A High School Camp on Algorithms and Coding in Jamaica

This is a report on JamCoders, a four-week long computer-science camp for high school students in Jamaica. The camp teaches college-level coding and algorithms, and targets academically excellent students in grades 9--11 (ages 14--17). Qualitative assessment shows that the camp was, in general terms, a success. We reflect on the background and academic structure of the camp and share key takeaways on designing and operating a successful camp. We analyze data collected before, during and after the camp and map the effects of demographic differences on student performance in camp. We conclude with a discussion on possible improvements on our approach.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 202

Ethical Hacking Pedagogy: An Analysis and Overview of Teaching Students to Hack

An area that is being scrutinized as a more effective method of educating and preparing security professionals is that of ethical hacking. The purpose of this research is to examine a more proactive approach to adequately prepare future information security professionals. Future careers in security may require that professionals be equipped with the necessary skill sets to combat an ever-growing presence of unwanted activity throughout the Internet. Many argue that future information security professionals need to have the same skill sets as attackers in order to adequately recognize and defend networks from intrusion. This research defines ethical hacking and examines the pros and cons of ethical hacking pedagogy as a viable approach for teaching network security to future professionals. The analysis includes the concept of ethical hacking education with an emphasis on ethical and legal concerns associated with ethical hacking pedagogy. The research concludes with an overview of existing best practices in ethical hacking education highlighting a hands-on approach as well as the inclusion of soft skills needed to complement the technical hard skills for future information security professionals

Creative Computation in High School

In this paper we describe the success of bringing Creative Computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. Creative Computation is an emerging discipline that requires a thorough grounding in both media arts and computing. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully attract and motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level Creative Computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in total enrollment as well as female participation in high school computer science

DBSnap-Eval: Identifying Database Query Construction Patterns

Learning to construct database queries can be a challenging task because students need to learn the specific query language syntax as well as properly understand the effect of each query operator and how multiple operators interact in a query. While some previous studies have looked into the types of database query errors students make and how the availability of expected query results can help to increase the success rate, there is very little that is known regarding the patterns that emerge while students are constructing a query. To be able to look into the process of constructing a query, in this paper we introduce DBSnap-Eval, a tool that supports tree-based queries (similar to SQL query plans) and a block-based querying interface to help separate the syntax and semantics of a query. DBSnap-Eval closely monitors the actions students take to construct a query such as adding a dataset or connecting a dataset with an operator. This paper presents an initial set of results about database query construction patterns using DBSnap-Eval. Particularly, it reports identified patterns in the process students follow to answer common database queries

Creative Computation in High School

In this paper we describe the success of bringing Creative Computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. Creative Computation is an emerging discipline that requires a thorough grounding in both media arts and computing. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully attract and motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level Creative Computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in total enrollment as well as female participation in high school computer science

Creative Computation in High School

In this paper we describe the success of bringing Creative Computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. Creative Computation is an emerging discipline that requires a thorough grounding in both media arts and computing. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully attract and motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level Creative Computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in total enrollment as well as female participation in high school computer science