(upbeat music)

I am so very, very pleased to introduce our next speaker. I met Dr. Israel, I believe, at the CSForAll conference. Is that where we met? Yes, I think so. Obviously, inclusivity in computer science education and STEM education has been a consistent theme throughout all of our presentations. We saw Burnell speak passionately about equity this morning. We've heard it from just about every single one of our speakers here, all talking about how they've tried to do it from a curriculum perspective, and how they've tried to do it from a professional development perspective. Of course, now, Dr. Israel is going to come from a research perspective. So, what are the actual best practices for achieving this? What does inclusivity actually mean? You know, we talk about... Burnell talked about CSForAll. What does the "all" in CSForAll actually mean? I am very, very excited for this presentation to share Dr. Israel's expertise with you. I consider her a friend, a wonderful person who's doing a lot of really great work, and I can't wait for her to be able to share with you right now. So please help me welcome to the stage, Dr. Maya Israel.

(audience applauding)

Hi everyone. Good to see you all. Today, what I'm going to share with you are a lot of lessons learned and resources. I'm not going to share any data, but I will share with you the outcomes of a bunch of studies. Just really quickly, a little bit about myself: I came to computer science in a really roundabout way. I was a special ed teacher. Actually, I started as a para and then became a special education teacher. I saw the power of technology to engage students who really struggle academically. This idea of empowering learners to be creators is how I came to computer science. Now, I'm a professor of computer science education, which cracks me up, but it's amazing.

This Bitly code and the QR code are for the slides, and I'll put them at the end too. There are a lot of resources that I want to share with you. But first, I think about the questions that keep me up at night, that help drive the work that I do. The biggest one is: how can we engage all of our learners, including students with disabilities, in the full range of K-12 computer science education? What is it that's the hook? For many of you who work in classrooms, that's the easy part. A lot of subjects that aren't nearly as fun and engaging, the kids get into the hands-on robotics and computer science, and they're engaged. But then the question becomes, how do I sustain engagement when it becomes hard?

(Dr. Israel chuckles)

So that's one of the research questions. The second one is: what are the instructional strategies that we as teachers can use that are the most effective to reach the broadest range of learners? I'm not going to create one lesson plan for you, and one lesson plan for you, and one lesson plan for you, because that's not realistic. What are those practices that really are the most far-reaching for all learners? What are the barriers? We've probably seen those barriers, we can count them off. But really, really articulating what those barriers to participation are, both in the technology, in the curriculum, and in the student learning needs and challenges. And then, how do we overcome those barriers? That's the other piece of that.

My favorite thing to study is how can we support kids when they feel all the feels that they feel during computer science education? I think during the last presentation somebody talked about frustration. These are things that probably all of you have experienced both personally and in your classrooms. When I think about those feels, especially the negative frustration feels, I think about how do I support kids with self-regulation strategies? What are the metacognitive strategies?

Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to sharing more insights and resources with you throughout this session.

So when kids are learning how to debug, how can we explicitly teach them that? How can we help them with their executive functions? That's kind of the overall question. When I share resources, they all align with these questions and problems of practice.

Okay, so here come the projects, and I'll go through these a little bit, but then we'll get into the supports and the resources. UDL4CS is a research practice partnership between lots of school districts and states that are interested in how to engage learners with disabilities in computer science education. This particular one is really focused right now at the elementary and middle school level. Essentially, we meet monthly, talk about problems of practice, and discuss solutions. This is a great way to connect if you're interested in that.

[Music Cue]

Time 4CSForAll. This particular project is about how to design instructional materials that align project-based learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, and Universal Design for Learning. I'll share those resources. If we can design things from the very beginning proactively, then we're reaching the broadest range of learners. Right now, we have a module on invasive species because we live in Florida. Think about all the iguanas.

INFACT is a project looking at executive functions and how to support neurodiverse learners when they're engaged in computational thinking. Camp Dialogues does a very similar thing, but when it comes to AI education, we're teaching kids how to develop chatbots in a universally designed way. CSEveryone is a project looking at taking all of this into teacher preparation. We have computer science online certificates, computer science ed master's program online, and EDD programs. We go into methods classes and bring this into pre-service teacher preparation. That's the landscape of where the things I'm going to share with you come from.

