An Exciting First Day at GHC13

Today was our first full day in Minneapolis for this year's edition of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.  It's so nice to live the conference through the eyes of the students I organized to get here, seeing as it's their first time at GHC.  It's also nice to meet up again with all my women-in-computing friends that I rarely get to see outside of the conference.

Things got started with a nice welcome session that happened to include me going on stage with my co-chair for the Communities Committee, Charna, to get recognized for our efforts.  The opening speakers (including student members of the ABI boards!) also gave some great advice for newcomers.

Then came a highlight of our day: the keynote / plenary session that featured Telle Whitney (CEO of the Anita Borg Institute), Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook), and Maria Klawe (President of Harvey Mudd College).  There was a lot of really good, frank talk about gender issues and facing them head on.  Karla, a GHC Communities Volunteer, blogged about this session - check it out!

There were a bunch of sessions in the afternoon, but I couldn't pay full attention to them because they were either full or I worked on my class's assignment to be released on Friday instead.  I did have fun presenting my Gram's House poster at the poster fair, making some really great connections with potential collaborators.

I'm really pumped to see everyone again tomorrow (for longer!), the sessions, my own talk, and most of all, the dancing!

Gearing Up for Grace Hopper Next Week

For me, today is all about getting ready for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing next week.  As usual, I'm involved with the conference in many different ways, from presenting a poster and talk to being a member of the Communities Committee.  Plus, I'm organizing a group of five other Carleton students who are attending for their first time!

I was thinking about all the different posts I've made about GHC over the years, and realized that I probably have a few that would be useful to attendees this year, too.  So here's a round-up of my most useful posts as we all gear up for next week:

• Getting Ready for a Conference
• Making the Most of Conference Travel
• Presentation and Communication Skills in Computer Science (check this out if you're giving a talk this year!)
• Dancing with Hundreds of Technical Women at Grace Hopper (aka one of the things I look forward to most!)
• When Having a Lot of Facebook Friends is Good (good ways to network with the attendees you meet)
• GHC09: I Am A Technical Woman! (a great video to get you in the mood)

A Preview of My GHC13 Gram's House Poster

It's not finalized, but here's a preview of the poster I made about Gram's House, a research project I started a few years ago, for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.  Gram's House is a game designed to encourage girls to consider computer science through a story about making a difference for a loved one and through computer science concept puzzles.

As usual, my poster is fairly minimal in terms of text content.  I use my posters as props to talk about the project during the poster presentation, or as teasers to entice viewers to get more information.  If you'd like to know more, visit me during the conference poster session, or check out my research page about the project where you can also look at the PDF of the poster.

Early Experiences with Poll Everywhere and Peer Instruction

I've now survived the first three lectures in both my classes.  Both are introductory computing classes for non-majors: one is heavier on concepts but includes Python programming, while the other is heavier on programming in Processing.  Both are also quite large: 440 and 280 students respectively!

I have always been a strong believer in active learning, even in huge lectures.  One of the main ways I'm incorporating active learning this term is through peer instruction and Poll Everywhere (an all-software version of clickers).  Carleton has a paid account for Poll Everywhere that all professors are able to use, and the service is totally free to students.

So far, even though not all my questions have been perfect, I am quite happy with the results.  It seems that students are engaged with the questions at hand, based on my walkabouts and seeing much arm waving toward the screen as students discuss the answers.  In most cases, I see a marked improvement in how many are selecting the correct response.

Here's a good example.  In my Processing class, I asked the following question after we learned about variables:

At first, the answers were pretty evenly split between red (52), blue ( 46), and neither (42).  After students had a chance to discuss with their friends ("convince someone who answered differently than you why you are right"), the responses were mostly red (77), still some blue (24), and fewer neither (15).

Even better, after the voting, I ran the code so we could see that the answer was indeed red, and I said "I guess you want to know why, right?" There were students who audibly agreed with that sentiment. ;) So I did an explanation on the black board using our variables-as-boxes analogy.  It was wonderful.

I have only done five "real" polls between these two classes so far, but I must say that I am already a strong believer.  It will be interesting to see what students think of it when I ask for informal, anonymous mid-term feedback in a few weeks.

Pictures of My New Office

I moved into my new office on Tuesday, and finally decorated a little bit.  Here are some photos of my new home!

My teaching and office hours are now posted on the little sign outside my door.  Why, yes, I did use scrapbooking supplies to decorate my schedule!

This is the view when you walk in.  The setup is actually quite comfy, with a proper adjustable keyboard tray and all.  I brought a lot of stuff from my desk in our research lab; that's the only reason the shelves look at all full.

There is a little table and chairs to the right of the door.  I don't think most profs have this - it was just left over from the previous administrative occupant.  I also finally found a home for some photos we had framed for our photo club exhibits.

This is a close up of some of the shelves.  I've got mugs and thank-you cards from various outreach events and invited talks, a family photo, and of course Computer Engineering Barbie.  The teddy bear came from a student in one of my mini-courses.