CS for All Teachers with Melissa Rasberry
In this interview with Melissa Rasberry, we discuss making educational lemonade out of lemons, using technology to collaborate in virtual learning communities, how people are learning differently through online communities, CS for All Teachers, suggestions for using different social media platforms to connect with other educators, and much more.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
in this week's episode i'm interviewing
melissa raspberry
in our discussion we talk about making
educational lemonade out of lemons
using technology to collaborate in
virtual learning communities how people
are learning differently through online
communities
such as cs4all teachers which melissa
oversees
some suggestions for using different
social media platforms to connect with
other educators
and so many more topics that are
relevant to today
as always i include links in the show
notes to the various scholars and
publications that are mentioned in this
interview
you can find those show notes by
clicking the link in your app or by
going to jaredaler.com and clicking on
podcasts
and if you decide to explore the other
sections there are hundreds if not
thousands of resources on the website
that are free
all right so we're now going to begin
with an introduction by melissa
hello everyone my name is melissa
rasberry i
am the principal investigator for the cs
for all teachers virtual community of
practice
and also a principal consultant at the
american institute for research
i'm so glad that you invited me to
attend today can you tell me the story
of how you got into computer science
that's a very interesting one as i often
say to folks that somehow i got dubbed
as a quasi expert here
at air around computer science education
but don't have much of a background at
all
i began my career as a third grade
teacher in durham north carolina
i eventually went on and pursued
additional degrees
and was able to secure a job at an
education nonprofit
here in north carolina and through that
time i really had an opportunity
to understand and develop some
experience around
connecting teachers online and really
being able to use
tech tools to bridge the gaps between
space
and time and geography so that teachers
could better connect with one another
to learn and to grow as educators and an
opportunity became
available to come here to air the
american institutes for research and so
i applied for that chance and got the
opportunity and one of the things that
was part of that opportunity was taking
over
this cs for all teachers community at
the time it was called the cs 10k
community because cs10k was the project
or the initiative that
nsf had at that time the previous person
who was serving as the pi for that
project was leaving air
and so they needed someone to come in
and take in that position and i would be
honest and say that i was a little
intimidated at first because i was going
i have
absolutely no background in computer
science but what they really were
wanting me to do is to kind of take that
experience with connecting teachers
online
and be able to bring that to bear in
this opportunity through the virtual
community and so
that's where it all started and that's
been about six years now
and it's been an amazing learning
opportunity to really
better understand a computer science
education field yeah i think
it's really important for people to hear
that
so many of the guests and myself don't
have like degrees in computer science
and whatnot so
some guests have no classes or i have
learned everything informally some have
taken a few et cetera
it's great to hear that like you can do
well in this field
and you can learn along the way as
you're going so you don't have to
like worry about the fact that you might
not have a degree in it absolutely and
that's sort of one of the things that i
figured out pretty quickly
about the teachers that we were working
with for one
as i came into the position at p.i and
was wanting to see how we could continue
to grow the virtual community
my first task was help me find the
really great teachers
help me find those teachers of cs and
in making those connections and talking
with them it was exactly as you said
jared that most of the people
weren't coming in with a degree in
computer science
many of them as you mentioned had never
take any courses at all and so
it's been a very interesting and
enlightening opportunity
to learn from this field because that
was so different from what i saw
in working with teachers in my path job
that
you know for the most part there if you
were an english teacher
you got a degree in english if you were
a math teacher you got a degree in math
and then there might be the you know of
course the education course work with
uh methods etc but you have that
grounding and again i
coming in as an elementary teacher you
get a degree in the content that you
certainly were in like child development
et cetera
and so it's been this very interesting
thing of understanding
this particular population of educators
and frankly
i think it makes them some of the most
amazing and resilient
educators we have because many
in the field have had to take on the
ownership and responsibility of their
learning
on their own now don't get me wrong
amazing professional development
programs out there
just like yours with boot up you know a
lot of it still has required a lot of
self-teaching and looking for those
opportunities
to grow and so i'm just excited to see
where we
continue to go and again just applaud
teachers and their resilience with
everything
yeah that's a really good point about
resilience and just being able to
reinvent yourself
by learning a new subject area and teach
a new subject area like i think that is
more important especially in 2020 with
everything that's been going on with
having to shift to remote learning and
whatnot so that's a really good point
what's a piece of advice related to
education doesn't have to be cs
education
it's a piece of advice that has really
resonated with you the advice would be
to get out of your own four walls you
know when we think of education and so
much of what we do
you know as educators and i think back
to my time in the classroom itself
so much of what i was trying to do with
my students is to help them to kind of
see the world
outside of just the classroom outside of
just even their neighborhoods
but i think so often teachers
get closed then within those four walls
and by no fault of their own
certainly there are so many things that
they have to do and there's a long to-do
list and they're busy and all of that
but i think that the more that educators
can i like to call it find your tribe
and love them hard
you know find your people like whoever
that may be and certainly
you know i'm a huge proponent of social
media as a way to do that social media
and technology and being able to as i
was saying you know kind of bridge the
gap
educators can feel very lonely within
their own classroom and so
you know because there is so little time
during the day to even partner with
those
you know across the hall from you or two
halls over
really looking at opportunities in ways
where you can you know find a community
of folks who you can learn and grow from
i think is really critical
because again it's sort of what we want
to do with students
so doing the same as educators of
continuing to kind of
look beyond just what you see because
there's some amazing things that are out
there
instead of having to kind of learn it
all or do it all yourself to be able to
tap
into you know a broader network and
figure out how you can work together
to do amazing things yeah i like that so
when i first started working in
education i went into music education
and started working with drum lines and
teaching whatnot while i was getting my
degree and i assumed that everyone was
going to have the same amount of passion
for percussion and drumline that i did
and quickly realized that that was not
the case so i'm curious
what was something that you believe when
you first began working in education
that you no longer believe
