Kids, Code, and Computer Science · Kids use Trello software to organize their research and ideas then teach their class-mates and publish their results online. Contents Back to School

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VisualStorytelling

AppsPhone and tablet apps to tell your story with photos, videos, and text. Works for classroom

projects and at home.

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help kids code + explore computer science

Computer ScienceKids, Code, and

KIDS, CODE, AND COMPUTER SCIENCE / AUGUST 2015 : VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1ISSN: 2377-1208 (ONLINE) ISSN: 2377-1216 (PRINT)

Publisher/Editor/Webmaster: Tim Slavin Copy Editor: Madeleine Slavin Writers: Jenn Choi, Ali Hagen, Ken Kaminski, Jennifer Newell, Jean-Francois Nguyen, Les Pounder, Madeleine Slavin, Tim Slavin, Emeline Swanson

Kids, Code, and Computer Science Magazine© is published bi-monthly, six times a year, online at https://KidsCodeCS.com and in print. Annual subscriptions are $15/year for online access only and $39.99/year (US) or $52/year (outside US) for print by mail plus online access. The magazine was launched as HelpKidsCode.com in August 2013.

Published by Owl Hill Media, LLC and copyright with all rights reserved except as noted. Flickr images are copyright their creators, as noted with each story online. Cover photo by Jonathan Blake. Questions or comments? Email [email protected].

Owl Hill Media, LLC, 378 Eastwood Rd, Woodmere, NY 11598 (516) 234-0607. Periodicals postage paid at Woodmere, NY and other mailing offi ces.

1How to Foster Genius in the ClassroomKids use Trello software to organize their research and ideas then teach their class-mates and publish their results online.

ContentsBack to School Issue // August 2015

4Feed a PhilosopherPeople who think also get hungry. It’s a hands on project which describes a classic computer science problem plus a few possible solutions.

7Visual Storytelling AppsThese apps let you combine photos, text, and video into stories you can share publicly (and, in some cases, privately) with others.

8Margaret HamiltonShe was in her 30s when she led the team that developed mission critical software used guide the Apollo moon landings.

10Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr.Kids with little or no software experience learn how software is created by working with a mentor and a local non-profi t group to design and build useful apps.

12CRUDNot a league of super heroes but, instead, four key concepts used to build and maintain software applications that use databases.

16Single Board ComputersRaspberry Pi, Arduino, BeagleBone, Mi-croBit, Edison, CHIP, and other handheld computers trace their history back to single board computers used by engineers.Example boards shown on pages 14-15.

20FPSFrames per second (FPS) is not just for TV and movies. It’s also used in video games. And it’s a small part of Google’s efforts to create phone apps that don’t need to be installed on your phone.

INTERVIEW

Paul Solarz talks about teaching kids how to learn and pursue passion projects 24

STORIES ONLINE ONLY

The History of Telephone DesignWomen in TechnologyHow to Tell a Story

IN EVERY ISSUE

News Wire Stories 19Language of Month: Nim 22Puzzles 29

Find lots more to learn and do at https://www.KidsCodeCS.com 1

How To Foster Genius In The Classroom

A teacher shows how his class uses Trello software to let his students spend time each

week to learn about a subject they’re interested in. Then teach their classmates and

share what they learn online. The program is called Genius Hours.

The concept of Genius Hour has become a popular mechanism for edu-cators to encourage their students to explore their interests. To avoid gaps in learning, much of the US curriculum is standardized. The Genius Hour movement, however, is a great way to inject open ended exploration into different aspects of our world.

The basic concept is that for one hour twice a week, students explore a topic of their choosing. They research the same topic for 12 one hour sessions, before presenting their findings on a medium of their choice. Gone are the days of dioramas: these young innovators elect to post their

Written by Lauren Moon

PROJECTS & PUZZLES

2 Find lots more to learn and do at https://www.KidsCodeCS.com

findings to a website, video, or slide presentation that they make themselves!

Paul Solarz is a 5th grade teacher who is passionate about adapt-ing tech in the classroom, and is constantly innovating with his budding Geniuses. He showed me how he is using Trello to structure his students’ Genius Hour proj-ects.

Asking PHAT QuestionsThe first portion of Genius Hour consists of students deciding on a subject, and subsequently devis-ing an open ended question that explores their topic.

