that our kids aren't ready – that they don't have the general math skills, but beyond that they don't have the problem solving skills. Working as a team, collaboration, teamwork and higher order thinking skills- our kids don't have them and our teachers don't know how to teach them, and they don't realize they're doing that they do learn those skills through this type of program. So it's a win/win for them, but it's a win/win for us. The University comes in and provides the training, the support and the competition.

Personal connections with local teachers: Gray has direct connections with every AP CS teacher in Alabama. He said that these personal connections help to network across the state. Gray says,

It has to come back to the teacher, so none of this survives if the teachers don't have the passion to take the things that they see and integrate it into their own curriculum.

Selling CS to local school districts: In the case of Gray’s K-12 robotics training, he approached a local superintendent who was enthusiastic about the idea and sent out invitations for his schools to participate. Davis said,

Our superintendent is very supportive, our CSFO (Chief School Financial Officer) is very supportive. He is just excited that we finally have computer science in our system.” Gray described his work as acting like a “door-to-door salesman.” He visits 20 high schools and middle schools per year and presents slides that introduce students to CS and information about CS careers.

Grassroots efforts to get students (and their parents interested in CS): Gray described the importance of increasing student and parent interest in computer science to further his efforts. He said that this interest often gets the attention of administrators. To get the attention of students, Gray visits about 20 schools per year to do a 45-minute to three-hour presentation. He shows students how to use App Inventor to create an app that controls a robot. He said,

If you have a lot of students that are on the edge of their seat trying to understand how that works, and it's real understandable, it's not magic, it's something that's easy to do, and then they want to know more.

Gray on grassroots efforts:

About ten years of knocking on doors, there have been two strategies. When you find your superintendent and can get your foot in the door there, and you find someone really open, that's an easy sell. If not, I would go straight to a grassroots effort, and it was not deceptive but I was trying to go from the bottom up. Get the students interested which drives the parents, and then once we did that we got invited to a PTA meeting and then we got invited also to the board of education for that school's monthly meeting and we were able to talk a little bit about that. So in that case it's driven from the bottom up. Teachers or students start to demand this or start to get excited about it and that drives the administration to take note. So that's been one tactic, and even in Birmingham there's two school systems that are rivals, and we'd go to one and say "hey, we just spoke to so-and-so," and then go tell the other, and they immediately wanted to do the same because they can’t have the other one get one up on them. So using a competitive approach to get them going, but it's either top-down if you've got the superintendent or the administration knows what they're talking about, or you have to do bottom up if you're in a school system that the administration is nodding their head yes but not taking any action so you need to from the populace get that going.

Formal agreements: To address the issue of a lack of teacher engagement, Gray asks teachers sign a formal agreement that they will remain engaged in the program and in some cases, even lead the program after a few years. Gray explained that many grants require this kind of commitment and this kind of agreement helps make sure that teachers are invested in the program.

Use your resources: Gray and Wagner mentioned the value of several computer science organizations including Code.org, CSTA, NCWIT and SIGCSE.

Offer engaging professional development opportunities for teachers: Crawford discussed the importance of designing professional development for teachers that is both useful and engaging. She spoke about plans for an upcoming professional development experience to train AP CS Principles teachers.

Crawford on PD for teachers:

I'm envisioning a good part of the time will be spent in the teachers actually developing lesson plans, developing projects, and implementation strategies so that at the end of this four days we at least have a scope and sequence and some lessons that they’ll be able to take back to their classrooms and implement immediately. We don't expect it to be all Jeff and others delivering and them listening. We really want to get the teachers actively engaged in product development. We have asked them to work with us during the rest of the summer to -- not face-to-face, but to pick out something that they feel really comfortable with and do some homework assignments focused on developing additional materials. We will bring them back during the school year for two more days to ask, okay, what did you teach? How did it work? What do we need to tweak? We will move on to maybe the next nine weeks of the course in that two days. We don't think our PD goals can be accomplished in a four-day time frame. We will continue to work with our teachers through webinars and talking with them through Google hangouts, we also want to use the Community of Practice that's part of the CS10K project. With A+ College we have either content specialists on staff with us or teachers that have proven to be very good in their craft, serve as mentors to other teachers. So this first group of eleven teachers we are grooming them to take that role with the next 40 teachers that we bring on board. So they're going to be our whiz kids and master teachers as we build the CS teacher ranks.

