Last week, Abigail Joseph, the middle school’s learning, innovation and design (LID) director, was named one of the first-ever recipients of the Computer Science Teachers Association’s Equity Fellowship. “I am part of a cohort of 10 educators from around the U.S. that are participants of the Computer Science Teachers Association organization’s inaugural Equity Fellowship,” Joseph said yesterday. “This is a true honor to be chosen out of 112 applicants, and I am happy to share my journey with all of you.”
The program provides various opportunities for career development to support efforts to increase equity in computer science education. “CSTA’s Equity Fellowship is a selective, year-long program that elevates educators who have demonstrated success in disrupting the disparities impacting females, underrepresented students of color, English language learners, and students with special needs in order to bring their inclusive teaching practices and leadership to educators across the country and around the world at the 2020 CSTA Annual Conference,” according to the organization’s website.
Six Harker middle school girls were named finalists and one named a semifinalist in the 2019 ProjectCSGIRLS Competition for Middle School Girls, which encourages entrants to create technology projects that will improve people’s lives. Individual finalists were Deeya Viradia, grade 8, and Anika Pallapothu, grade 6, and team finalists were eighth graders Carol Wininger and Amiya Chokhawala and seventh graders Trisha Iyer and Anika Mantripragada. Saanvi Bhargava, grade 6, was named a semifinalist. This was the first year Harker students entered the competition.
Participants were tasked with creating a computer science or technology project that addressed a social problem in the categories of health, world safety, intelligent technology or inequality. Finalists are eligible to attend the ProjectCSGIRLS National Gala, which will be held June 8-9 in the Washington, D.C., metro area. National winners will be announced at this event, which also will include notable speakers and workshops.
Next month, senior Nikhil Dharmaraj (pictured, second from the right) will visit Cambridge, Mass., to speak on a panel about the intersection of artificial intelligence and the humanities with Harvard University faculty members Jessica Fjeld and David Weinberger of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Dharmaraj’s work with Harvard began last summer during an internship at the college’s metaLAB, “a joint product of [Harvard’s] graduate school of design and the law school,” he explained, “which seeks to explore various issues at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Right up my alley, as I’m equally interested in both subjects!”
Dharmaraj worked on two projects during his time with metaLAB. The first, titled “Moral Labyrinth,” was showcased at the prestigious Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria, in September and consisted of mazes with borders made up of ethical quandaries about technology and nature. “My role in the project involved web development and early design of the digital labyrinth that ended up being exhibited at the festival,” said Dharmaraj. “I also contributed to the ideation of the physical labyrinth as well as general research for the project.”
His next project was “The Laughing Room,” an installation designed to emulate the set of a sitcom, in which participants’ conversations were scanned by an algorithm for speech patterns that would elicit laughter. A laugh track would play when the algorithm detected a phrase perceived as funny. “As a summer intern, I completed a full literature review on philosophical theories of laughter and computational humor, and I contributed to the project’s data collection and code,” Dharmaraj said. “It was done using a neural network, trained on various stand-up comedians.”
Upon matriculating at Harvard in the fall, Dharmaraj plans to continue working with metaLAB while working on his dual concentration in computer science and classics.
Last month, senior Amy Jin was named one of five students nationwide to receive the Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing. Jin’s project provides surgeons with a way to assess their technique by analyzing their movements and providing feedback on a variety of criteria, such as economy of motion and bimanual dexterity (the term for dexterity demonstrated when performing tasks that require both hands). In developing the project, Jin used videos of surgical procedures, which were analyzed via “computer vision,” according to a press release by the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). She also sought the feedback of a team of surgeons, who validated the assessments.
The Cutler-Bell Prize is awarded each year by the CSTA and the Association for Computing Machinery to promote the study of computer science among high school students. The individual or team behind each winning project received a cash prize of $10,000 (toward tuition at the university each student will attend) and an invitation to the CSTA annual conference in July in Omaha, Neb., where the awardees will be formally recognized for their achievements.
Late last month, the College Board revealed that seven Harker students and one 2017 alumna received perfect scores on Advanced Placement exams they took in May 2017, earning every possible point as well as the maximum score of five. Seniors Akhil Arun and Adriano Hernandez and 2017 graduate Divya Rajasekharan earned three of just 60 perfect scores on the AP Macroeconomics exam, while senior Vignesh Panchanatham earned one of only 26 perfect scores in AP Microeconomics.
