K-12 Outreach Activities

K-12 Outreach Activities

Since 2003, I have been involved in several outreach activities to help improve the awareness of computer science among K-12 students and teachers within the State of Alabama. This page documents some of those activities with pointers to separate web pages for each event.

	UAB High School Programming Contest In May 2005, I organized the first High School Programming Contest at UAB for students throughout the State of Alabama. This is an annual event that attracts over 45 students from over a dozen schools in the state. The second contest was held in 2006 and a third contest is planned for May 12, 2007. My colleague, Dr. Barrett Bryant assists in the planning of the HSPC activities. The HSPC Web Page is available here.

	UAB Summer Robotics Camp I initiated the Summer Robotics Camp in the summers of 2004 and 2005. This multi-week camp provides students with an opportunity to learn Java through fun, yet challenging, series of exercises (e.g., Balloon Buster, Sumo Wrestler). The summer camp is offered in collaboration with the Heritage Center, which matches underrepresented minority students with UAB mentors. The Robotics Camp Web Page is available here.

	Field Trips to the CIS Department With several colleagues in the CIS department (Dr. Bob Hyatt, Dr. Puri Bangalore, and Fran Fabrizio), we offer on-site field trips to our department. This three-hour tour provides lectures on Alice, computer chess, opportunities in computer science, and a survey of the department resources (including Alabama's fastest computer and a visualization wall). The Field Trips Web Page is available here.

	School Visits and CS Awareness Talk To raise awareness about computing in the State of Alabama, I have prepared a lecture that introduces students to the opportunities within computing, as well as the specific things available at UAB-CIS. This talk has been given to over a dozen schools in Alabama across the state. The K-12 Opportunities in Computer Science slides are available here.

	Mentoring for Science Fair Projects Over the past two years, I have mentored four high school students in preparation for regional and state science fairs. These students are treated like a graduate student through a year-long collaboration and given their own desk space and computer in my lab. In 2006, Mountain Brook High School student Jerrod Sutton (now a UAB CIS student) won six awards at regional and state science fairs. A sample Science Fair Poster is available here.

	After School Alice Technology Club The Technology Club at Gardendale High School, which is sponsored by faculty member Juanita Vann, has invited me to conduct a series of talks to the club members. The club meets twice a month throughout the school year to learn how to program in Alice. The Technology Club members will create projects in Alice that will be submitted to the Alice Film Festival on May 12, 2007.

	Alabama K-12 Teachers Workshop On July 31, 2006, I organized a state-wide workshop that brought together many key educators who have an interest in advancing the role of computing within Alabama K-12 education. The workshop assembled 16 participants with various backgrounds, including: K-5 technology instructors, high school AP computer science teachers, high school students, school administrators and headmasters, undergraduate and graduate students, executive directors, and UAB professors. The Alabama K-12 Teachers Workshop site is available here.

External References to these Activities

Several external links recognize the outreach activities of the UAB CIS Department. The following represent two features that advertised these efforts nationally:

As a result of the K-12 Teachers Workshop, CSTA Executive Director Chris Stephenson wrote on her blog an article entitled "What if Alabama Led the Way?"
Addison-Wesley has created a quarterly newsletter called "the Loop" that is distributed to all computer science faculty across the United States. The inaugural issue of "the Loop" featured UAB outreach activities as a model for high school engagement.

Future Opportunities

In addition to the above activities, there are several other opportunities that are being planned:

The High School Programming Contest requires knowledge of Java or C++, which is not taught in most Alabama schools. To broaden the participation in this event, the 2007 competition will also feature an Alice Film Festival, which will provide those in grades 8-12 with an opportunity to submit Alice programs that will be shown during the keynote presentation of the contest.
To further the awareness of Alice, I plan to offer a 2-week mini-camp in Summer 2007. This will specifically target 8-9 grade girls.
In Summer 2007, the Robotics camp will be extended to several additional weeks. In collaboration with other colleagues in the CIS Department (Dr. John Johnstone, Dr. Kenneth Sloan, and Dr. Puri Bangalore), an extended summer camp experience will provide students with opportunities to explore graphics, robotics, Java, Alice, and parallel programming.
With Cameron McKinley (2006 Alabama State Teacher of the Year), future collaboration will explore the introduction of Alice workshops into Hoover City middle schools.

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