Our first class meeting is Lecture Wednesday September 7; there are no off-campus section meetings (i.e., clubs!) until about 3 weeks into the semester. Some of the information on these web pages is tentative until the semester begins.

Office Hours

Prof. Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau (dusseau@cs.wisc.edu), 7375 Computer Sciences
Best to send email to confirm
Mondays: 2:30pm-3:30pm
Wednesdays: 11:00am - noon

Club Resources

Weekly Plan

9/7 - Week 1: Intro to Course

9/14 - Week 2: Get to know your site

9/21 - Week 3 : Prepare for first Club

9/28 - Week 4: Club Content

10/5 - Week 5: Community-Based Learning

10/12 - Week 6: Formative Assessment

10/19 - Week 7: Behavior and MindSet

10/26 - Week 8: CS Unplugged: Searching

11/2 - Week 9: Tinkering

11/9 - NO CLASS

11/16 - Week 11: Preparing for Final Projects

11/23 - No Lecture - Thanksgiving

11/30 - Week 12: Showing off Final Projects

12/7 - Week 13: Resumes and Presentations

12/14- Week 14: Final Celebration

Congratulations to everyone for teaching CS to 4th and 5th graders!

Lab 301: Sun Madison Children's Museum 2:30 - 3:30

Lab 321: Tues Stephens Elementary (120 S Rosa Rd) 2:30 - 3:30

Lab 322: Tues Goodman Community (214 Waubesa St.) 3:00 - 4:00

Lab 324: Tues Van Hise Elementary (246 S. Segoe) 3:25 - 4:25

Lab 331: Wed Crestwood (5930 Old Sauk Rd) 2:30 - 3:30

Anana (6323 Woodington Way) 2:30 - 3:30

Lab 332: Wed Thoreau Elementary (3870) Nakoma Rd. 3:30 - 4:30

Lab 333: Wed Randall Elementary (1802 Regent St.) 2:40 - 3:40

This 2-credit service-learning course helps UW students lead after-school and weekend clubs focusing on CS Fundamentals and Scratch programming.

Course Overview

Computer science (CS) is revolutionizing all of our lives. Innovations in computation drive our economy and underlie almost all our advances in science and engineering. To flourish in today's world, everyone needs to understand not only how to effectively use computers and technology, but also computational thinking. Computational thinking is a way of solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science; computational thinking enables individuals to specify solutions so precisely that even computers can follow the directions. Although computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists, most individuals are not exposed to it

The primary objective of our clubs is to introduce the benefits of computation to the next generation. Our next generation’s scientists, engineers, teachers, entrepreneurs, and artists must all be able to innovate using computation. Therefore, we propose to introduce elementary and middle school students to computational thinking. We believe this is the ideal age because the students are mature enough to understand key mathematical concepts and have acquired basic computer-usage skills, yet are young enough to have few misconceptions about computer science. Our secondary objective is for students to obtain experience with the creative aspects of computation. One of the empowering aspects of computation is that individuals are not limited to being passive users of technology; instead, even novices can create their own original games, stories, art, music, and more.

In this course, each UW student is part of a small team (2-4 UW students) responsible for leading an afterschool (or Sunday) club. The clubs are held weekly and involve the same group of kids each week. Each UW student is expected to be a club setting for at least 10 hours over the semester; the afterschool clubs are all 1 hour (or 1.5 hours) each and run for 10-12 weeks. UW students are expected to spend time preparing content for each club meeting; most of the content is centered around programming in Scratch (see http://scratch.mit.edu).

STUDENT GRIEVANCE PROCEDURE

Any student at UW–Madison who feels that they have been treated unfairly has the right to voice a complaint and receive a prompt hearing of the grievance. The basis for a grievance can range from something as subtle as miscommunication to the extreme of harassment.

Ensuring that all students feel welcome and supported is a top priority of our department. The Department of Computer Sciences has developed procedures to handle complaints or incidents that are student-related, such as bias or mistreatment, or academic, such as a grade dispute or incident with an instructor. Information on the CS reporting procedures can be found here: https://www.cs.wisc.edu/report-an-incident/

For assistance in determining options, students can also contact the drop-in staff member within the Dean of Students Office at 608-263-5700, within Bascom Hall, Room 70, Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m.–4 p.m.