i studied in undergrad elementary
education and i remember
in my multicultural social foundations
course that one of the things that we
did was to read
jonathan kozal's savage inequalities
book and that
book for me was truly life-changing i
had the assumption that everyone else
sort of
had the same schooling experiences that
i did
that they had teachers who loved them
who wanted to see them to do well
that had access to the resources they
needed and now mind you i wouldn't
necessarily say that i
grew up in a hugely you know heavily
resourced place we were pretty
i guess kind of middle of the road
district if you will
and some of the schools that i went to
or maybe on the impoverished side of
town just by where the boundaries were
and where
i went to school but i would say that i
had a really good experience overall
as a k-12 student in public schools and
then when i got to college and
decided to become a teacher i read
savage inequalities i realized
just how much there were so many
inequities
that existed and even as that kind of
bright-eyed
just you know soon to be graduate and
then entering in as a new teacher
i kind of had this feeling like you know
i can save the world i can save every
single kid
and while i absolutely do believe that
i was able to help many children
see themselves in a different light and
feel successful
and feel loved i knew that there were
bigger
societal influences beyond what i could
do in the classroom
and so it helps me to better understand
that yes even while in the schools where
i was working
they may not have some of the same
inequities as say east st louis
and other places that were highlighted
in jonathan kozol's book
they were brought up forces working
against our kids and that
you know kind of keeping up that you
know one teacher can save the day
mentality is frankly not the best model
to have and again
teachers will always be heroes to me
heroes and shiros to me
but i think it's more about what i've
realized now is how much
it's a much bigger macro issue and a
systems issue
of what we need and how we need to
support kids and frankly to support our
teachers i'm a firm believer
if you support the teachers the teachers
support the kids we'll get to make sure
the kids get what they need and so
you know but that though now i realize
goes beyond just what happens in that
classroom or in that building
you know it's more about community
support it's about
making sure that the kids and their
families are getting adequate health
care
have access to good housing there's so
many things because the kid doesn't just
walk into your building
and walk into your classroom and shed
everything out that
you know they were dealing with at home
and all of a sudden you get to be the
shiro
and save the day yeah you can make that
difference
in that period of time but they still
walk out back to those same realities
and so
that it needs to be if we really want
education to have the impact that it can
have
and teachers to have impact that they
can have on students
there's broader supports that are needed
so one of the things that i like to do
each morning and each night i do some
kind of a positive reframing of
something that is negative so
if we were to look at some positive
thing that has come out of covid one of
the things
is that schools districts teachers
family etc
have a better understanding of the
inequities that are going on with access
to internet and technologies at home
like in arizona alone it's in the double
digits the percentile of
both students and teachers who do not
have adequate internet access to
actually like do
like a zoom call like we're on so that's
one of the things that i think
has kind of opened up some eyes for a
lot of people that oh there are some
things that we need to address that are
outside of
just what goes on in the classroom
absolutely
what i love to see is also
the innovation that's come from it and i
think about that in conversations that
we had here at air
one of our senior leaders was sharing
sometimes this disruption
that leads to innovation and that causes
things to change much faster so i think
about
you know the places that have taken to
try to
you know again innovate and help those
kids that didn't have access
putting routers on school buses and
putting them out in the community
that's not long-term change but it's a
short-term solution that's getting at
that
and helping us to kind of think about do
we have to consider you know the ways
that we've been doing things and
does it need to look differently i think
another thing is showing the light on
too is just how much
we really do need to have more in terms
of differentiation
a number of my friends have talked about
with their kids
that you know they might have gotten
activities that should have taken them
three hours and it took them 30 minutes
because they got done that quickly you
know so are there things that that child
may need
you know additional levels of support to
kind of
advance their learning and the same
sense of the other kids who
aren't having that support and may need
that you know additional remediation etc
so
i'm hopeful as you said that out of
these very difficult times
we can begin to think about things
differently because certainly
frankly not a lot has changed about the
education system in a long time
we've still been doing you know things
in pretty much the same way
as we did 100 years ago in the ways that
kids are learning and so
can we take this and i love that you
know being able to reframe that negative
into something positive
yeah and when i say that it's also
taking into account the gravity of the
situation what not so just in case
anyone's like oh he's taking it lightly
no
i'm not understood absolutely
with teachers not being in the classroom
or at least a lot of
them it's much more difficult to
collaborate than it was previously so
i'm wondering
how has technology been something that
has allowed
teachers to better connect not just
within covid
times within this last year but also
just through
your research working with virtual
learning communities well i think about
computer science in particular when it
comes to that because
if you think about it you know for those
and let's take kind of the different
levels at which
you know computer science education has
taken effect so
we have had tremendous efforts that have
been put in place for many years now to
help prepare high school teachers to
teach cs courses and so they've gone
they've been part of
summer institutes and workshops
continued support throughout the year
and be part of a cohort
of people that are learning together you
know over the summer
face to face but then when they would go
back to their schools oftentimes they
were the only one
there that was teaching it you know some
obviously have pushed and managed to
kind of build up their computer science
department and maybe there's another
colleague but
for many of them they were kind of the
singletons that they were the only ones
in their building
teaching computer science certainly as
you think about elementary and middle as
that started to come on whether it's
from doing like
an hour of code or just kind of you know
serendipitously getting excited
your kid got a robot for christmas and
you decide to start integrating that in
your middle school science classes or
something like that
you know there too there weren't a lot
of people there wasn't like there was
this large contingency and so
i do think that's the value of where
virtual communities can work really well
when you are that singleton and there
may not be others in your building
teaching that same content to be able to
connect with others
that's much easier to do online than it
is to get in your car and drive across
the district
some cases there may not be anywhere to
drive you know because you're the only
one maybe in your whole district that's
doing it and so
that i think is the power of virtual
that i think is one of those things that
frankly i'm hopeful will be a positive
outcome of
covet as well is this idea that you know
let's think about the ways that we can
stay connected virtually