Our main tasks as teachers are to engage all of our learners, ensure they learn, and make sure they feel like they belong. Easier said than done, because of the range of learners we have in our classrooms. It's easy to say, "I want to engage all of my learners," because we want to, but what does it actually look like? What does it take within the broad range of learners that we have in our classrooms?

On top of that, because I also come from a space of disability studies, I think about the 7.5 million kids in US public schools that have an identified disability and get special education services. Then there are nearly a million other kids who are getting supports for accommodations through 504 plans. When we talk about CSForAll, we really are talking about CSForAll. In most of the classrooms that we work with, kids with disabilities are included in general education classrooms. As a teacher, you get the kids in your classroom, and you're going to have the full range of kids as well.

[Music Cue]

Okay, so what do we do? The first thing we do is look internally. This is one of my favorite teachers in Broward County Public Schools, who is doing some work with the VEX 123, who's amazing. But in any case, it starts with our beliefs, and it's something that we're constantly having to think about. I'm going to share three of these beliefs with you.

The first is what I call the Universal Design for Learning mantra, which is learner variability is the norm and should be embraced. The more we know from neuroscience, the more we know that our bearings are so much more complex and variable than we ever thought. It used to be back when I was in my teacher prep program, we'd be like, "Here's the lesson plan and here's some tiered stuff that we did with differentiated instruction." But what we know is that the way that just us in the room learn is more...

[Music Cue]

Thank you for your attention and dedication to making education inclusive for all learners. Your efforts are truly appreciated.

[Final Message]

Let's continue to work together to create a learning environment where every student feels valued and empowered. Thank you!

We can't put kids into these like buckets of like, this is the average kid, and this is the gifted kids, and this is the kid who struggles, because the variability is really broad. So the way that I like to think about this, and I'm super proud of this gift by the way, is that I talk about this as a jagged learning profile. Every one of us has things that we're stronger in, and things that we have challenges in, and it's not static.

Right now it is like two something, I've had my coffee, I'm excited, I'm up here, I feel like I'm pretty sharp, hopefully, but like an hour from now when I'm done and I'm like, "Okay, I've done it," my learning profile's gonna look really different than it does now. All of us come into a classroom with strengths and challenges, and they're variable depending on the content, the context, how we slept last night. Knowing this with our students is really, really helpful because then when we design instruction, we're like, okay, we have to just accept that.

The second one is that we really need to believe that all kids deserve to be included in computer science and robotics, and that they can be successful. We've done multiple studies that essentially say, "If the tools are accessible, if our instructional practices are effective and we believe they belong, student learning is gonna increase," regardless of whatever category you put on children. So that's the second one.

And then the third is that what happens when a child is not learning and is not engaged? What is it that I need to do? That belief is that I need to look internally and think about why that child isn't learning, and why that child is not engaged. Thinking about, okay, is there something about the technology that's not accessible? Is there something about my instruction that can be tweaked? Is there something in terms of the classroom environment that we need to change? Is there something about the collaborations that kids are in? The groups aren't right? Thinking about that rather than that child's not learning because they have X diagnosis or whatever it is. So those are the beliefs.

I love this analogy and thinking about those beliefs. I think we don't live in a world where there's a myth of the average shoe size, right? We don't blame people's feet for not fitting like Cinderella, right? She doesn't fit into her shoes. So there's nothing wrong with my foot if it doesn't fit into a little teeny tiny shoe, right? When we think about instruction, I don't want us to think about what's wrong with the foot. I want us to think, what can we think about the shoe? Is there a range of shoes that we just didn't think about? So those are kind of the mindsets that I like to think about.

[Music Cue]

All right, make sense? All right, so now I'm gonna start sharing some resources about what we can do. Oh, and this moves. That's amazing. The three main areas that we look at, at least we'll look at today, is Universal Design for Learning, high leverage practices, and accessibility. We also talk about culturally responsive pedagogy and translanguaging, but that is too much for one talk. So we're not gonna talk about that today. But in each one of these areas, we've done multiple studies to look at how does it relate to computer science and how does it increase engagement and learning?

