For the past two years, we have implemented a new professional development (PD) course for high school Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers.The course meets for an entire academic year and is divided into two phases."Phase 1" (Aug-Dec) focuses on CS content knowledge by preparing participants to take the Praxis CS 5652 test, a pathway in many states for K-12 teachers to obtain an add-on CS endorsement for their teaching licenses."Phase 2" (Jan-May) focuses on pedagogical content knowledge as participants complete a self-directed project related to their individual CS teaching goals.We strive to deliver personalized PD that is effective in training high school teachers from a variety of education and CS skills backgrounds to teach advanced CS courses. This poster considers the following research question:To what extent do teachers who participate in our PD develop (a) self-efficacy as a well-prepared teacher of advanced CS content and (b) identity as a CS teacher?We know that CS teacher self-efficacy, specifically teacher perceptions of preparation and readiness, is required for teachers to effectively implement a CS curriculum [3].Furthermore, CS teacher professional identity provides a foundation for sustained motivation, job satisfaction, and commitment [1].We are particularly interested in how CTE teachers from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels perceive themselves as CS teachers, and what impact our PD has on the development of their identity as CS teachers.We are conducting a mixed-methods study that includes surveying and interviewing participants before, during, and after the PD course.All responses are linked so that we can measure changes in self-efficacy and identity.We administered the Computer Science Teacher Identity Survey [2] at three points.Before the course, participants complete an intake interview to capture prior knowledge and learning goals.In the middle of the course, we interview participants about their experience preparing for and taking the Praxis test.After the course, participants complete an exit interview about

Computer Science (CS) education is becoming increasingly important in K-12 schooling, with some U.S. states now requiring educators to integrate CS into various disciplinary courses. The CS for Social Studies project supports the integration of CS into Social Studies (SS) classes in rural middle schools. Twenty-five teachers, working mostly in pairs (one SS teacher and one CS or instructional technology teacher), participated in professional learning workshops and received coaching support to design and implement integrated lessons that address both SS and CS learning standards. The current analysis examines the corpus of year-end, project-based integrated CS-SS lessons (n=8), to illuminate how integrated CS-SS lessons can address learning goals across both disciplines. Data sources included teacher-created lesson materials, classroom observations/video, implementation logs, teacher interviews, and student work. Utilizing a framework created to characterize integrated CS-SS lessons, analysis of lessons (as designed and enacted) focuses on three dimensions: (1) depth of CS concepts, (2) integration of CS-SS, and (3) alignment of instructional tools/resources with integration objectives. All lessons addressed standards-aligned CS concepts such as variables, conditionals, branching, and computational thinking skills (e.g., decomposition), and a variety of SS topics including the Civil War, the Great Migration, and personal finance. However, lessons varied in the extent to which they leveraged students' CS knowledge to explicitly enhance SS learning (or vice versa). This analysis suggests there are multiple approaches to using CS concepts to support disciplinary learning, including creating new learning experiences to explore SS content.

Making technology and computer science learning experiences accessible to students with disabilities is an important step in preparing them to enter the workforce of the future--one in which many jobs will require skills to solve problems with technology. This paper presents the tool and curricular enhancements developed to make the Exploring Computer Science Robotics unit accessible to students with visual impairments (VI). It describes the evolution of enhancements, based on formative evaluation studies, to increase support as VI students engaged in building and programming LEGO Mindstorms robots. Results describe the ways in which enhancements were iteratively designed in response to student engagement and confidence, as well as their emerging understanding of top-down and bottom-up processes in robotics design and programming.

The next generation of world citizens must be technologically fluent members of society. By technological fluency we mean the ability to manipulate technology creatively and for one's own use. This fluency is composed of knowledge and skills utilizing materials and tools, as well as attitudes, (e.g. confidence), with respect to technology. Numerous interventions exist to support middle school students' technological fluency, and robotics activities are popular. It is critical that instruments assessing student attitudes towards robotics are available for the development and evaluation of these interventions. We present an instrument for assessing middle school students' technological fluency attitudes specifically tailored for robotics activities. Survey subscales were developed from existing science motivation research, and individual measurement items were generated and adapted within those subscales. The robotics activity attitudes scale (RAAS) was revised through three rounds of pilot testing in 2010, 2012 and 2015. The final RAAS in 2015 consisted of 50 items with an overall Cronbach's alpha of .972 (N=236) organized in four dimensions of Curiosity, Interest, Expectancy Value, and Confidence and Identity.