again whether it's within your own
building or beyond again to be part of
these broader you know network
of people my concern is that you know
because it's been something that's been
forced upon us
that you know we're all kind of feeling
now like dear god if i don't ever have
to be on the zoom call again i'll be
fine
i get that we're all there like we all
feel that way
but you know there's some value to that
because it's allowed us to connect with
people heck it's allowed people to
connect with families the way they
happen to and so i'm hopeful that some
of those things
of just being able to allow folks who
would not
otherwise have peers that are you know
working on the same content areas again
and that's pre-coveted
you know that those sorts of lessons
will carry forward
and that people will continue to tap
into that in ways that
they might not have before so here's
hoping
right some of those positives will
continue and what led to your interest
in
researching and creating virtual
learning communities
because this isn't like something that
you just decided to do with covid you've
been doing this for quite some time now
it is it is and so it sort of kind of
goes back to that
you know when i was telling about like
the lesson that i learned that i didn't
know
in the beginning i think even when
i was in that social foundations class
and reading about savage equality
that like led my mind more so to these
bigger issues in education
like i knew i wanted to teach but early
on i started to wonder i don't know if
my place
in education within the classroom don't
get me wrong
i think it's the most valuable place
that you can be and i'm so grateful for
the
you know the four years of experience
that i had as a teacher in a year that i
interned at the principal because it
helped me to have a
you know greater understanding of
schools and what that was like
but i always was drawn to those like
bigger
picture issues like you know what are
these systems issues that we're working
with like i was the one
as an undergrad that you know when in
our methods courses they started talking
about well you know you'll have these
assessments that you have to do when the
kids do this and i'm like
but what if we just didn't give the test
like i was trying to be this
revolutionary or something
you know i think you know when i got
into
the field and then you know started
going toward graduate work
again my mind kept going to these like
bigger
systems issues and things like that and
so though i got my doctorate in
educational leadership
i still wasn't sure if like the district
level leadership was where i kind of
wanted to see myself
i got the opportunity to have an
internship
at a non-profit where i eventually got
that full-time job
while i was finishing up my doctoral
program and that was where the work
began with
kind of looking at teachers and the ways
that they could lead
from the classroom within the field not
necessarily meaning
teachers have to become principals
principals how to become superintendents
and you know that sort of thing
although you know certainly we need
great teachers who can become great
leaders
but i started to get connected with work
that was really about
you know tapping into teacher voices and
how
you know as opposed to state legislators
making decisions about schools
what do these people know truly you know
how can we ensure that teachers are
part of the decision-making process and
so the projects and the work that i was
doing there
was trying to elevate teacher voices
meant that we were tapping
the teachers from all over the place and
it was like a national
organization local here in north
carolina but we did national work and so
a lot of the work we did
was virtual and really it was such a
eye-opening thing like where i wasn't
sure of like does this make me feel
better does it make me feel worse
that regardless of where teachers were
they were having the same issues
you know dealing with the same problems
there's never enough time
there continues to be more pressures
that are placed upon teachers like we
add new initiatives but we never take
away
when the plate continues to get more and
more full that
we are making decisions without
talking to teacher and then we wonder
why things fail
well you know maybe if you would talk to
the teachers and so
it was through that work just frankly by
necessity
and that we were wanting you know for
projects that we were doing that were
about
you know connecting teachers that sort
of we had to kind of tap into these
technologies and so
it's interesting because when i started
working at that organization
i guess that dates back to 2005
is that right yeah so about 15 years now
and that when we when i first started
working there
the most sophisticated technology we
were using
was a lift serve like that and so it's
just incredible to think about
the past 15 years and how i mean that
seems like ages ago like what a lister
but truly that's how teachers were
connected and so i kind of think about
it now i'm like there is no way we would
be dealing with that because
truly on this list serve you would have
daily
you know dozens of messages of teachers
responding to one another and we're not
talking about quick emails we're talking
about very
lengthy epistles if you will of
responses and
to think that that would be way we would
connect now is like you know
laughable because no one would want to
do that at the same time but i just saw
the value again of being able to bring
people together and what was exciting
about that work is
even then there were times where
teachers were building
very strong personal and professional
connections
with people they had never met before
but they were connected by technology
and so
some of them would you know work
together to
put in a proposal for a conference you
know kind of co-present together a
workshop or whatever at a conference
and would never meet until they were
physically there face to face
and so you know i definitely saw the
value and the potential of how
you know being able to connect educators
in ways
that they never would have had the
opportunity to do so otherwise it was
just something that i thought was
really exciting and a great way to be
able to help build the profession
yeah it's a good point i actually have a
couple of co-workers that i've never met
in person before
so it's interesting like working
remotely for the last three years
yeah i also am interested in virtual
learning spaces and in particular the
informal learning spaces so
i wrote a chapter on affinity spaces and
the implications of
the informal characteristics of that
works by james paul g in
formalized learning environments so like
what can we learn from those informal
spaces and potentially
apply in like a classroom setting i'm
curious what kind of scholarship has
either informed or inspired your
interest
in virtual learning communities you know
i kind of look to
eddie and wenger sort of the grandfather
if you will of communities of practice
he's done some amazing work there that
for sure has been
something and then i think even just and
this isn't like
formal scholarship if you will but just
being kind of what you were talking
about the informal things
twitter and the community of twitter and
really the value
that twitter has i think is huge and i
think is something that really has
shown how we don't do a good enough job
in thinking about professional learning
in education for educators because
i think continuing to have that very
much of like
professional development equals
attending a workshop
connected to seek time being present and
whatever that looks like
in a face-to-face or virtual world but
that's not really how we learn
like what is it about you know now and
everything else in the world
if i have a question or if there's
something i learned i'm not gonna wait
until it's time for a workshop
to go find that information like i'm
gonna go seek it out and know that i can
get my fingers on and like being able to
find that in a much faster way
and i'm not sure and i'll be honest to
say that a lot of that i haven't
delved into too deeply but that is