Capture student interest: Wagner spoke about how students believe in stereotypes about people who study computer science and feel that taking computer science courses is not for them. Wagner believes that showing students how computer science can be exciting is a good strategy for overcoming this stereotype issue.

Wagner on student interest:

When we go into the schools, I think there's a problem with getting the kids over the stereotype that CS is not cool, that it's somebody sitting at a computer by themselves all day every day. Getting them over that stereotype, but it's kind of a good thing about robotics, once they get that robot in their hand, they start playing with stuff, those kids get so excited. I’ve seen these kids, they walk in the classroom like they're really really cool, especially the high school students. They're cool kids, and they want to act like it's no big deal, and then they get the robot and there's smiles and they're talking and they're asking questions and they get really into it.

Provide teachers with computer science teaching resources: As a prior teacher, Wagner realizes how busy teachers are and how little time teachers have to plan classes. She said,

If [teachers] have to build a whole new course from scratch, create all the curriculum themselves, that causes them issues, some hardship. One of our goals is to connect them with other teachers and with existing curriculum to save these teachers some development time.

Lack of sustainability: Gray explained that once funding of a program ends, the program can be in danger of ending. He said that it can be a challenge to involve teachers in the program in a consistent way.

Gray on sustainability:

Sustainability has always been the challenge. And then just finding the kind of teacher you need who has that excitement and passion as well and doing it for the right reasons. That's been the main challenges. It's kind of frustrating when you know that we can only do this two or three times per session, so we do it for two years, and we hope the teacher will take over, but if they’re back grading papers and not paying attention and we have no mechanism to bring them up and engage them, that's the main challenge.

Balancing Responsibilities: Gray has many responsibilities as a professor at the University of Alabama. His challenge is to balance a teaching load and working with PhD students with his outreach efforts. He said,

My challenge is I have to wear two hats, find a way to scale this [effort in computer science education] even further and also keep my research pipeline going. This all started as a hobby and just took off.

Gray will run three computer science camps for students in July as well as two training sessions for teachers in June. One of his main challenges is managing all of these responsibilities.

Addressing confidence and motivation issues in new computer science teachers: Gray often works with teachers to train them in robotics and he will be training 50 STEM teachers over the next three years to teach CS Principles. He is concerned that the STEM teachers who have no background in computer science will lack confidence and motivation in teaching the course.

Teacher certification: Gray noted that there are issues with CS professionals receiving certification to teach computer science at the high school level. Gray understands that CS professionals don’t necessarily have the skills to teach in the classroom, but he feels that these professionals have to jump through many hoops to get the appropriate certification.

Lack of graduation requirements: Currently there are only 10 states that accept computer science as a graduation requirement. Davis said that it would be very challenging to have computer science as a required course in Alabama. As of May 2013, Gray is meeting with the Alabama State Department of Education on this issue. They are hoping to classify CS as a permissible elective and then make CS a graduation requirement.

Misconceptions about computer science education: Wagner noted that a barrier for furthering computer science education is that teachers and administration have many misconceptions and misunderstandings about computer science. Wagner also spoke about the issue of stereotypes among students and that students think that computer science means sitting in front of a computer all day and means working with Microsoft Word or Excel.

Start slow: Gray began summer computer science camps in 2004 with only five students. He said,

If I’d tried to grow that to what we have now, I probably would have failed. So each year, I pushed it a little bit more, and over ten years you get the word out eventually.

Gray explained that there is a lot involved in dorm-based camps in particular, including planning social activities and hiring assistants.

