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 - likely to change)
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 PST

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. Besides education in general, topics like educational technology, computing education, and real-world constraints on large-scale change may also be included. 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.

Rough skeleton 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 or prewriting. 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.

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 am a Tucson transplant who enjoys the down to earth nature of the desert. I'm about to graduate from the University of Arizona with a B.S. in Computer Science and Molecular and Cellular Biology. I'm interested in the use of big data and machine learning in computational biology research, and I've also become passionate about computing education. My interest in computing education is based on my own love of Computer Science, as well as my experience leading a few teaching projects at the UofA and the dire need for computing skills I've seen among scientists. The frequency with which my friends in the sciences tell me they wish they had taken computer science in college tells me something's wrong.

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 plan to blog and tweet about my progress...
 * I've recently discovered IRC
 * 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.
 * Need to figure out where to host the project...

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.''

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.

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.

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.