something in particular like again
when you can tweet something out and
i've done that before for presentations
i've been preparing for a presentation
and said hey i want to
share kind of some quick advice with
folks about topic x
tweeted it out been able to have
a dozen great responses to give to
people
you know when i tweeted out that morning
in the workshop this in the afternoon
certainly have been able to get better
informed than i ever would in sending an
email
and so i think we just in general that's
a piece where we could be looking more
about it into scholarship in that area
and just
in general about how we are learning
differently
and how we constitute learning i think
there's a huge space where we need to
kind of look into that
and how then that has an impact not only
for students but teachers as well
and what has surprised you in your
research and development of communities
like this over the years
i think there's a couple of things one
is that we still continue to struggle
with how to measure effectiveness or
measure engagement and i think that that
is something that you know with the
projects that i've worked on
and looking at you know being able how
do we demonstrate impact
it's a difficult thing because for
example with the cs world teachers
community
i could go and tell you how many members
we have
i could look and tell you how many page
views i can tell you how long they're
saying you know looking at google
analytics how long they're staying time
on page
you know bounce rates all those you know
metrics if you will
but i think we continue to struggle with
figuring out
so then what's the impact or how is this
truly making a difference
and i don't know that anybody's really
figured that out yet because
from past experience again with the
previous job where i worked i remember
that there were times where
we might have like the culling of the
list of saying like hey you know
we're sending things out folks who
haven't logged in by you know such and
such
date we may resend membership or you
know whatever you know just trying to
kind of
you know kind of update the membership
if you will and then
we would start to hear stories from
folks where it would be oh well i
haven't commented in a while
but i've gone in and i read this
discussion
or i grabbed this resource and i went
back and used it with my grade level
team and it changed blah blah blah
it had this impact i don't know how we
really do that
because unless it is a self-reported
and that it's harder to do and in a time
where we are
looking to see you know what's the
impact of this
what effect is it having it's harder to
do again you can give those numbers
you know page views members etc
but then then what and then that truly
doesn't
tell us what it means to have impact i
firmly believe we are
but to be able to communicate that to
others
i'm not sure that anybody's really
figured that out really well yet
especially when you have like a space
like ps4 all teachers that it's a
larger group this isn't something that
you know
as i was mentioning earlier it's not
necessarily a
this is a professional development
opportunity you start here you stop
there
you do these tasks in between that looks
different
than like what we're providing which is
this ongoing community space
that's sort of a just in time as you
need it
come as you will as you need it's harder
to do that
and especially as there are more ways
because then you have
i can tell you the number of people in
the community but then i can also tell
you the number of people that follow us
on twitter
those numbers don't always match up
right and
you know you may join in a webinar but
not be a member there will be something
from the webinar that changes
your instruction it's harder especially
as again we have all these different
inputs
to truly measure engagement to truly
measure
impact in ways that people like to do it
it's just not an easy it's really messy
and it's something that we continue to
think about yeah so much of that relates
one of the reasons why james paul g
ended up writing about affinity spaces
because he felt
there is this inability to be able to
apply
communities of practice within like
online spaces in terms of the way that
leif and wenger originally framed it
and other people have also talked about
this need for being able to
better understand engagement and the
ways that people communicate online in
particular so like there's a
digital media scholar henry jenkins who
talks about this a lot participatory
cultures and then there's
mirko schaefer who wrote a book called
bastard culture that kind of
dives into how these explicit ways that
people participate
like responding to a discussion form
thread or retweeting something but then
there are implicit ways like
what you were mentioning a teacher might
just go on read something and then go
and apply
all the stuff but you can't measure that
because you don't know what happened
with it so
it's a fascinating like conundrum that
you have in terms of you don't really
know
how people are engaging with this even
if you are able to like
measure how many likes or retweets or
whatever like
that doesn't really tell you the kind of
impact you have and i mean the same is
true though if we think about it
as educators sure the teacher
you can measure impact on
an assessment at the end of the year you
might even be able to extrapolate that
out to
kind of express in the future so you
know perhaps it's a
you know they take your apcsp course and
then do they enter into a computer
science major in college or something
like that but then we also think about
the ways in which teachers plant seeds
that they never see you know go into
fruition i think the same is true that
there could be
you know things that are a part of
listening and hearing conversations or
seeing the way things are done that
maybe isn't immediate
but it is something in the future so
even with that kind of thinking
longitudinally
it's even harder to kind of determine
because
some of those things may not you know
come into being until much later on
even to do like a survey at the end of
the year maybe there's not something
until
three years later this month puts into
effect right but it was because
of you know they would be able to tell
you that it goes back but
you know we don't have the sort of
tracking mechanism
or you know even as sophisticated as an
evaluation
to be able to kind of look at that
information over time yeah
that makes sense what was something that
like you thought would be a really great
idea for
a community and then ended up not
working so well
i think that's something that we
continue to think about and
kind of really determine and we do try
to be very much
like a learning project or a learning
community
so with cs4l teachers you know one of
the things for sure
that we recognize is that teachers come
to us as members with very different
needs and very different backgrounds
and so we had to think about like what
are ways that we can kind of support
any number of folks and i remember
working with our web developers
some years back and they were like well
tell us about your target audience
we were kind of like oh that's funny k12
teachers
we're like we'll try to narrow that down
i'm like can't really do that
you know they're like well are they this
or they're that i'm like could be
could be not you know it is such a space
where
you know it's hard to kind of say and
even thinking about like
how the identity of teachers
we you know for expediency's sake i'll
often say
you know we support computer science
teachers but really i prefer to say
with a project teachers of computer
science or teachers of computational
thinking because often
they don't identify themselves as
computer science teachers
and that came to conversations years ago
with the previous executive director at
csta but you know
he told me about a survey they had done
and many the members themselves don't
see themselves as computer science
teachers
all of that said kind of something that
we've learned is that i think it's one
of those things though
with discussion threads more often than