[Music Cue]

Okay, how many of y'all have heard of Universal Design for Learning? How many of y'all have applied it to computer science? Yeah. So this is something that's happening. We know what the word UDL is, we've heard it, but what does it look like in computer science is really hard. There are very few people who are actually doing that. And so what we're doing is gathering people who are engaged in universally designed computer science education. That's part of what UDL for CS is doing.

[Thank You Note]

Thank you all for being here and for your commitment to inclusive education. Your dedication to improving learning experiences for all students is truly inspiring.

[Final Message]

Let's continue to challenge ourselves to think differently about education and to create environments where every student can thrive. Thank you for your time and attention today.

If you're not aware of what Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is, it originated from architecture. It stemmed from the fact that buildings were not accessible. Here's a picture of a wheelchair at a curb, unable to get down the step. In architecture, with the Americans with Disabilities Act, we started retrofitting buildings. Suddenly, we had ramps—not very elegant, but functional for accessing buildings. It's retrofitted, not pretty, but effective. In education, we often do the same. We retrofit instruction, adapting lessons and curricula to make them more accessible to learners.

Universal Design is about being "born accessible." It's a design approach from the start to be as broadly usable as possible. Consider the Guggenheim Museum, where ramps are at a 5% angle, allowing navigation without stairs, even with a wheelchair. This is the origin of Universal Design for Learning, which evolved from universal design in architecture.

From the learning and neuroscience perspective, this is a simplified explanation. It's a great framework to consider without delving into all the neuroscience. We focus on engaging kids in learning flexibly. First, how can we engage kids? How can we hook them into learning and sustain their effort? Kids enter the classroom with diverse motivations, backgrounds, languages, and abilities, so different things will engage them.

Next, how do we represent information in various ways? Regardless of their language backgrounds or prior knowledge, they should access these representations. Multiple ways of representing information—seeing, touching, feeling, manipulating—are essential. Then, action and expression involve how kids demonstrate what they know. Paper and pencil tests work for some, but kids should leverage their strengths to show their understanding.

The idea with Universal Design for Learning is to build lesson plans, curricula, and materials flexible enough to engage kids in different ways, represent information in multiple ways, and allow kids to express their understanding diversely.

What I did was take that framework and create a document, still being crowdsourced. This is one of the resources linked at the end. I took each of the three principles, along with guidelines and checkpoints, and created examples specific to computer science education. For instance, with action and expression, we can provide options where teachers have templates with starter codes. For recognition, using physical computing, physical representations, interactive whiteboards, and videos are effective ways of representing information.

Recruiting interest involves giving students choices in the projects they undertake. In this three-page document, you'll find examples of sustaining effort, vocabulary, language, and symbols in computer science education, communication, and self-regulation comprehension, and executive function. Each bullet point offers suggestions.

Thank you for your attention and interest in Universal Design for Learning. I hope this information helps you create more inclusive and effective educational experiences.

And by the way, those of you who are doing UDL and computer science, I'd love to hear what you're doing, because this is a super crowdsource document so it can continue to grow. So that's an example of a tool that you can take into your classroom that takes those three UDL principles and apply them directly to computer science education.

But this is a little intimidating, and so the way that I use this document, I use a four-part sequence, and this is like teacher lesson planning 101. So it's not new, but I like applying it here. The first thing I do is I think about what are my instructional goals, and then I turn those instructional goals into "I can" statements, so that they are student-facing. And then we're like, "Okay, where are we with these 'I can' statements with the kids?" And then I think, all right, I've got these goals. What are the barrier words? What are the barriers that I think my students are gonna face with these goals? We could probably guess what those are when we do our lesson planning. So I think very explicitly about the barriers before I do any of my lesson planning.

And then what I do is I think about the UDL principles and these checkpoints, because this is too much and it's not a more is better. It's about being really, really targeted about which UDL checkpoints are specific to what you wanna accomplish in the computer science classroom. Make sense? Don't wanna do too much, right? Our jobs are hard enough. And then obviously the last part is reflecting on whether students are learning and engaged, and then it's like a cycle and then we try it again. So that's pretty much what we do with UDL.

I wanna show you a little video here because we're gonna practice a little bit. So let me give you a tiny bit of context to this video. There's these two kids, they're sitting next to each other, and the student is trying to animate rain sounds to go on this penguin, okay? I call this video, "It's Glitching," and you'll know why in just a moment. Hold on.

