[LuCE-News] Participate in Teacher Survey, Natural Languages, and More

Dear all, It’s been a couple of months since my last message from LuCE, and there’s quite some news! 1. Moving to a Mailing List I'm moving to a mailing list for sending out these news emails. I am still learning how this works, so please excuse me for potentially sending extra mails (you might have received a welcome message when we added you to the list—that wasn’t planned). 2. Please Participate in our Teacher Survey on Programming Language Concepts We are about to do a study where we would really, really love to get your input. The study will consist of a survey for high school informatics teachers in Switzerland. The survey consists of quite a few questions, and we estimate that it might take about an hour, maybe a bit more, to complete. To compensate you for your expert contribution, we plan to give to every invited participant who completes the survey by the deadline a CHF 150.- voucher for SBB-CFF-FFS. (We are still awaiting the approval from our university's ethics committee, but the unofficial feedback we received so far looks very encouraging.) So, if you could spare an hour, please open the invitation email when you receive it in a few days. Grab a cup of coffee or tea, make yourself comfy, and take the survey. Your response is automatically anonymized; we will not know who answered what. The survey includes some understanding questions as well as some questions about your experiences and opinions related to various concepts. Not only will you greatly help us in our research, but you also will hopefully gain new insights or ideas for your teaching. And you will walk away with a voucher for a nice trip. Oh, and if you have a colleague who is a practicing high school informatics teacher in Switzerland, and who might be interested in participating (and in receiving a voucher!), too, please direct them to this form so they can declare their interest: https://usi.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Q2475zCnCJN3Wm We would like to have as large a pool of participants as possible. 3. Which (Natural) Language Do Your Students Program In? When you teach programming, which (natural) language do you use? Our PyTamaro library exists in English, Italian, French, and German. But there is more than just the language of the library. We put together a page describing the various ways the choice of natural language comes up in programming education, and specifically in working with Python, PyTamaro, and PyTamaro Web: https://pytamaro.si.usi.ch/activities/luce/multiple-languages/en/v1 4. Are you a mathematics teacher? Do you teach algebra? Then check this out! Oh, and also if you are not into mathematics, having a look at this page might be insightful for anyone teaching programming. Because if you teach programming, you may be teaching some algebra. Especially if you teach programming with PyTamaro. And if your students enjoy programming with PyTamaro, then it might be worth pointing out when some idea about the composition of a graphic corresponds to some algebraic concept they learned in math (like the idea of an identity element of a binary operation). https://pytamaro.si.usi.ch/activities/luce/mathematical-foundations/en/v1 That’s it for today. I hope this message actually makes it all the way to you all. If all goes will, you should find the archive of messages (starting with this message) on the mailing list archive page: https://lists.usi.ch/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/luce-news@lists.usi.ch/ You also should be able to unsubscribe if you don’t want to get spammed by us any longer: https://lists.usi.ch/mailman3/postorius/lists/luce-news.lists.usi.ch/ All the best from Lugano, -Matthias