Because one of the necessary re-quirements of the students’ ques-tions is that it is an open ended topic that cannot be answered objectively, Paul challenges his students to ask a PHAT question, which stands for Pretty Hard And Tough. “Skinny” questions can easily be answered by a quick Google search, and that takes all the fun out of it.

“The goal is to have a large enough question to keep you ex-cited and interested for that entire

period of time,” Paul explains. “It’s not something that’s answerable by Googling it; these are questions that require you to synthesize information over the course of many days and many sources to try to come up with an answer that works for you.”

Roadmapping On TrelloStudents spend the first Genius Hour period developing an Essential Question, getting it approved by Mr. Solarz, and then inputting it into their own Trello list.

The list name is the Essential Question they seek to answer. Some Essential Question exam-ples are:

• “What causes an ice age to happen and how does it affect our planet?”

• “How have Legos changed over time and how can they be used in the classroom?” (Good thinking, Charlie.)

• “How much German can I learn in 12 periods and then teach?”

• “How do soccer teams design their jerseys and what are the different designs they have come up with?”

• “What do the words and sym-bols mean on US currency and why were they chosen?”

• “Did Megalodon ever exist and if so what were his gifts and special talents?”

(I wish I could post every Genius Hour question because they are all fantastic.)

Each student uploads a card cover image that is associated with their project. Then, each subsequent card in their list is a step in their project.

The goal of roadmapping their Genius Hour projects in Trello is to demonstrate the students’ use of their executive functioning skill set.

“It’s the idea of thoughtful plan-ning and not just randomly do-ing things,” Paul explains. “We’re setting our purpose for the next 12 periods.”

Identify What You Know, And Learn What You Don’tAfter the card cover image, the next card indicates the KWHLAQ step. This acronym indicates the students should answer these questions about their topic:

Trello Board with a Few Essential Questions | Photo by Lauren Moon


K – What do I know?

W – What do I want to know?

H – How do I find out?

L – What have I learned?

A – What actions do I take?

Q – What new questions do I have?

The KWH’s are tackled prior to researching, and the LAQ’s are answered after their project is complete. Paul explains that the goal is not to identify a rigid set of steps and then strictly adhere to them throughout the process. Rather, one of the key tenements of the exercise is to learn to revise and adapt as a student’s knowledge evolves.

“The idea is that you’re constantly revising your Trello list,” Paul says, “You’re adding cards, you’re taking away cards, you’re changing cards, and you’re supposed to by the end have a reasonable procedure for what you did.”

Weebly Is The Modern Day Poster BoardMr. Solarz says that the majority of the kids elect to present their findings on a website they make themselves. They are also required to make a video to go along with their final product, and they often upload them to their website.

Paul uses Weebly with his students, which is a website making platform that grown adults also use to make websites for their businesses. Impressive, right?

One Last Essential Question: What Are The Origins Of Genius Hour?Genius Hour actually has roots in tech, with many attributing the open format concept to large tech companies where developers are encouraged to spend a

portion of their time solving problems that interest them.

Trello, in fact, was born out of this same initiative: as a side project, the Fog Creek design and development teams sought to digitize the concept of sticky notes being moved around on whiteboards.

It seems only fitting that new Geniuses are now using Trello to ask their own questions, and discovering the processes by which they find these answers.

Read an interview with Paul Solarz about teaching, technology, and passion proj-

ects at the end of this magazine issue.

Read this story online with links to Trello, Paul Solarz, Genius Hours, and more:

https://www.KidsCodeCS.com/genius-hours-trello-projects

KWL Chart by Silvia Rosenthal Tollsano at Langwitches.org/blog


StorehouseThis iPhone and iPad app lets you create and publish stories. Stories are experienced ver-tically, by scrolling down the screen, so the content layout is less rigid and more like a web page than a print magazine.

To create a story, you press a circle that appears at the bottom middle of the screen. Controls to add and edit visual content are at the top of the screen. Stories are public.

StellerThis iPad and iPhone app is my favorite of these apps because a lot of interesting people publish stories on a regular basis from around the world. Plus stories are experienced horizontally, like flipping pages of a magazine.

