Blogs (19) >>
Thu 16 Mar 2023 16:35 - 17:00 at 715 - K-12: Pedagogical Innovations 1 Chair(s): Pooja Vashisth

In the past years, the authors held computer programming and machine learning summer camp for high-school students with disabilities. Due to the pandemic, the summer camp was offered virtually in 2020 and 2021. This paper reports our experience of teaching this summer camp. The main goal of the summer camp was to let students with disabilities get first-hand experience of working in STEM fields to encourage them to pursue STEM careers. The curriculum was primarily composed of hands-on activities for Python programming and Computer Vision. Besides lectures and programming tasks, there were also guest speakers and an external panel to offer personal experience of working in STEM fields.

Students enrolled had disabilities including Autism, learning disability, vision impairments, and blindness. The summer camp was successful, and all students were able to finish all programming tasks. Special accommodations and adjustments were necessary, especially in the curriculum, schedule, teaching practices, and the involvement of special educators. The overall effort to make these adjustments was not extremely high. However, we did observe accessibility issues for the student with blindness. Overall, our experience shows that online programming camps for high-school students with disabilities are feasible, and students with disabilities can potentially be successful Computer Science professionals.

Thu 16 Mar

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

15:45 - 17:00
K-12: Pedagogical Innovations 1Papers at 715
Chair(s): Pooja Vashisth York University
15:45
25m
Paper
Putting Computing on the Table: Using Physical Games to Teach Computer ScienceK12In-Person
Papers
Jennifer Parham-Mocello Oregon State University, Martin Erwig Oregon State University, Margaret Niess Oregon State University, Jason Weber Oregon State University, Madalyn Smith Oregon State University, Garrett Berliner Oregon State University
DOI
16:10
25m
Paper
BJC Sparks: A New Functional-First Middle School CS CurriculumK12In-Person
Papers
Dan Garcia UC Berkeley, Mary Fries EDC, Michael Ball UC Berkeley, Pamela Fox Microsoft, Deanna Gelosi University of Colorado Boulder, Lauren Mock University of California, Berkeley, Della Dastur Stratford San Jose Middle School, Dave Briccetti The Athenian School, Bob Kahn Brentwood School
DOI
16:35
25m
Paper
Virtual Summer Camp for High School Students with Disabilities -- An Experience ReportK12In-Person
Papers
Wei Wang University of Texas at San Antonio, USA, Kathy Ewoldt The University of Texas at San Antonio, Mimi Xie The University of Texas at San Antonio, Alberto Mestas-Nunez The University of Texas at San Antonio, Sean Soderman The University of Texas at San Antonio, Jeffrey Wang Keystone School
DOI