not they do not participate in
discussion threads
just because it's a different kind of
it's a an older way
of connecting and so we have a group of
folks again i spoke earlier about
one of the biggest things or key things
i did was to find the good teachers and
so
a model that we've created through the
years has been to
identify select and support a group of
teacher leaders that we call community
ambassadors
to help run and lead the virtual
community
that these are teachers that are in the
classroom or they may have moved into
other spaces that they have
experience with teaching computer
science or to computational thinking and
so
they often get frustrated because
they're like oh we post something and
people may not respond and i'm like well
again you never know with what you post
may have an impact
again you may not see it in a response
from someone
but i think it's good to have that to
people
one can either access good information
in a regular period of time
and or can know it's okay if i have a
question that i can post it there or
have it you know something that i want
to discuss with others so
i think it's sort of that of like and
more broadly thinking about
but as a technology evolves how do we
evolve
the sorts of supports that we provide
and ensuring that when you have a very
diverse group of teachers that you're
trying to support
how can you offer a little bit of
everything depending on
what they need so we're continuing to
learn and grow with that for sure
so having had experience with cs for all
teachers like i understand the platform
but if somebody's listening to this and
we've kind of talked around it what
would be like your elevator
pitch for like here's the problem that
this addresses and how we hope that
people
engage with this platform i love that
you asked that because that's one of the
first things we do with our community
ambassadors is work with them on
develop your elevator pits our cs for
all teachers virtual community is a
free space free virtual community for
teachers anywhere from pre-k on up to
grade 12
to come to connect with others who are
also
teaching and interested in computer
science and computational
thinking you get access to discussion
groups
webinars resources multimedia products
etc
it's a space where you can come to learn
and grow with others again it's free
it is open to any and all and really is
about
you know kind of helping those educators
who may not have another
point of connection or you know
networking opportunity
to be able to get access to some others
we certainly don't see ourselves as the
end-all be-all of all things computer
science but certainly
see it as a space to kind of get folks
started and thinking about
where they can connect with the things
they need to be successful so one of the
things that a lot of people have talked
about
is like in relation to learning
informally or through virtual or
connected environments is
drawing from many different approaches
so i'm curious
what kind of approach would you
recommend for a teacher who
is using cs for all teachers how do you
help them also connect
through other platforms like twitter or
other social media platforms or
other listservs or discussion forum
groups like how does it all kind of like
work together
yeah we get that question a lot too and
i think what i normally tell folks
is and this goes for like anything when
you're trying to
kind of dip your foot in if you will
into the virtual world
what i usually tell folks is start small
because i think what often happens is
you're starting to learn something new
you're teaching a new
subject you are teaching a new grade
level
you know you just want to expand your
learning but oftentimes what we can do
is go out there and we click to follow
this we join that
you know we sign up for that and then it
becomes so overwhelming
that you end up ignoring everything
right so one of the things that i
recommend
is start small so whether it's with cs4l
teachers
or any of the other sites that are out
there sign up kind of get you know
take some time to look around look and
see what's there
then kind of figure out okay get a
better sense of what it is that you're
looking for
you're interested in we try to do as
much as we can to help promote what's
happening with other organizations and
so
you know for example csta and their
conference for next year
the time period for putting in a
proposal has just been happening now and
so one of our community ambassadors did
a webinar about well what do you do if
you want to present
at csta and kind of did that and see
whit
has their annual student and teacher
awards program
and so we're putting out information to
our community
for that and so i think again finding
one place or space to start
and then you know seeing what else is
out there and then
you know kind of adding on is super
helpful the same thing for twitter
i think certainly finding a few
organizations or people
that you trust and have some good
content following those people to start
then kind of as you notice following
accounts and then thoughts starting to
follow certain
hashtags certainly you know the csk8 is
a great one
or case yes whichever direction it goes
i can never remember that
following some hashtags and that opens
your eyes to others as well
and then i think the other key thing is
that
it's okay to unsubscribe or unfollow
if you just after a while it's kind of
like this isn't really something i'm not
really finding anything of value
or this is too overwhelming like that's
okay too
because again it would be better that
whichever it is
we hope you will find you know our cs
world teachers community space and or
our twitter account something helpful
but for any of them if it becomes too
overwhelming or you're not getting what
you need
unsubscribe unfollow and then try to
help curate it in a way that's better
don't feel like you know because there's
nothing worse of getting
you know 12 emails every day because
you're on so many different and
connected with so many different groups
i'm feeling like you just delete all of
them because you just don't have the
time to look at anything at all like
find a couple that you find a value
start there
and then kind of branch out yeah that's
a good point that reflects my own
journey through it like dabbling and
then diving deep into like
social media as a learning community and
now i check it once a week
and it's like 10 minutes at most just
because i have
other avenues that i use to continue to
learn and grow and whatnot
so one of the things that i've worked
with like undergrad or graduate students
and trying to help them
consider like platforms is we talk about
the affordances and constraints of it
what does this allow you to do what does
this prevent you from doing
i'm curious if somebody's looking for
platforms to use what affordances and
constraints might they consider
if a teacher wants like up-to-date
information on something cool you might
want twitter if you want
something that is more thoughtful in
terms of what people are
posting you might want to look at
somebody's blog or
like a discussion forum etc i think a
couple things that come to mind
one regardless of what kind of platform
is
looking at how recent is
the last information that's been added
is key for me
and working with folks through the years
who have been interested in creating
any kind of platform you know i've often
used the
kind of analogy that sometimes people
have this idea of like if you build it
they will come
right you know that from the movies
right but my thought is
if you build it they may come but
they're not going to stay
if they don't find that the information
is there's a constant flow
of up-to-date information and so when
i'm talking to people on the other side
of those who are building or want to
create it one of the very first
questions i always have is so whose
responsibility is it going to be to keep
it fresh and updated because you can't
just do it or whatever so on the flip
side as the user
that would be the first thing that i'd
look for is looking at when was the last
time this has been updated
and you know understanding that we're
