Education notebook

Films offered on women, computing

The Arkansas Department of Education is making available to teachers and students the opportunity to view three documentaries that highlight the roles that women have had in the history of computer programming.

The Computers is about six young women who in 1946 programmed the first all-electronic, programmable computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was a secret World War II project to assist the military in calculating thousands of ballistics trajectories.

The Coders tells the story of the inventor of Flash, the first multimedia platform supporting video, graphics, games and animation for the Internet, and the inventor of the Java servlet, which allows web applications to respond quickly to requests from users everywhere.

The Future Makers is about a doctoral student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the student's vision of manipulating electronic devices using natural hand gestures instead of keyboards or touchpads.

The state Education Department entered into an agreement with First Byte Productions LLC to make the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer Programmers Project videos available to all Arkansas educators. Kathy Kleiman, owner of First Byte Productions, discovered the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer programmers as a Harvard undergraduate looking for female models in programming.

This agreement was made possible through the work of the state agency's computer science unit and as part of the $5 million computer science grant provided by Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the Arkansas Legislature.

Teachers can access the documentaries via the ArkansasIDEAS learning management system: http://ideas.aetn.org. The videos can be shown in other limited venues by calling the the department's computer science unit at (501) 682-0459.

Teaching program ratings released

The National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan research and policy organization, has released new ratings for 875 undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs.

Of the seven undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs evaluated in Arkansas, four rank in the 90th percentile or above: Harding University in Searcy, Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

The University of Arkansas stands out with top grades in all evaluated areas except student teaching and early reading.

Early reading is the weakest area across programs in Arkansas, according to the national council's review. Selection criteria for teacher preparation programs, however, is strong, with five of the seven programs earning As or Bs in the category. Grades on classroom management" for the Arkansas programs are above the national average, with two-thirds of programs earning an A or B.

The newly released review only analyzed undergraduate programs for preparing elementary school teachers. The organization will over the next two years release updated ratings for undergraduate secondary, graduate and nontraditional elementary, graduate and nontraditional secondary, and undergraduate and graduate special education programs.

The 2016 review of elementary teacher preparation programs is available at the National Council on Teacher Quality website: nctq.org.

Metro on 12/11/2016

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