On the AP Computer Science A exam, senior Swapnil Garg, junior Ryan Adolf and sophomores Eileen Li and Kyle Li earned four of 112 perfect scores. Harker was one of just 17 schools that had four or more students earn perfect scores on AP exams last year. According to the College Board, nearly 5 million AP exams were taken by almost 3 million students in 2017. Only 511 students earned every possible point.
In April, rising sophomores Catherine Zhao, Ronit Gagneja, Jeffrey Yang and Michelle Kwan took second place at the Cupertino Hackathon, held at the city’s Quinlan Community Center. During the event, they created an app that helps students organize bike rides, carpools and meetups. Their work was presented to the Cupertino City Council, with the top five teams receiving awards from Cupertino mayor Savita Vaidhyanathan.
About 20 teams competed at the Cupertino Hackathon, during which they spent 13 hours creating projects intended to improve public safety and promote community togetherness. The event also offered many learning opportunities, including workshops on women’s contributions to computer science and leveraging software used by several large tech companies.
An impressive 46 teams showed up to participate in this year’s Harker Programming Invitational, which took place March 19 at the upper school campus. Open to all Bay Area high schools, the event featured both advanced and novice divisions and had teams solve coding problems designed by officers in the Harker Programming Club, who organized the event.
“This year, our contest ran very smoothly as we planned the problem set development and contest details well in advance of the competition itself,” said club co-president Manan Shah, grade 12. “Each member of our team contributed significantly to the success of the competition, whether it be in writing the problems, setting up our contest server, talking to our sponsors or managing the completion of designated tasks.”
Club members also had the task of attracting event sponsors, which included IBM, the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, Star League, Make School and ACEprep.
In addition to the competition, the event also featured talks by Stanford University professor Chris Manning, and Angie Krackeler of IBM’s Watson team, both experts in artificial intelligence.
On Feb. 3, HarkerCTF held its first cybersecurity competition at the Nichols Hall atrium. About 60 students separated into teams to solve cybersecurity problems and answer lab questions, which required them to submit their own code for grading.
HarkerCTF, which aims to boost student interest in computer science and give advanced computer science students opportunities to test their abilities, organized the competition to give students a chance to utilize their knowledge of applied computer science concepts. In computer security, CTF (Capture The Flag) is a popular type of computer security competition.
“In order to allow all students to participate in the event regardless their previous computer science experience, and to promote more students to become interested in computer science, we have provided some introductory questions in our competition as well, so all students could learn from the competition,” said HarkerCTF president Johnny Wang, grade 10. HarkerCTF plans to invite students from other schools to attend future events.
Placing first at the event was team “VASP,” consisting of grade 11 students Sumer Kohli, Praveen Batra, Vijay Bharadwaj and Akhil Arun. The humorously named “Team Freshmen,” made up of juniors Swapnil Garg, Andrew Semenza, Adriano Hernandez and Derek Yen, placed second. In third place was “L33t Haxors,” consisting of seniors Misha Ivkov, Vedaad Shakib and Andrew Tierno.
Over the course of the fall semester, middle school computer science students have been learning that software creation is about much more than knowing how to code. Utilizing the concepts defined in the Design Thinking Process (which is currently taught to graduate students at Stanford University), young programmers are learning how to create the best possible user experiences.
One tool being used to teach these concepts is Gamestar Mechanic, a game design program that computer science teacher Sharmila Misra says is useful for learning how to design software with users in mind. “Our students use Gamestar Mechanic as a tool to apply software designing concepts that are essential for programmers,” Misra said. “Nowadays, programming can be learned online too, for free. However, these software development concepts are definitely not something the students can just learn online.”
Using games as a basis for teaching software design seemed like a natural choice, because many students were already so familiar with them. “Using that as the base, students stayed on board with enthusiasm to learn computer science concepts,” said Misra.
The students’ first users were their buddies at Japan’s Tamagawa Academy, who not only are just beginning to learn English but also have varying experiences with games, Misra said, “as they don’t yet have laptops of their own like our students do.”
In their work with Gamestar Mechanic, students learned how to empathize with potential users, which helps them in defining the requirements for the games they create. After defining the challenges that must be surmounted to meet user requirements, they sketched out concepts and took feedback from users and peers who are both like- and different-minded. Prototypes were then made and released to the Tamagawa students, who provided additional feedback, which was then used to finish and release the final products.
Using the knowledge and experience gained from their first projects, the students are now making games for their peers at Harker.
Misra characterized the students’ response to Gamestar Mechanic as “very enthusiastic,” noting that “since the requirements, the design, the feedback, making the game and testing are all using games, students relate to it very easily and get engrossed in it and they don’t even realize they are learning concepts taught in a graduate school.”