also in a kind of a difficult place here
that things may be a little bit
different and give some people a little
bit of grace if
it's not been as frequent it could be
other factors due to covet and
everything else and just life being a
little bit different this year but
certainly if there's not been anything
new that's been added in
a year plus probably not worth your time
to do that because you're not going to
get from it
the things that you need so that would
be number one and then also i think it
would be thinking through
what is it you know kind of what is it
that you're looking for
like is it you know kind of it and
that's more of addressing it for your
own self and your own needs
are you interested in something because
you want access to information
are you interested from something
because you want
a community those are a few different
things as well
so again it's kind of the you know
reflecting yourself and maybe you don't
know
but i think that's something that's
helpful because again and this is kind
of part of the conversations i have with
people as they're building it it's like
you can have something that's more of
like a resource repository
that's that's fine and there's a
legitimate you know
reason to have something like that but
that doesn't necessarily mean it's a
virtual community
right sharing resources is way different
than building community and so
again i think so from the user
perspective i think it would be
considering that as well
there are some spaces and places that
you can get access to both of those
things
but you know i think kind of stepping
back and trying to figure out
what's best for you is would be one of
those like again
what's the last time of update and kind
of frequency of update
would be question one and then like
what's my purpose for getting engaged
and then trying to kind of figure out
those places
and also too i think i would add a third
one maybe that's like
how are you wanting to access this
information from the perspective of like
i'm
very and this is just how i do things
other people are different
but when i access facebook for instance
facebook i want to be kind of my
personal space
zone out to do things of personal
interest
i don't connect with professional
related
groups through facebook because it's
just the space where
i want to have my social personal life
and i use other spaces but twitter is
more
for professional reasons and so i think
also considering what kind of like what
your personality what your preferences
are
if you're someone that's like i don't
have time to be going to these different
places i just need everything in one
place
and that could be something else to
consider than most professional groups
or
you know resources in the places where
you already are
versus starting a new platform but all
that truly is kind of personal
preference as well
yeah that's a really good point about
having like different platforms for
different purposes and whatnot and not
mixing the two
my wife is really good at that being
like my feet in two different fields
there's like this interesting mix of a
lot of
cs educators tend to prefer like twitter
but then a lot of music educators
tend to prefer connecting on facebook so
it's like this weird like blend of
like personal and professional for those
platforms at least for me
how has covid impacted your thoughts on
virtual learning communities
i've been working remotely for six years
now and so
you know when covet hit there really
wasn't much change
to my work life or my work schedule
because
i was already working from home and will
continue that way
i do think that in general
but also specific to virtual communities
as a you know as a professional support
but i think we have to figure out
how to turn things on and turn things
off and i think about with educators
that educators have always been ones to
kind of take their work home
and you know they finish the day at
school but then inevitably at home
you know when they should maybe be
putting more time and attention to
family and you know personal things
or whatever that you know they've been
doing that in between trying to grade
papers
or respond to parents via email or
whatever
preparing the next day's lessons and
things like that and so
i definitely believe that as much as i
said earlier that virtual communities
have value and in this time of cobig
when we can't be face to face they truly
can be a lifeline
either personally professionally
whatever else you know
academically emotionally whatever ways
that you need it but i think
just like anything that we've got to
figure out like when to turn it on and
when to turn it off
because particularly in this time when
it is so stressful and there are so many
things going on
that you know finding balance is really
key and so
you know not allowing it and this time
when it's just so much harder to
start and stop the work day that it you
know it can be tough when you're like oh
i see this great message and i want to
respond to this like okay yeah but
you've been sitting in this chair for
how many hours now
maybe you should go do something else
and so there is value
but there's also the need for not
allowing it to
take over particularly when we don't
have
the same kind of boundaries that we've
had before
for the most part when there's a start
and stop to your work day
i think we have to do the same thing
with this because and that's something
you know we've been mindful
of you know we know that teachers are on
zoom all day and so while we're offering
you know webinars we've been talking to
about we need to shorten them
we have them for an hour but you even
need to shorten a little bit more
because people are
got so much zoom fatigue or you know
pick your choice of
webinar tool fatigue and being able to
kind of give a little bit more of a
break
from that so how do you try and take
breaks from that or try and prevent the
burnout
there's a lot of educators right now who
are just completely overwhelmed have too
much on their plate are
taking it home because they are working
at home etc so
what strategies have you recommended
for that one thing for sure has been and
this
you know may or may not be possible for
teachers when they're
on live with their students but
certainly there's some meetings
that where i just cut my camera off and
just like i'm here
i'm listening i'm focused i just can't
do the camera right now
because there certainly is something
about you know looking at your own image
or just like
oh that's interesting what's that
picture back there behind his head or oh
look at the dog
is that a dog in the background you know
we get so distracted by so many things
and
you know sometimes having that that like
truly we
did work before virtually without having
to see
into people's homes all day every day
some of it is just cutting the camera
off
time and still being able to stay you
know
stay focused stay connected but not
having to have the camera on
something i'm trying to do more is like
i just said like i
should get up and just change scenery a
friend of mine said this you know it's
like going and looking out the window or
sitting outside and
just like focusing on a bug crawling on
the ground
it's like just bringing your attention
to something else that
you know is away from where you are but
i'll be honest to say it is tough
because you know whereas with even
though i worked from home
there generally was something in the
evening that
was taking me away from sitting here so
whether it was oh i'm gonna go to the
grocery store
or you know everyone's favorite going to
target
or i have a meeting that i have to drive
to or some other thing that i'm doing
that was
physically taking me away from home
that's not really happening as much like
oh i have a meeting again on zoom or
or you know my grocery store is
going to pick it up because i've ordered
it online or it's being delivered or
whatever the case may be and so
i think we really do have to be
intentional with that and a big big part
of it i think is
changing your scenery but again maybe
moving your desk a little bit or going