The story creation tools are fairly easy to figure out. Press a thin large plus sign at the bottom center of the screen. This leads you to select a theme and up to 20 photo or video media assets. Then you work from an editor screen to add text and pages, as needed, as well as reorder pages. To publish, create a collection, for example, family events or trip names, then click Publish to upload a story to their servers. Once published, you can share your story privately or publicly embed it into a web page.

1 Second Every DayThis $2.99 iPhone and Android app began life as a Kickstarter project to re-cord a moment every day in one person’s life. The app combines a video and photo capture tool with reminders to record your life daily.

PixotaleThis visual storytelling app proved to be the easiest to use. The first screen lets you browse published stories. If you want to sign up to create your own stories, click the icon at the top left to sign in or sign up. From there, it’s easy to figure out how to create a story, add text, video, photos, maps, and polls. Stories are public and (soon) private.

Visual Storytelling AppsVisual storytelling apps are a great way for kids to document and explore their lives. While jour-nalists, filmmakers, and business people use visual storytelling, these tools can be a powerful way for kids to learn how to tell stories, use pro-fessional software, and maybe build a portfolio.

These phone and tablet apps also are a great way to help students make sense of their daily lives inside and outside of school. Plus it is fun to be creative and share your work. Teachers and students also might use these apps to create and pub-lish stories for school publications.

Families can use these apps to let their kids capture events, for example, vacations, washing the dog, or birthday parties. These apps could help kids see events from a dif-ferent point of view.

If you use LEGO Ed-ucaion products, also check out their Story-Creator software used to teach literacy.

One concern: some apps let you share privately while others do not. If that’s important, be sure to check.

Read this story online with full reviews and links to apps, storytelling ideas, and more:

https://www.KidsCodeCS.com/visual-storytelling-apps


Margaret HamiltonToday we take for granted software works well and solves a wide range of problems.

But software didn’t always work this way. Or need to work this way. The Apollo moon

landing needed a guidance system that could handle errors, prioritize tasks, execute

tasks at different times, and more. Many of these demands were new to computing.

Margaret Hamilton led the team that developed this new software.

If you have ever flown on an airplane, you probably know some of the flight was managed by computers. You also may have heard Airbus recent-ly acknowledged the crash of a Spanish A400 plane was caused by faulty software configuration of the engines.

Now imagine in the mid to late 1960s designing computer hardware and software to land human beings on the moon, almost fifty years ago. Ideas about fault tolerance in real life computer systems were new. And the tight space limitations of the lunar lander required using another new technology,

PEOPLE


microchips on computer boards. Today we take both fault tolerance and microchips for granted. It’s rare when one or both cause a crash and loss of human life.

That wasn’t the case for the Apollo moon landing missions.

Margaret Hamilton, a self taught programmer with advanced math degrees, managed a team at the MIT Instrumentation Lab that won the NASA contract to write guidance software to land the first human beings on the moon. Their software had to accept inputs from a number of sensors which tracked speed, location, and other details then manage the data to answer questions from the astronauts in real time and signal as

onboard computer was flooded with useless data when one of the astronauts accidentally switched on a radar system while following a script. The computer set off alarms, to indicate it had to deal with useless data, but ignored the lower priority radar data and focussed, instead, on data needed to put the lander in position for the astronauts to fly the final short distance to land on the moon based on what they saw out their windows.

and her work? She was only in her early 30s when she led the MIT team and made significant critical contributions to the NASA Apollo moon landing program. She went on to start a business and continue to contribute ideas that advanced software design and development. She’s also credited with coining the term, “software engi-neering.”

Photos courtesy of NASA.

An Apollo Guidance Computer

Read this story online with links to learn more about Margaret Hamilton:

https://www.KidsCodeCS.com/margaret-hamilton

Imagine if the software created by Hamilton’s team had handled all data equally. The useless data would have overwhelmed the processing power of the computer and likely crashed the lunar lander or led to the landing and mission being aborted.

While the design and code were tweaked for future missions, the initial designs and solutions from Hamilton and her group were kept intact. And the team went on to build software for Skylab, the first space station, in the 1970s. Many of their ideas and solutions became the building blocks of software development, for example, end to end testing, asynchronous software, and priority scheduling.

problems happened.

There were no code bases or earlier soft-ware projects to learn from. The software and programming techniques had to be created from scratch.

