Hanes Teachers Enhance Skills in Computer Science

 

Stephanie Skordas, in the Office of Communications and External Relations at Wake Forest University, has written a story about a computer-science workshop that Wake Forest held for teachers at Hanes Magnet School.

Along with graduate and undergraduate students, Samuel Cho, assistant professor of physics and computer science, and fellow computer-science professor Paúl Pauca created a two-day workshop for Hanes teachers. The goal was to demonstrate how computer science could be worked into lesson plans across their curriculum. The workshop was made possible by a $5,000 grant from Google, matched by Wake Forest University.

“We need to expose young students at the middle school level to computer science,” Cho said. “It’s fundamentally as important as math, English or science.”

The Wake Forest computer science department turned the workshop into a learning opportunity for college students too. Several of them created breakout sessions that taught the middle school educators how to use a basic program called Scratch to create lesson plans for creative writing or to make literature come alive.

“I’ve already figured out a lesson plan to use with Scratch,” said Yu’Vonne James, who teaches Spanish at Hanes. “It’s called ‘Games People Play.’ Students will pretend to be a game company and create Spanish review games for other students to play. They’ll play each others’ games to review what they learned in Spanish.”

For the full story go to Wake Forest