My "Yarn-Saver" sock pattern |
I attended because of the CS Principles Pilot. Plugging along on the project this year feels isolating at times. I worry that I am not doing this correctly. This fades when I get a chance to talk to the other piloters, so it was great to have a mini-reunion. SIGCSE has renewed my energy in building my pilot course, along with a huge to do list.
Goal: End the isolation and get surrounded by lots of great CS teachers, local and elbow to elbow.
Luckily attending SIGCSE also means sitting in on other great presentations. My personal favorite was the paper presented by Michelle Craig about knitting patterns and program tracing. My own knitting bias aside, it was a very interesting take on how new programmers acquire language. For instance the repeat-until structure is mroe intuitively obvious to a novice that the typical while structure we introduce.
Id also add that we create knitting patterns to create artifacts. This can get lost for new programmers. No one wants my dusty pile of knitting magazines, but most of my family and friends appreciate the socks they describe. Or at least they pretend to, and some days thats all that counts.
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