Favorite Snap! Lessons
What Teachers Find Effective in Their Classrooms and Why

Panel

Presented by:

Josh Paley

from Henry M. Gunn HS

Josh Paley is a Computer Science and Mathematics teacher at Henry M. Gunn HS in Palo Alto, CA where he has helped to grow the computer science program from 50-60 students to about 350 in 2019/2020. He is encouraged by the new highs in female students in both introductory and AP courses. He was one of the pilot instructors for UC-Berkeley's Beauty and Joy of Computing AP CS Principles course. He also served as an instructor for Google's CAPE program in 2010 and 2011.

Josh is an avid indoorsman as he is allergic to things such as plants, dirt, and probably fresh air. Josh has an awesome wife, Suzanne, who does bioinformatics at SRI International, and three amazing kids who are now adults: Allison, Karen, and Trevor.

Sean Morris

Mark Miller

Efrain Lopez

Nicole Hutchins

Jessica Hexsel

Volunteer Hosts
Thanks for helping with Snap!Con 2020!

Lam Pham

No materials for the event yet, sorry! Meanwhile...

NOTE: Links to materials coming soon!

Riffing on an idea that Prof. Colleen Lewis has done at SIGCSE, we will see examples of what actual teachers view as their best lessons. Presenters will deliver lessons as they would in their classrooms (insofar as that is possible) and there would be time at the end of each presentation for questions.

The presenters are:

  • Mark L. Miller, Ph.D. implemented a prototype "computer coach" to help children learn to program in Seymour Papert’s famous Logo language. In 2000, Miller founded a nonprofit, Learningtech.org, with the mission to bring equitable access to information technology, including Computer Science, Making, and Robotics, to "children of all ages." Miller has maintained that AI should become an elementary school subject; that vision has recently started to come true.

  • Nicole Hutchins is a former high school computer science teacher turned researcher focused on CS4ALL. Currently she is a PhD student at Vanderbilt University designing and developing computational modeling curricula for K-12 STEM classrooms.

  • Sean Morris has twenty-plus years of experience in teaching and software development in the Bay Area. A logo-generation kid who grew up learning to program on the first Apples, his work life is spent between Albany High as a Computer Science teacher and on campus at UC Berkeley working with a team to develop a system to move traffic-related data into traffic simulations and models.

  • Efrain Lopez is now the Computer Science Curriculum Manager at IDEA Public Schools where he is working to expand AP CS Principles into 30 high schools over the next 3 years. He has served as a BJC Master Teacher (trainer) for the past 5 years and loves using the BJC curriculum to engage non-traditional students in computer science.

  • Jessica Hexsel recently (April 2020) completed her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Educational Technology Leadership. She worked on intelligent tutoring systems for middle school math in the Human Computer Interactions Institute (HCII) at CMU for 3 years. She leads the AP CS Principles course at Gunn HS in Palo Alto, CA, using BJC and Snap! to inspire our next generation of thinkers and problem solvers.

Discuss on the Snap! Forum

Date:
2020 July 31 - 12:00 PST
Duration:
1 h
Room:
Zoom 1
Conference:
Snap!Con 2020
Language:
English
Type:
Panel
Track:
Panels
Difficulty:
N/A