User:KatieIreneC

Katie is new at this. She's a CompSci and MCBio student about to graduate from the University of Arizona.

She's applying for the GNOME OPW with Wikimedia. This description is under construction.

(Working Project title)
Education Field Guide: What Technologists Need to Know About Teaching

Name and contact information
Name: Katie Cunningham Email: katieirenec at gmail IRC or IM networks/handle(s): katieirenec Location: Tucson, AZ / Lansing, MI Typical working hours: 10am-6pm MST / EDT (Here's a handy map of current times across the US!)

Synopsis
Short summary describing your project: what it means to accomplish, and how it will benefit MediaWiki or Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia.

Technology and education are interconnecting more and more. Education technology (ed-tech) is an enthusiastically discussed industry, and the movement for formal computer science education is gaining momentum at all levels. Groups like Py*, Black Girls Code, and OpenHatch have been created to attract and teach "free-range" beginners programming and open source skills. Organizations like Wikimedia promote learning among those that use their products, but also have a need to teach new members in their communities.

However, few in the technology sphere are familiar with research about educational techniques. We know a lot about how people learn, as well as how new technology has affected or not affected learning in the past. A short primer on best practices in teaching should be created so technological people can quickly absorb this information and then make the most impact with the people they teach. Promoting better teaching can help individuals and organizations reach more diverse types of learners, minimize attrition of learners, and maximize the ability of those learners to make future contributions to the community.

Deliverables
''Include a brief, clear work breakdown structure with milestones and deadlines. Make sure to label deliverables as optional or required. It’s OK to include thinking time (“investigation”) in your work schedule. Deliverables should include investigation, coding, deploying, testing and documentation.''

The goal is a 20,000-word freely licensed English document that can be read in 2-3 hours. It will summarize known research about best teaching practices and the way people learn. It will be a resource that Wikimedians find easy to read and use in contexts like how-to-edit trainings.

The targeted audience is people with programming skill who have never done any reading or research in the field of education, but who want to help teach others to do technical tasks.

Topics to be covered include: (Note: to be narrowed down and put in non-academic language as application is finalized)
 * Bloom's Taxonomy
 * Cognitive Load
 * Learning as a Schema
 * Mental Models/ Notational Machines
 * Constructivism
 * Phenomenography
 * Threshold concepts
 * The three knowledge types
 * Project-based learning
 * Good Examples
 * Connectivism
 * Behaviourism

Timeline: Now - May 1: Guillaume, Greg and I introduce themselves, and I finish this application.

Mid-May to mid-June: Guillaume would have a few conversations with Greg and Katie about Wikimedia's communications environment, and Greg and Katie would start working on a lit review and prewriting.

Resources identified for this project include:

Mid-June to mid-September: Guillaume would be a secondary advisor to the student's work (Greg would be the primary mentor) and Guillaume would advise on logistical things about publishing, and be a secondary editor -- Greg would lead on the process of writing the doc.


 * A new topic every couple weeks?
 * Some time at the end as a buffer and for proofreading

About you
''We don't just care about your project -- you are a person, and that matters to us! What drives you? What makes you want to make this the most awesomest wiki enhancement ever? You don't need to write out your life story (we can read your blog if we want that), but we want to know a little about what makes you tick. Are you a Wikipedia addict wanting to make your own experience better? Did a wiki with usability problems run over your dog, and you're seeking revenge? :-) What does making this project happen mean to you?''

I've become passionate about computing education because I love computer science and because I see so much potential for computer science to advance other fields. I'm about to graduate from the University of Arizona with a B.S. in Computer Science and Molecular and Cellular Biology, so I've spent a lot of time with both computer scientists and biologists. I see how helpful a knowledge of computer science would be to so many scientists, saving them time processing data and allowing for new approaches to discovery through new algorithms. But currently, only a narrow segment of the population takes courses in computer science---even though basic programming skills can be as important as basic mathematical skills for many projects. The lack of exposure to real computer science and the fact that few seems to know about the importance of computer science until late in their education has become clear to me, both from the number of panicked phone calls I get from friends who can't figure out basic programming tasks in their labs and the number of attendees to workshops like Software Carpentry bootcamps or the introductory Python workshops I started at my university last year.

Improving the state of computer science education has the power to change this. It can help us not only get the additional software engineers and open source contributors we need, but also improve work in fields from linguistics to biochemistry. And for me, computer science education and outreach is just fun. Breaking down computer science concepts into small, easily understood pieces and disassembling misconceptions about the field so others can share my joy in computer science is awesome. It's what I fill my free time with, it's what I write about on my blog, and it's what I want to pursue in my career.

Blog: There once was a student from Tucson

Twitter: @katieirenec

Mentors and interested parties
Greg Wilson (Software Carpentry) - Primary mentor: editor, research advisor

Guillaume Paumier (Wikimedia) - Secondary mentor: advice on user experience, formatting, integration with Wikimedia

Participation
''We don't just want to know what you plan to accomplish; we want to know how. Briefly describe your work style: how you plan to communicate progress, where you plan to publish your source code while you're working, how and where you plan to ask for help. (We will tend to favor applicants that demonstrate a clear vision for what it means to be an active participant in our development community.)''

Brainstorming:

I think the topic of education is very important to the tech community, so I plan to tweet and blog about what I'm reading and writing about. I think this will help spark conversations about the topic. It has been suggested that I publish monthly posts on the Wikimedia blog to maximize the visibility of the project and allow more people to see a shorter, more easily digestible version of the content.

(How do Greg and Guillaume prefer to communicate?)

Communication will take place through email, wiki talk pages, and occasional video chatting. IRC is also an option.

If I am accepted to the program, I plan to relocate to Lansing, MI for the summer in order to be able to interact with a graduate student in Computer Science Education who is doing a summer internship with Software Carpentry. As well as my mentor Greg Wilson, this student will be a primary resource for helping me absorb the relevant educational research.

Need to figure out where to host the project... The project will be hosted on a wiki? On third-bit.com? Wikibooks?

Past open source experience
''Do you have any past experience working in open source projects (MediaWiki or otherwise)? If so, tell us about it! If you have already written a feature or bugfix in a Wikimedia technology such as MediaWiki, link to it here; we will give strong preference to candidates who have done so.''

My initial contribution for OPW was helping "define and polish" the first draft of mediawiki.org's new Greeter page, as well as contributing to the Project:New_contributors/Starter_kit.

I was part of the Gutengroup, a lab that is committed to making their code open source. As an example, check out dadi, the Gutengroup code I am most familiar with.

Any other info
''Please add any other relevant information -- UI mockups, references to related projects, a link to your proof of concept code, whatever. There are no specific requirements, but we love to see people who love what they're doing. Show us you're excited about this project and have an interest in the background and are considering how best to make your idea work.''

Check out pictures of the beginning programing workshops for non-Computer Science majors that I organized on the UofA WICS flickr page.

I helped out at a Software Carpentry bootcamp for biologists held at University of Arizona, described here.