One big problem they solved is how to manage the pri-ority of data fed into the computer. As it happened, their solution saved the first lunar land-ing. Three mintues before landing, the

Hamilton learned computer program-ming while working on weather forecast-ing projects at MIT then projects for the Air Force. At that time, software devel-opment and comput-er science were not separate disciplines. You learned pro-gramming on the job while solving prob-lems.

Perhaps one of the more amazing de-tails about Hamilton


Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr

Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. is a non-profit which helps schools and groups host

one day hacking events for kids with little or no software development experience.

Kids work with mentors and local non-profit groups to identify how software might

help these groups achieve their mission then build an app to meet their needs.

Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. events help raise the consciousness of kids, non-profits, and people in their communities.

The founder of Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr., Patrice Gans, was inspired by her experience with a hackathon for adults sponsored by Random Hacks of Kindness. “The hackathon wasn’t about landing a job,” Gans says, “It was about helping people.”

Instead of improving skills and gaining exposure, the adult hackathon reflected the Random Hacks of Kindness goal of creating a self-sustaining global community of innovators building practical open technology for a better world, and to ensure their work creates impact in society.

While Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. is not affiliated with the Random Hacks of Kindness organization for adults, the spirit is the same for chil-dren. Instead of solving problems by creating complete software, the goal of the adult hackathons, kids, local non-profits, mentors, and communities

NOTEBOOK


design and build prototype apps to gain awareness of how technology can help solve local problems.

Patrice Gans held her first Ran-dom Hacks of Kindness, Jr. event while a teacher at Fraser Woods Montessori School in Newtown, Connecticut. She started teaching computer science and program-ming after a career as a program-mer and earning a Masters degree in Computer Science.

At this first event, Gans says, “The kids spent the morning talking with each non-profit group and brainstorming ideas for applica-tions to help solve their problems, then spent the afternoon develop-ing their ideas into an application. Everyone had a lot of fun.”

The ideas for Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. evolved based on this first event at Fraser Woods. “Our mission is is to empower students to use technology for social good and positively impact the chal-lenges facing local non-profits in their communities,” Gans explains. “We do this by hosting a one-day hackathon where students in 4th-8th grade are paired with comput-er science mentors and nonprofit

representatives to develop pro-totype smartphone apps for local charities.”

What makes a RHoK Jr hackathon different than the average hack-athon is that the young partici-pants get to work directly with local community organizations. Together with their mentors, the groups of students work to cre-ate solutions to problems that non-profits can solve with the use of technology. For example, at a recent event at Trinity College, students created an app called the A.F.O.C.GPS Locator App for the animal rescue organization Animal Friends of CT. Students have also created apps for Hartford Habitat for Humanity, Ebony Horsewom-en, Bens Bells of Newtown and the Ferret Association of CT.

Any school or group can work with Patrice and the Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. team to cre-ate their own one-day hackathon to benefit local kids, non-profits, and communities.

In order to host an event, groups need to provide a venue that will hold a minimum of 80 people that includes wifi and food for the

participants. Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. can use their con-nections and expertise to suggest mentors, non-profits, donations, and participants.

As a non-profit, Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. also accepts dona-tions to help the group help local schools and groups set up and promote their events.

Patrice Gans is optimistic about the future of Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr. “My journey origi-nally began with the search for the perfect experience for my students, something that would inspire them while providing a challenging and fun introduction to the power of computer science. At the same time, I wondered if elementary students would give up a Saturday and spend it in-doors, working with strangers to help others? I am thrilled to say the answer is yes! By the end of the event at Westover School this May 2015, close to 200 students, 40 mentors and 30 charities will have participated.”

One team demonstrates their app / Story and cover photos by Jonathan Blake

Read this story online with links to more information about this program:

https://www.KidsCodeCS.com/random-hacks-of-kindness-jr


CRUDCRUD is not a a league of super heroes or super villains. Instead, CRUD is an

acronym for the four basic database-related functions programmers encounter

as they create software.

Each letter in CRUD refers to tasks performed with databases:

• Create or add data

• Retrieve data

• Update data

• Delete data

This acronym likely was created in the 1980s to describe database func-tionality used by SQL (structured query language) databases. Each letter maps to an SQL operation: INSERT (create), SELECT (retrieve), UP-DATE (update), and DELETE (delete). However, these operations also apply to non-SQL databases, for example, MongoDB and BigTable.