(Child 2 groans)

Okay, deep breath. What's the matter?

It's glitching, it keeps on glitching. Just stop, stop, stop. What do you have for your coat? That the fur?

For the rain. For the rain. Lemme see if that's the same coat I have.

No, for the rain, it's because I'm trying to make sounds, rain sounds.

Oh, that's too many rain sounds, just letting you know. That's too many. And it, yeah (indistinct).

What will happen if you put too many?

It'll like kind of glitch I think.

Oh.

No, because... I wish my dad was here. It's not working because it's... It's not working because it's glitching.

(Dr. Israel laughs)

How many of you have had experience like that in your classrooms? Right?

(Dr. Israel laughs)

So one of the ways that we study this is that we use video screen recording and then we annotate the videos. And so we hear the funniest conversations between kids. This one was a really great example, because what's happening here is that the child, they put too many rain sounds like, "Just letting you know there's too many sounds," the other kid said. And what happens when you put too many sounds in the same forever block is that you're going to hear like this. Like it's not gonna make any sense, right?

So it's a way to think about, okay, what are the goals? Well, in this particular situation, the goal was just to animate a little project, and use a forever block. The barriers are that the student really didn't understand kind of what, like thinking about repetition, and what they needed to do and like a complete program. And then how can UDL help? Like in this particular situation, there are lots of possibilities, right? I would be able to go back and say, okay, what are the barriers? Well, they didn't understand that you can't have too many blocks here. Like it could be that a very simple project planning template would be enough, right? Let's look at your project planning template and then follow it like a simple solution.

But for this particular case, like the frustration, like all the fields there. So I don't know if you've ever had a chance to actually video screen capture your students' computer screen. Screencastify does that on Google, and it's amazing because you can see what the kids are doing and the conversations they're having. You just have to remind them that they're being taped. I've heard flirting; I mean, it's hilarious, but it's great. Kids are awesome.

In any case, this is an example where I would go, okay, what are the goals? What are the barriers? How can I use the UDL checkpoints to address those barriers? Let's see here. Okay, so here's another group of strategies that has worked really, really well for me. I call these multiple entry points, and they're two different ways that we do this. This is probably something that is pretty well known, I would say. But thinking about the progression, right? Starting with something that's unplugged, then going into something that's really, really guided with project planning templates, and then moving to more open-ended activities.

Oftentimes, this is where we start, but the part that I really, really like is then to give kids choices. I call this... Whereas before this was sequential, right? Think I do, we do, you do. This is a whole bunch of you dos, but there are different options, right? I'll show you some examples of this in a little bit. One entry point is an existing project. The kids can play, remix, and break it apart, but the code is already developed, and they can see it. Then, I can take the exact same project but make it buggy, right? They can toggle between the project that is correct and the buggy project and see what the differences are.

One, I call this exploded code, but these are Parsons problems. You take all of the code and break it apart. In block-based programming, I'll show you what that looks like. For many of our classrooms, with a wide range of variability, we need some expansions. We call those spicy expansions. Once the kids get through this and understand it, there's a range of extensions they can go through. The idea is that in a single classroom, the students should be able to enter into the projects with that low floor and high ceiling. You'll have the QR code; these are examples in Scratch, but we're working on these in VEX too. When those are available, they'll be on the website.

Okay, so here's a super, super depth beginning one. It's called puppy training. A moment it will show. Essentially, what you do is it says, "Help me train my puppy." Click on the green C to call him, green to make him sit, R to make him roll over. So you know, the puppy's gonna come over, sit, and roll over, right? That's the completed code. There's also one with missing commands. There's one here; I'll show you the exploded code one. I will show you the exploded code. See inside. You could see that all the blocks are here, but the students have to put them together.

We also then have the extension in Scratch. We used the Micro Bit. But what's nice about VEX 123 and VEX is that it doesn't need to be the extension that could be there from the very, very beginning. In this particular example, the extension is to connect it with the Micro Bit. This particular website here, my colleague Joanne Barrett, created a bunch of these. When we have the VEX ones, they will be up here as well. We have puppy training, a weather one, and one for heat molecules. Thinking about low flame, high flame, absolute zero. The idea here is that we can build flexibility into our classrooms and our instruction. We don't have to have a whole bunch of different things.