and looking out a different window as
you're working
i think all of those things help yeah
that's a good point being in arizona it
gets
really hot and the room that i'm
recording this in like
gets a lot of direct sunlight throughout
the day and so i would have the window
shut for most of the summer but like
now that it's nice i'm able to actually
look out the window and it's nice having
that to be able to just look
a little to the right and cool i can
actually see outside
right right so i'm a very
big practice nerd i love learning about
learning but also
learning about how we refine our
abilities and understandings
and so i'm curious how do you practice
or iterate
on your abilities either as like an
educator or as a researcher
regardless of kind of the work that i do
cs4l teachers is just one of several
projects that i work on
but they all to a certain extent deal
with
having to react in the moment and not
always being able to have like kind of a
rehearsed script there that you can pull
from
and particularly that comes through
webinars
the work at air starting in the spring
and leading to the summer
when a lot of organizations and clients
that we were working with started to
realize okay
those face-to-face meetings that we
thought we were going to be having
now we need to figure out how to do them
virtually and so
for sure webinars and being able to
practice with
webinars and going through and
doing them in using this technology
whether it's been
for my church activities that i'm
involved with
or it's you know civic groups that i'm
connected with using some of the same
tools that i use
at work for virtual conferences or
virtual meetings that we're doing
i've been using those same tools with
these other things that i
do personally and it's certainly that
has helped
because it allows me to kind of consider
the variety of stakeholders that may
need support
so i use the example of
at church we've been having kind of a
book study
and so we had been using i've been
introduced
to google's new tool jamboard
that allows people to like brainstorm
and put like sticky notes on the screen
etc so i decided to use that with our
book study
with my church group who happen to be
a number of older congregants
so being able to deal with
the what do i do where's the link how do
i click on this
while it was like a delightfully fun
exercise
you know kind of leading them through
and teaching them newer technology
it allowed me to kind of have that
practice of what do i do
when i am doing something professionally
and there's that person that like needs
that help and it's interrupting the
group and
how do i redirect and what does that
look like and so i guess that's probably
one of the ways of like
you know as virtual has been required
for
kind of so many more parts of my life
i haven't hesitated to kind of pull in
those other tools because again it gives
me
a chance to practice with a broader
group of stakeholders
that certainly helps to support in the
actual work that we do
professionally and help me think through
what some of those strategies need to
look like
yeah that's a funny little story that
definitely resonates to like watching
some of the recordings of our
virtual pd that we've been providing
like seeing
different teachers responding
differently to whatever platform or tool
we're using
it's kind of comical sometimes yeah
nothing humbles you more than helping an
older loved one
trying to figure out their phone or
their laptop
and yeah trying to do that virtually
makes it even more
comical so absolutely what
recommendations do you have
for improving equity and inclusion in
computer science education
first of all i'm happy that that's
entering
more of our conversations regardless of
what the topic area is
and you know as we think about you
mentioned earlier trying to find
the positive out of some negative
situations i think
that the racial unrest you know the
issues of police brutality
and all of that that also happened this
summer on top of everything else that
was going
on with the pandemic has certainly
brought that to the forefront
in many places where it wasn't before
and i think it's became
i don't want to say it in this way but
in some ways like more in vogue
or you know the new thing to do let's
talk equity and access
my hope is that that isn't a short-lived
situation
right and that it doesn't become kind of
like oh there's something new that kind
of we don't have to talk we've done that
check we've guessed equity and access
when we figure that out right
one of the things that i have certainly
appreciated within computer science
education specifically
is that i think that there is a core
group
of advocates within the field who are
refusing
to allow this to just be kind of a
one-time conversation first of all
they've been talking about this
pre-summer 2020. right it's been a kind
of the foreground
and you know been an integral part so
i think about that in terms of you know
equity and access
isn't just about recruiting
diverse stakeholders or diverse students
and
to the field like computer science
education
it's ensuring that when they get there
they feel included
they feel like they deserve a seat just
as much as anyone else
they feel like that their diverse
backgrounds
interests and needs are considered not
as an afterthought but more
you know that's that's part of the
planning and then
you get them in the door you make them
feel comfortable when they're there
and then you're also giving them the
skills they need
to pursue whatever comes next for them
right
i think that's a huge bonus
of where many programs are you know
looking to do that
many people programs advocates etc are
doing that in cs education
i think back to one of our guest
speakers so last year
the pi or principal investigator meeting
for
the cs for all research practitioner
partnership project
with nsf so we brought together a
cross-section of
projects and we had guest speakers and i
remember clearly one of them
khalia braswell phenomenal young woman
a black woman who has done amazing
things already
she was herself computer scientist she
worked for
apple but she talked about in her
keynote about how
you know there was so much effort to
ensure a diverse group
of folks were you know hired into the
company
and i don't mean to pinpoint apple as
just one of them that was just from her
example
she talked about how you know again they
got her there but the conditions weren't
such that she always necessarily felt
comfortable
as a black woman in the organization and
she also talked about how
she chose to live in oakland
much farther than others may have chosen
to live because she wanted to
feel like she had a community of people
who looked like her
when she went home and so i think it
speaks to
you know again we have to do a better
job that
we talk about equity and we talk about
access it goes
all the way through the spectrum it does
it's not enough
to recruit folks into the classes
and then not provide classroom cultures
to support them in their success
it's not enough to do to provide them
with the culture
to make them feel successful and not
give them the skills and support they
need to then go into
whatever career perspective that they're
interested in
and so i think it's certainly something
that all
fields all organizations should be
thinking about and again i hope that
it's not something
that you know is a passing trend
but we continue to hold this as key so
many companies
came out this summer with you know
statements of
we support and believe all black lives
matter and you know
all these other statements that were put
out that addressed
issues of equity and access but now what
right you know what happens six months
later what happens a year later
have those same organizations change
their own cultures
their own philanthropic support you know
is it continuing and not just
kind of that one time fad so many points
really
resonated with that especially the
discussion on like
diversity it's not just enough to get
the demographics that you're trying to
target and whatnot
you need to do much more than okay now
we have the numbers we're looking for