How CRUD WorksIn practical terms, you likely would have functions or methods to create a data record in the database, retrieve the data record, update a specific data record (usually with the unique ID of the record), and delete a data record (also using the unique ID of the record).

For example, almost all online software applications include the ability for people to sign up to use the application. Here’s how CRUD works with user accounts:

• When a person signs up, the application creates a database record with their user profile which includes their login information.

• When they login, another function or method takes their login cre-dentials and retrieves data from the database to confirm they have permission to use the application.

CONCEPTSCONCEPTS


• If they change their password, the application updates their data record so their next login attempt will validate their credentials correctly.

• If the person wants to delete their account, a function or method uses their account ID to delete their account data from the application.

CRUD works for every part of any software application which uses a data-base. For example, an online application to publish content will have user accounts plus the ability to create, retrieve, update, and delete content. It also might have the ability to create, retrieve, update, and delete categories, comments, and other data useful in publishing content.

Often programmers must provide users with forms to allow them to cre-ate, retrieve, update, and delete data. This data is then used by the internal functions or methods to interact with the database.

If you write enough software applications, eventually you develop a set of code you can copy and paste to provide user forms and code to interact with the database. Most of your work then becomes a matter of checking the forms are correct for the new application and data is captured then en-tered or modified in the database correctly. Code to retrieve and delete data also needs to be tweaked to reflect new database table names and similar details. Programmers hired to maintain a software applications know to look for these specific functions or methods in the code base.

To make things even more interesting, code frameworks like Ruby on Rails provide an easy way to access CRUD operations with any database. Instead of coding to interact directly with the database, you pass the data to Ruby on Rails or other framework to handle database interactions. This is a much saf-er and cleaner way to write software programs that interact with databases.

Beyond CRUDSome purists would add an S to CRUD for Search. While create, update, and delete affect database data directly, retrieving data does not. Also, re-trieving data is used only for updates and deletions. Search also could be limited to database updates and deletions. However, users of software appli-cations often need to search data in the database and see a list of possible search results. The counter argument is that search is a part of retrieving data, not a separate activity.

While CRUD is a common term with programmers, there are other variations beyond SCRUD. For example, some add an L to the acronym for listing large blocks of data, an activity which requires pagination to manage a block of data to display subsets of the data on multiple pages. Pagination requires tracking which subset of unique data to display to the user from the larger block of data.

As a practical matter, programmers who design a new program know they will need functions or methods to create, retrieve, update, and delete data. And programmers who maintain an application know where to go in the code if there’s a bug with the core database functionality. CRUD is both practical and abstract.

Top story photo by W_Minshull on Flickr.

While CRUD is not the name of a league of superheroes, it is a powerful concept used everywhere in software that uses a database.

Read this story online with links to more information about CRUD:

https://www.KidsCodeCS.com/crud

Single board com-puters are hand-sized computers kids (and anyone) can use to learn about com-puter hardware and software. They began as custom boards en-gineers ordered from a factory, tweaked to build and test their designs, then ordered in quantity.

Single board com-puters are still used by engineers. But Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and other boards have made it possible for anyone to learn how computers work, as well as create fun electronics projects. These pages display many of the boards available. The maga-zine site URL below includes links to these boards.

Raspberry PiThe idea behind this tiny and affordable computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, based at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skill levels of the A Level students in the UK apply-ing to read Computer Science at Cambridge. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist pro-grammers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design. Unlike game consoles, the technology most kids are familiar with today, the Raspberry Pi is designed to be a flexible low cost computer with lots of power and capabilities.

ArduinoInitially created by Massimo Banzi as a design tool for his students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy, the project was formal-ly started as Arduino by five friends and released in 2005. The board schematics and source code is open source hardware. Anyone can build their own versions or buy off the shelf versions available online. Arduinos are perfect for all kinds of electronics projects with sensors, lights, cameras, and other machines.