All the kids can work on the same thing and be at whatever level they're ready for. I'm not telling kids what to pick; they have the autonomy to do this. We want the kids to be empowered to do whatever they want to do. Some of our teachers are a little scared of that, wondering if kids will pick the right thing for them. But that happens in reading too, like when you're going to pick books, and so we have to guide them a little bit. The kids do a really good job of picking the projects that are relevant to them. Many of them will want to get to the spicy expansions, so they'll do some of these early ones pretty quickly. But then the kids that need to stay in exploded code or buggy code can do so and still learn the standards and goals we want them to learn. That's concurrent entry points.

Music Cue: UDL

Another resource for you. All of this stuff is like drafty, but I'm going to put it out there because y'all are teachers, and you're kind, and it's okay. I started to curate some of these materials, UDL for CS interactive table. If you go here, what I've done is I've created videos. I took that table, that PDF, and created little videos. It's just talking ahead of me right now, sorry. But then there are some strategies underneath. For each one of these, if you're interested, you can find resources for how to recruit interest, provide options for expression and communication, or executive functions. That table can seem a little intimidating, but you can go here and find resources for how to do that.

All right, that's your deal. Oh, I was going to show you one more thing here. We're curating a bunch of resources. For example, intro to inclusive computer science, frameworks, or instructional practices. Some of these materials, like the ones we just talked about, I've created with my colleagues in my lab. Some of these are things we've found online. We're trying to get everything together. The tagging system isn't amazing, but there's a lot here already. Over the course of the summer, I'm hoping the tagging system will be better, but that's a resource that's hopefully helpful. If you want to reach out, there's a way for you to do that here.

Music Cue: Transition to High Leverage Practices

The Council for Exceptional Children is the big organization for special education in the United States. They got together all of these super smart folks who study this work and came up with 22 high leverage practices in four areas: collaboration (not like student collaboration, but adults working together, co-teaching, co-planning, working with parents), assessment, social, emotional, behavioral, and instructional. Within each one of those, like on the HLP website, you can see, for example, the high leverage practices related to instruction. We just talked about scaffolding, which is one of them.

Just like with the Universal Design for Learning framework, what I'm trying to do is figure out how this applies to computer science education. I think it's part of being a teacher: how does this work in my classroom? What we're starting to do is pick out of those 22 some of the ones that I think we naturally do in computer science education anyway. For example, collaborating with families—we do that all the time. We want to bring them into what we're doing, using multiple data sources to understand our learners' strengths and needs, teaching metacognitive strategies—that's all about debugging. I picked the ones that I think are most useful to start off with.

Thank you for your attention and dedication to improving education. If you have any questions or need further resources, please feel free to reach out.

We'll eventually get to all 22, and then we've created some resources. So here's an example of scaffolding that comes directly from the special ed world that I came from. We used to use, and still use, this term: least to most prompting. The idea is to assume competence. A lot of times, what we do for kids who struggle is that we over-support them, saying, "Here, let me help you." That's not always the best thing to do. We want to... you know, frustration is not a bad thing; learning how to deal with frustration is the issue. So, we talk about starting with the least amount of support and only going to more intensive support if kids are showing us with evidence and data that they need some support. This is an example that we use.

What we're now doing is taking these and creating some resources that are also available to you. You can see, they're super drafty. But essentially, what I've done is taken the high leverage practices, like scaffolded support, and explained what it means. This is directly from the website. Then, I discuss why it is important and how to apply it in the computer science classroom. I'm hoping that this shows how some of this application fits in computer science. We've done some of this ahead of time so that it'll be easier to implement in the classroom. Right now, I have this for three of them: metacognitive strategies, debugging, and another one.

Here's an example that Diana Franklin has created for looking at a Scratch project. It's called TIPP and SEE. The idea here that Diana and her colleagues have done is to look at the title of the project, the instructions, the purpose, and then play the project. Just like with the ones that I showed, you see, click on the sprites, look at the events, and explore. It's a metacognitive way of getting started with a project that is scaffolded. Those resources are open for you.