The Arts & Bots Math and Science Partnership program integrates creative technological fluency projects as transdisciplinary activities into non-technical courses, creating a pathway for students of all abilities and areas of interests to engage with engineering and computing. The Professional Development provided by the program prepares teachers from traditional disciplines, such as English, History or Science, to integrate robotics projects into disciplinary classrooms, and aims to promote teacher skill, confidence, and self-efficacy in the design and classroom implementation of robotics design projects. The Arts & Bots project has developed and piloted a new program for in-service secondary school teachers. To date, we have trained 38 teachers from a variety of disciplines to implement Arts & Bots robotics design projects in their classrooms. Teacher training integrates experience with robotics kit components, a programming interface, the engineering design process, and recognition of student affinities towards engineering and computer science. We present the development model for our teacher training program as well as preliminary positive results regarding teacher practice and self-efficacy. Data includes teacher surveys, interviews, and class observations. Teacher training has developed over the course of several years, and we discuss how teacher experiences have shaped the development of the program to its current form.

We describe a three-stage model of computing instruction beginning with a simple, highly scaffolded programming environment (Kodu) and progressing to more challenging frameworks (Alice and Lego NXT-G). In moving between frameworks, students explore the similarities and differences in how concepts such as variables, conditionals, and looping are realized. This can potentially lead to a deeper understanding of programming, bringing students closer to true computational thinking. Some novel strategies for teaching with Kodu are outlined. Finally, we briefly report on our methodology and select preliminary results from a pilot study using this curriculum with students ages 10-17, including several with disabilities.

Current technology literacy trends in the United States show declining interest and engagement in technological fields of study. We propose a roadmap by which robotics applications can enliven technology education and capture the interest of new students. We also describe our current efforts to design appropriate technologies and apply them at the middle school, high school, and college levels

To help answer questions about the behavior of participants in human-robot systems, we propose the cognitive evaluation of human-robot systems (CEHRS) method based on our work with the personal exploration rover (PER). The CEHRS method consists of six steps: (1) identify all system participants, (2) collect data from all participant groups, including the system's creators, (3) analyze participant data in light of system-wide goals, (4) answer targeted questions about each participant group to determine the flow of knowledge, information, and influence throughout the system, (5) look for inconsistencies in the knowledge and beliefs of different participant groups, and (6) make recommendations for improvement. We offer this comprehensive, human-centered evaluation method as a starting point for future work in understanding cognitive change in human-robot interactions

The Personal Rover Project produces technology, curriculum and evaluation techniques for robotic educational use in formal and informal (after-school, out-of-school) learning environments. Our specific aim for this phase of the project is to create and evaluate human-robot interactions that educate members of the general public in an informal learning environment, specifically museums. Our educational goals are to further an appreciation and understanding of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), to illustrate the role of robotic rovers in scientific exploration, and to provide hands-on learning experiences that demonstrate robot autonomy. We have designed a new robot, the Personal Exploration Rover (PER) and the related interactive components of a museum exhibit to achieve these goals. Here we describe the exhibits developed and the formal evaluation results of the exhibits' educational impact and efficacy. These results suggest techniques by which learning can be measured and used as an indicator of successful human-robot interaction.

A description is given of NVAX and NVAX+, single-chip microprocessors that implement Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX architecture. Pipelining techniques that have traditionally been associated with RISC CPUs are used to greatly improve the performance of these chips over previous VAX microprocessors. Successful application of these techniques requires careful consideration of memory request and operand request ordering, I/O space access, and multiprocessor issues. NVAX provides an upgrade path to customers having existing systems which use a previous VAX microprocessor. NVAX+ provides a migration path to customers who choose to convert NVAX+ systems to use the DECchip 21064 ALPHA microprocessor.>