Single Board Computers

Find lots of links to single board computers on the magazine resource page:

https://www.KidsCodeCS.com/resources/single-board-computers


RESOURCES

CubitAlso begun on Kickstarter in 2015, Cubit is a plug and play board with lots of extra kits. It’s a mashup of littleBits and a single board computer. Extra kits include servos, sen-sors, potentiometers, buzers, LED strips, and more.

More Single Board Computers

C.H.I.P.Begun as a Kickstarter proj-ect in 2015, this board has an incredible amount of capa-bility packed into a tiny low cost board. The basic board cost $9 on Kickstarter and included, among many other things, a 1Ghz processor, 512 MB of RAM, 4GB of hard disk storage, bluetooth, and wifi. The board also includes a pocket container and a separate video connector. Combined with the open source software, this board provides lots of flexibility at a low cost.

BeagleBoardThe BeagleBoard was created by several people in the US, including a few employees from Texas Instruments, a computer chip manufacturer. They wanted to create an open source board kids and hobbyists could use to create electronics projects easily at a low cost. Another goal is to reduce or eliminate the distance between computer soft-ware and electronics projects which often require plugs to connect with sensors and other devices.

micro:bitDesigned and distributed by the British Broad-casting Corporation, the micro:bit will be given away to year 7 UK students fall 2015. The board is a stepping stone to let kids experiment with com-puting before moving to Raspberry Pi and other boards. The name is based on the much loved BBC Micro computer from the 1980s.

Intel EdisonWhile created by Intel in 2014 as a development board for wearable tech-nology, the project also is compatabile with Arduino and includes Linux. There is a development kit and modules, as well as an online community.

Onion OmegaOmega is an invention platform for the Internet of Things. It comes WiFi-en-abled and supports most of the popular languages such as Python and Node.



Answer to a 150-Year-Old Math Conundrum Brings More MysteryFrom Wired, the story of an interesting math problem from the Victorian era. It’s a combinatorial math problem and helped lead to a new fi eld of mathematics with applications in cryptography, and the like.

How Oculus and Cardboard Are Going to Rock the Travel IndustryThis story from Bloomberg describes how the mix of virtual reality, Oculus, and the Google Card-board project will make travel obsolete. Well, not entirely. The headline is designed to get you to read the article, no surprise.

However, the mix of technologies is available today and found online easily. Download the Cardboard app for your phone or tablet then search for Goo-gle Cardboard online to fi nd the specs (if you have cardboard lying around) or where to buy a kit you can build yourself. Looks fun to try for home and school classroom projects.

The only negative? You might look silly with your computer and cardboard plastered against your head. Then again, maybe not.

CubeSats will escort NASA’s In-Sight lander to Mars in 2016The Insight lander will use briefcase-sized companions satellites to relay data to Earth during its mission to Mars and while operating.

Hack of cloud-based LastPass exposes hashed master passwordsFrom Ars Technica, a truly excellent description of this hack and how companies like LastPass that handle sensitive data well can sur-vive a hack without compro-mising data people trust to them.

News WireSome of the stories found online since the last issue. Stories are about coding, computer science, and how we use technology in our daily lives. Visit the news wire URL above to read all stories.

https://KidsCodeCS.com/august-2015-news-wire

The Web is getting its bytecode: WebAssemblyWebAssembly is a new language for creating online web applications. If you don’t know, byte-code is the simplest possible code for a computer to pro-cess. JavaScript and other languages used on the web require processing into byte-code. WebAssembly is designed to skip the step, or convert JavaScript and other languages into by-tecode, and thus be faster and reliable.

Charmaine Zoe on Flickr

antpaniagua on Flickr

NASA/JPL

plenty on Flickr

Google


Paul Solarz

Paul Solarz is a fifth grade teacher who teaches his kids how to learn, how to manage

projects, how to do research, and how to formulate questions then find answers. They

use technology to create and publish their work but technology is not the key. While

anyone can watch videos online to learn, Paul shows how the classroom is where deep

learning happens through personal contact with a teacher and working with other

students. I asked Paul about how he uses technology in his lesson plans, his new book

Learn Like a PIRATE, and how his approach empowers kids to learn how to learn.

Tim When you sit down and plan out a lesson, how do you decide when and how to include technology?

Paul The idea, for me, is that over the summer I look at my curriculum for all subjects, I look at my big ideas. First of all, I try to integrate all my subjects together long before I get to the lesson. I look at where there is some overlap in content for reading and writing that might fit into science and social studies.