like you have to provide the sport you
have to make it a welcoming environment
etc so
i really appreciated that i'm curious
about what do you wish there was more
research on
that could inform what you're interested
in computer science and just education
in general
i can't consider that question in 2020
without thinking about
what difference this year is going to
have on students learning
you know there was a part of me that
just said you know what guys
what if we just took a break we skipped
this year
like we just
took a break you know and that's the
kind of
i mean how do you do that like i know
that can't really happen
but you know there was just a part of me
that you know thinks about like how much
this has also put extreme pressure
on teachers on families
than on students to meet
these guidelines standards requirements
whatever you want to call it
that just frankly in the grand scheme of
things
aren't that important like if nothing
else from this year
i think for me personally and i hope
with others that we've realized that
some of those things that we just
thought were so critical
they're really not like when we get down
to it they're not
you know the places i thought i was i
had to go this year or things that had
to happen or things i had to have
i didn't you know i survived without
all these things i'm gonna be okay and i
think
in the same way i hope that as
we study this year
and what the impact that it's had that
we don't just focus on the learning law
although i understand it's there can we
also investigate
you know i'm not a total fan of all
these words but like
the grit the resilience the
strength so whatever else you want to
throw into that category
that we've all had to develop in order
just to get through it and that goes
across the board you know especially
for you know teachers and parents who
have taken on a lot of this
try to protect the kids from going
through it right you know i struggle
with trying to kind of figure out
what's the best way forward with wanting
a desire
for you know getting back to normal
whatever that means but also you know
extreme desire of how do we stay safe in
the process
and you know i just really hope that
generally speaking the research doesn't
bear out
that schools have failed us because i
don't think by any means they have
the schools are being asked to take on
way more responsibility
schools have always been asked to take
on tons of responsibility
but that you know instead that there's
some
opportunities for us to really highlight
the ways that
schools teachers administrators and all
you know what they have been able to
provide students throughout all of this
i'm hopeful that somebody's taking a
look at that
and you know kind of keeping that in the
floor and frankly though too the other
piece of that i would say and something
that we at air have done too
is you know we talk a lot about social
emotional learning or social emotional
supports for students
i think the same needs to be true for
teachers and
you know figuring out what we can do
because my fear is we may be facing some
really massive
teacher shortages because teachers are
just totally burnt out i mean i've
already seen that and i know in some of
the numbers there's been some
you know early retirements or you know
teachers just saying i'll figure
something else out because i can't
handle this
but again my mind always goes to those
larger system
issues that we need to be considering so
that
we have the support systems in place
that allow for
everyone to be successful yeah it'll be
interesting like a decade or two from
now to reflect back
on what it felt like and then what the
research will come out of
this year and next year etc especially
in relation to learning and
like you're mentioning even just like
mental and physical health of
everyone involved whether it's students
teachers family members etc
i'm curious do you have any questions
for myself for for the field
i guess from your perspective jared and
i love that you do this
i'm wondering what has been like some of
your biggest takeaways from these
conversations
such a cross section of folks in the
field this kind of relates to
a general frame of mind that i have but
there's always
so much to learn and so many
perspectives that i hadn't considered
and so
now we're in november and
so the first podcast released october of
last year so like over a year
of doing interviews and whatnot i've
just learned so much from
listening to all these different
perspectives and people with expertise
that
i don't have any expertise on or very
little
and so it's been a fascinating growth
opportunity for me
going through this both with the
interviews and then the unpacking
scholarship episodes where it's like
okay i'm going to publicly basically
reflect on
some scholarship that i've read and kind
of share those understandings so
it's been an interesting growth
opportunity for me so
i've enjoyed it and i look forward to
continuing to do it so
i don't know if that answers your
question no that's great great
do you have any suggestions on how i
could improve this podcast
i don't have any suggestions for
improvement i would just say i really do
appreciate
you know you're looking for
diversity and perspectives i always
think that's helpful
and the more that we can do to amplify
such
differing perspectives is always helpful
in bringing those
delight and as much as possible i think
again like when you think about computer
science education
again getting back to there are so many
different pathways into the field
and helping people to see that it helps
people
feel better about themselves because
they can see that hey
you know i'm no different from you that
i came in in a very
certain curious path or whatever i think
is hugely helpful
yeah that's a good point it would be
interesting to even do like a
an analysis of like the backgrounds of
the guests who have been on the show to
see
like who has backgrounds in cs and to
what extent etc
but that would just be for my own
interest
i guess the last question is where might
people go to connect with you and the
organizations that you work with
sure so certainly we would love to if
anyone is not yet a member or just want
to check it out
the cs girl teachers site is just for
allteachers.org you can also find us
on twitter i'd have to give you that
hashtag i don't have it it's like cx for
all teachers the teachers is
p c h r f
that was back when there was a limited
number of for their twitter handle
so to take away some of the vowels there
and then i'm also on twitter
at mel mel raspberry r-a-s-d-e-r-r-y
so i would love to have folks to connect
and would
love to talk more about interest i'm
always excited to talk to people
particularly those who have kind of had
a different route into
this space and frankly also just kind of
have had a
interesting career in education i never
would have placed myself here
back when i was that seasoned in
undergrad but it's a pleasure to
have this opportunity to learn and grow
in education in different ways
and with that that concludes this week's
episode of the cska podcast
i really do hope that you check out cs
for all teachers and join the community
discussions that are going on there
stay tuned next week for another
unpacking scholarship episode and two
weeks from now for another
interview but between now and then if
you would be so kind please consider
sharing our writing review
so we can continue to help other cs
educators around the world
thank you so much for listening and i
hope you all have a wonderful and safe
week
Guest Bio
Melissa Rasberry is a Principal Education Consultant at the American Institutes for Research where she manages the CS@AIR portfolio of projects focused on K-12 computer science education. She began her work in CS as the Principal Investigator of the CS for All Teachers virtual community, an online home for over 8,000 teachers of CS. She has dedicated her career to educational excellence and equity and enjoys using technology to bridge teachers and ideas. She lives in Durham, NC but is a proud UNC Tar Heel.
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