Another thing I wanted to say about explicit instruction is that sometimes in CS education, this is a bit of a dirty word because there's this tension between open exploration, letting kids get their hands dirty and make mistakes, and providing explicit step-by-step directions. I think it's a non-issue in the classroom that maybe professors and researchers talk about more because everybody scaffolds. But what I mean when I say explicit instruction is to use it if it's necessary and then fade it. This idea of over-support oftentimes happens. I see paraeducators with their hands on students' computers, making sure that doesn't happen. We provide the scaffolds, we provide the explicit instruction, but then we fade it as kids become more efficient in using the strategies themselves.

Okay, so we've talked about mindsets, Universal Design for Learning, and HLPs. This is the last piece, and I'm doing great on time.

(Dr. Israel chuckles)

Accessibility. This is really tough because we don't get to design the tools that we're given. But what we can do is evaluate whether the tools we have are accessible for our learners. This is super complex. But what I do is use these four principles, called POOR. This comes out of CAST, so essentially, I look at whatever tool I have, and we're doing this with the VEX 123, which is amazing, and actually making improvements. Is the information perceivable? Can my students see it? Can they hear it? Can they physically understand it? For example, if I have a student who's blind, can they still perceive the information? Is it operable? Can they navigate the information on the screen or the robot?

Thank you for your attention and engagement. I hope these insights and resources will be helpful in your educational practices. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need further assistance.

Is it understandable? And robust means can it be used with a range of technologies, for example, if you have a switch, right? Or a child is using some kind of assistive technology, doesn't work with that. And so even though the idea of accessibility is really, really complex, asking these questions specific to the tools that you're using will let you know what are some of the barriers within those tools.

So when we talk about goals, barriers, and then UDL, this is a really great, somewhat simple way of looking at the tech barriers. So that's the accessibility side of things. And this is something that right now we're doing with teachers together collaboratively, because it takes work. So when you're co-planning or working together in teams, this is the kind of thing that you can do together, and kind of come up with solutions like, you know what? Like I have an idea for how to make this a little bit more understandable for my learners, right? So that you're able to do the evaluation, but then tweak what you're doing in your instruction to be able to address some of these.

And on the other hand, if you're using a tool that doesn't meet these standards for your particular learner, then you have to say, "Is this the right tool to achieve this particular goal for these particular learners?" And that's where you might have to be a little creative about the range of tools that you have available to you.

Okay, so those are the three UDL, HLPs, and accessibility. This is how I think about putting it together. And we haven't talked about culturally responsive pedagogy here, but I didn't want to ignore it. So it's here because this is definitely part of the equation. I think about this kind of like a, remember those kaleidoscopes when you were like growing up and you would look into them and you would switch and like all of the little things were in there. I kind of think about like accessibility and inclusion, kind of like that.

So I've got these different frameworks, Universal Design for Learning, High Leverage Practices, cultural responsive pedagogy. But I have to look through the lens of who my students are in my classroom. 'Cause these aren't like a one size fits all thing. And so that's kind of like why I have this as a gear. So essentially if you think about your classroom through these lenses, then you're able to pick the kind of strategies and the supports that you'll have for them because it's never a one size fits all. Every time I think about Universal Design for Learning or high leverage practices or accessibility, it's with the lens of who my students are in my classroom. And so that's why kind of that piece of it is here.

This is part of the time for CS project. So at the beginning when I talked to you about the invasive species module, this work came out of that. So what we did is we took these different frameworks. Hopefully this is something that's helpful to you too. And we used the eight PBL elements and we created checkpoints just like that UDL, PDF that I created at the beginning. I created one that aligns project-based learning, Universal Design for Learning, and culturally responsive pedagogy. So I'll show you those resources too.

So this is the time for CSForAll website. It's a collaboration with Broward County, the outlier valuation group, and the University of Chicago. The lesson plans aren't here yet because we're in the middle of a treatment control study, which will be done hopefully at the end of this year. But what is here is the crosswalk that we created. Let's see if I can make this bigger. There we go. So for those of you who do project-based learning, you know, you key in on knowledge understanding, you create a challenge and a problem, you have like sustained inquiry and authenticity. Within each one of those, we did the work of that alignment so that you can hopefully take these and apply them within your own project-based learning activities.