When I start to look at lesson design, I start to think about a number of things. I don’t really take a lesson and say, “how can I bring technol-ogy into the lesson?” Rather, I’ve learned a whole bunch of technology tools the students can use, more than what teachers can use. We’re about students creating more than consumption. I look at which tools can work really well with a particular lesson. I don’t force the tool.

For example, we might want to make a drawing of the water cycle then identify each part of the water cycle with experiments. We might take precipitation and show how precipitation works on different surfaces and videotape embed it into a ThingLink image on our website.

Tim Do you teach technology skills as you go or all at once?

Paul I’ll always integrate teaching how to use a tool into the lesson. If it’s the first time using a tool, I’ll help them create an account or show

PEOPLE

Interviewed by Tim Slavin



them how I’ve added them to my account already. I’ll give them instructions weekly on our website so everything is posted permanently.

As a collaborative group, they’re a lot better off if I don’t teach them everything because they’ll start teaching each other and experimenting. They end up with something that shows they’re learning, that was fun and exciting, that was collaborative, and now they know a tool they can use whenever they want to use it.

Tim Are a lot of these tools set up to ensure privacy of students?

Paul We have an understanding we will never use any stu-dent’s last name online, or personal information. We always use a first name and a last initial or my last name.

Typically we embed content into our Weebly website portfolio. We don’t send people to YouTube and other sites. That’s usually the work-around, the embed code. If an embed is not possible, we’ll take a screenshot and post it on our blog.

Tim Do you also teach kids the full range of technology lit-eracy, for example, the global impact of technology?

Paul Most of the kids, by the time they get to me, they already know. But I will spend time each year to make sure stu-dents have the right skills, using search wisely, using

the right terms, filtering through things that come up to find the best things.

When we do a research pa-per, I teach them how to do proper research skills. At the beginning of the year, I teach them you don’t put anything inappropriate online, or look at anything inappropri-ate. Because in their home life they’re going to have the same experience, in the classroom I teach them the proper way to handle it.

Tim How did you find Genius Hour?

Paul Years ago I believed that my kids should study topics of interest to themselves but I didn’t dedicate much time to it. As time went on, I read a book called Comprehension

and Collaboration and they talk about inquiry circles, opportunities for kids to research and learn about a topic that interests them. My goal was to give back some of the class time to my kids so they could do things that were interesting to them but somehow be educational. I didn’t mind if they were drawing if they were trying to improve their drawing. The focus wasn’t to waste time. The focus was to learn a skill or become more knowledge-able.

About six years ago, I read a book called the Passion-Driven

Classroom. The book said let student passions be allowed

Notes

Teaches atWestgate Elementary School in Arlington Heights, IllinoisGrade Taught5thYears Teaching16URLshttps://twitter.com/PaulSolarz

http://paulsolarz.weebly.com

http://www.learnlikeapirate.com


for moments of the day. It gives you a model to follow, which she calls Passion Time. Which is why I call my Genius Hour “Passion Time.” It’s basically what are you pas-sionate about and how do you want to spend your time?

Then I wanted to structure it with certain things. I wanted a planning stage at the be-ginning and near the end a reflection component. Throughout the whole thing I wanted kids to really use meta cognition to look at what they were doing each day, if they’re on the right track, and what adjustments they might need to made along the way. I found Silvia Tolisano’s KWHLAQ chart and thought, wow, this is perfect. This will help me help my kids focus on what they’re looking at in the beginning and at the end help me to get them to reflect.

Then I also tied in the Understanding by Design book which says an essential question should drive the learning. So I called my students questions essential questions at the beginning. They don’t follow the actual definition of an essential question but they do follow the purpose. The question has to be specific to get my kids to tune into what they need to be looking at but at the end they won’t necessarily have answered every ques-tion. There’s not really a right or wrong.

Tim How does reflection time fit in?

Paul I ask them at the end to write a formal reflection on their blog entry what they learned, what they had trouble with, about six questions, whatever makes sense. The essential question is the title, then a video or a picture, then the KWHLAQ, then a paragraph reflection. You can see examples on our blog. We stop at the end of our activity and we say, “Alright, I want us to think about what we just learned, why did we spend time learning, what was new, what excited you?”