Cultivate opportunities for sustainability: Gray said that so many programs end because there is not continued support in terms of funding and personnel.

Understand the context of a K-12 teacher: Gray spoke about the challenges that K-12 teachers face and how important it is to realize this from a higher education perspective.

Gray on teaching:

The real eye-opener I’ve had is how challenging it is to be a K-12 teacher. So I think a lot of my colleagues, research professors, have no idea what goes into being an everyday teacher. So I’ll go out and occasionally run these all-day sessions where a school will ask me to give a talk to 6 classes, and by the end of the day I’m worn out, I can't speak anymore, I’m tired, I need to go home and lay down, and I teach right now, one course a semester and I complain that it's too hard. Teachers we work with are doing that six times a day.

Understand the context of the university professor: Gray spoke about some common misconceptions people may have about university professors and the context in which they work. He said people misunderstand that professors only teach classes. He explained that he has many other responsibilities, including securing funding for his work. He also said that one challenge professors face is a lack of understanding of how to teach content. He said,

Just because [professors] know CS doesn't mean we know how to teach it at [the high school] level. It's kind of presumptuous of me to think that just because I have a PhD in CS, I am an expert on how to teach CS.

Build trust with school districts: Crawford spoke about the importance of collaborating with school districts to build trust. She said,

In general I think you've got to build a level of trust with the districts. You've got to figure out who the decision makers are, you have to be available to talk to them, willing to listen to their concerns and understand where their pressures are.

Keep it cheap: Wagner recommends looking for less expensive tools such as open source software or free resources such as Kahn Academy. Without a high price tag, efforts in computer science are more likely to be approved in schools.

Believe that students can achieve: Wagner believes that there is a tendency to simplify computer science to the point that it isn’t interesting. She said,

I think that some people are afraid to use a more sophisticated programming environment such as Eclipse or Visual Studio with first time programmers when really it doesn't faze them; they're used to applications like Microsoft Word with lots of buttons and menus and they still know how to type a document, but those environments allow the students to expand and do more down the road, and the students see that and then they have the confidence that they can do it.

School districts should use the expertise of university professors: Davis spoke about the importance of using universities as a resource to inform teachers about computer science. She said that Gray and his team have been essential in preparing teachers to effectively teach robotics in particular.

Raise the importance and value of computer science education: Wagner spoke about how essential it is for people to understand the importance of computer science education. She said that even today, university professors might lack understanding of the importance of computer science education at the high school level.

Gray on the value of CS education:

I’ll ask the principal, "Why are you teaching this course X, after I just showed you where all the jobs are in the next eight years?" And they get a little bit upset with me, and I only use that approach when it seems like it's needed. I think students should take all the AP classes they can, but the most affluent high school here has an AP Latin class that has 120 students take, and that was the year we had seven students take the AP CSA. Last year, May 2012, CS had the most job offers of any major, and we've always been in the top five salaries. I show all this information, yet there's an imbalance in how we're preparing our students. The number one exam in my state is US history. We had over 5,200 take the AP exam in US history, and last year we had 97 students take AP CSA, which is the highest number, our highest ever. So I’m not at all saying don't teach US history of course, but we need to bring up where students are getting jobs. My grandfather competed with someone down the street, my grandmother, mother and father competed down the street with someone for a job, and our children are now competing with someone from across the world, and we need to escalate things.

Increase numbers of AP CS Principles teachers: With Gray’s NSF grant to train 50 AP CS Principles teachers, he is well poised to increase the numbers of teachers of this course in Alabama.

Integrate computer science into other courses in high school: Wagner envisions high school courses that integrate computer science, and that computer science is not just a stand-alone course. She hopes that teachers will realize the applicability of the discipline.

Certify high school teachers in computer science: Wagner spoke about the importance of offering certificates for teachers in training to ensure that prospective teachers have a strong understanding of computer science and how to teach it in their classrooms.

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