Thank you for your attention and engagement. I hope you find these resources helpful in your educational endeavors.

So this is here, right? I'm super proud of it. So then the other part just to know... Oh, I just shouldn't have clicked outta there. So even though the lessons aren't up here yet, the collections will be. We created some videos that align with the eight PBL elements and these equity practices. And so hopefully these can be applied to any kind of project-based learning. We try to keep it not related to CS and science, even though we're integrating computer science and science in these modules because we think that this is much broader in terms of project-based learning. So these are here for you too.

Okay, so that's that and the videos we just talked about. Okay, so here's my last bit of parting advice. Having been in the classroom for a very long time, and now doing this work with teacher candidates, it is not an all or nothing. These are complex frameworks. You're teaching complex content to kids that have a broad range of needs in your classroom. And so what I always say is start small and build, just like we tell our students, right? It's not like an all or nothing, right? It's not binary, right? And so just like start, build, collaborate, and then like over time, add more into your toolkit here.

I wanted to show you a couple more things here. So I've got a bunch of resources, I'm gonna have the QR code on the last slide too. So if you missed it, it's there. The first thing is the Computer Science Teachers Association has a new working group called CSAccess. And so you can join a Listserv here, we're doing a lot of work. We're working with curriculum and tech companies and just trying to solve some of these problems. So this is a great resource for you if you're interested in that and being part of the conversation.

This summer, I am doing a virtual PD through Pathfinders Infosys. Infosys Pathfinders has a ton of professional development. It's all free, it's all free to public school teachers. So we're doing one that's part of this work called disability inclusion in CS, K-12 CS, Bitly is there. So we're gonna have 50 spots, some have already been taken, but if you're interested, sign up. We'd love to have you there.

And then here are all these resources that we talked about. The only one I haven't talked about, which I think is really important is part of the CSAccess Group has been developing this best practices for teachers. And so thinking about universal access, access for kids who are deaf and hard of hearing and access for kids who are blind or visually impaired. So within all of these, you've got like pedagogy, user interface, inputs, outputs, and so these are being developed as we speak, as part of the Access CSTA working group. But everything else is here as well as a few other things.

So that is it, and I'm ready for questions.

That was terrific. Thank you very much. Everyone's taking a picture of the QR code right now, as they should. It's right there. We're not moving the slide, don't worry. And this is another gift that I'm super proud of.

(Dr. Israel laughs)

I think y'all are like the first ones to see it, but...

(Dr. Israel laughs)

So we do have two mics. Questions from anyone for Dr. Israel?

We have one right here, Tom.

Hi. I just went to the website and it looks like the application's closed for the summer program. Can it be opened back up?

Yes, it should not be closed. Yes. I will make sure it's fixed.

(indistinct)

Other questions.

Just a comment, thank you for sharing your presentation on (indistinct).

Yeah, I mean, we're developing a lot of these resources not for ourselves, like we're hoping that they're useful to folks and so that's like, please use them, and let us know how you're using 'em.

Seth has a question right here.

Thank you. That was a great presentation. My question is, what is your experience working internationally? Do you have collaboration internationally? I'm from Ghana anyway.

Oh, amazing. No, not yet.

We've been working primarily in various schools across the United States. I was at the University of Illinois, where we worked extensively in Illinois schools. Additionally, we're working in New York City public schools and South Florida schools. However, I have not done any international work yet.

[Woman 3] Yeah, thank you. Out of all the information you provided, where would you point me if I want to get resources on teaching computer science at the high school level?

At the high school level, one of the key resources is AccessCSforAll, which is out of the University of Washington. This resource is really focused on the high school level. Another resource is the Quorum programming language, which is designed for learners who are blind and have low vision. Interestingly, designing for kids on the fringes often results in tools that are great for a wide range of learners. Stefik and his team at UNLV have done work with Quorum for kids with learning disabilities and ADHD as well. While the frameworks are broad, much of our work involves block-based programming languages. If you're specifically interested in text-based programming, I would recommend looking into AccessCSforAll and Quorum.

Terrific. Any other questions for Dr. Israel?

No, thank you.

Another round of applause, please.

(audience applauding)

(upbeat music)