My reflections all take place at the end of learning. But I teach them meta cognition which goes throughout learning. A lot of people have trouble understanding this. If you formally reflect throughout, they’ll never learn how to use meta cognition to pause and think about what they’re doing. I want my kids to be constantly reflecting. If you make them fill out a sheet every day, they’ll never going to do reflection on their own.

Tim Is your book a summary of what you’ve learned as a teacher so far?

Paul It’s kind of a how to manual for creating a student led classroom. Technology plays a small role in the book. It’s how I believe s classroom should run. I believe students should have power to make decisions throughout their day. They shouldn’t constantly rely on the teacher. The teacher should be one of the members of the classroom as you work together on common goals.

The book is called Learn Like a PIRATE and I break down PIRATE as an acronym saying if you do the six things PIRATE stands for, you can create a student led classroom. That’s peer collaboration, imporovement rather than grades, responsibilty in the classroom, active learning rather than quizzes and tests, twenty first century skills like reflection and meta cognition, and empowerment to make decisions. My kids can interrupt the class to make corrections to benefit everyone. So I don’t have to be the one to make all the decisions.


Tim What’s the role of teachers in a classroom when kids can go online to use Khan Academy?

Paul For me, the way I work, the whole key is I provide kids with the direction up front then I circulate and make sure I’m observing and I give feedback to each kid constantly. A lot of times my feedback is directed to the whole group, for example, here’s something we’re all doing wrong or could do bet-ter. Or sometimes it’s just an individual or a group of peo-ple that I can redirect or pro-vide instruction for them to help others. So when some-one comes up to me and says they don’t know how to do something, I can tell them to go ask another student. You still need a community.

I know there’s definitely on-line education, and it works well for some people, but the

way I believe works best is we’ve all got devices, we’re all working on what we need to work on when we need to work on it, but we all work together at all times.

Teachers might worry about, “how do you know which kids know what because they rely on their partners all the time?” My goal isn’t which kids know what all the time. My goal is, “did my kids learn today? Did they make incre-mental improvements today?”

We’re so focussed on “I teach, I learn” and we’re not focussed on sometimes it is a process. Not everybody can get from A to Z in one class period. But if they get from A to L and feel good about it, and they’re willing to work from L to Z tomorrow, that’s what should matter. But when we say you only got to L today that’s a failing grade, or you’re not understanding it, then they focus on the fact they’re not good enough.

In our classroom, we’re all about the process. If all you get to is L, then that’s a lot better because you got to L and you feel good about yourself versus you got to L and we told you that you were wrong. It’s a different mentality. We don’t focus on mastery. We focus on im-provement and just trying hard and revising. Even if tomorrow we have to move on to a completely different skill, if I come back to it, I want to know you’re going to work on it. In our class-room, because there are no grades, they do go back to it. They don’t feel they have to do enough to get a C. They know they learned some but they need to learn it all.

Tim How do kids respond to a process approach?

Paul Kids leave the classroom feeling they’ve learned a ton, they feel smart, they feel good, they’ve been collabo-rative.

Tim How many years did it take to feel comfortable as a teacher?

Paul I’ll let you know when I retire.

Read the complete interview online with links to more information:

https://www.KidsCodeCS.com/an-interview-with-paul-zolarz


APOLLOARDUINO

CRUDCUBESATS

FPSHAMILTON

NIMOCULUSONION

RHOK JRSBC

SOLARZSPAGHE T TI

STELLERSTOREHOUSE

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Match the Word with Its DefinitionSBC Apollo Guidance ComputerAGC Frames per SecondCRUD Random Hacks of Kindness, Jr.FPS Single Board ComputerRHoK, Jr Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete

Find the WordsThere are lots of words in this issue. Try to find each word spelled forwards, backwards, vertically, or on a diagonal. Hint: there are lots of diagonals in this particular puzzle.

Puzzles

Do you like making your own puzzles? You can make neat ones here online:

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/

Find lots more to learn and do at https://www.KidsCodeCS.com

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.”

— Alexandra K Trenfor

Documents

Kids, Code, and Computer Science · Kids use Trello software to organize their research and ideas then teach their class-mates and publish their results online. Contents Back to School