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Integrating computing into other subjects promises to address many challenges to offering standalone CS courses in K-12 contexts. Integrated curricula must be designed carefully, however, to both meet learning objectives of the host discipline and to gain traction with teachers. We describe the multi-year evolution of Bootstrap, a curriculum for integrating computing into middle- and high-school mathematics. We discuss the initial design and the various modifications we have made over the years to better support math instruction, leading to our goal of using integrated curricula to cover standards in both math and CS. We provide advice for others aiming for integration and raise questions for CS educators about how we might better support learning in other disciplines. 

Most programmers rely on visual tools (block-based editors, auto-indentation, bracket matching, syntax highlighting, etc.), which are inaccessible to visually-impaired programmers. While prior language-specific, downloadable tools have demonstrated benefits for the visually-impaired, we lack language-independent, cloud-based tools, both of which are critically needed. We present a new toolkit for building fully-accessible, browser-based programming environments for multiple languages. Given a parser that meets certain specifications, this toolkit will generate a block editor familiar to sighted users that also communicates the structure of a program using spoken descriptions, and allows for navigation using standard (accessible) keyboard shortcuts. This paper presents the toolkit and a first evaluation of it. While the toolkit allows for full editing of code, we chose to focus strictly on navigation for this evaluation, using the navigation-only study design of Baker, Milne and Ladner. Visually-impaired programmers completed several tasks with and without our tool, and we compared their results and experience. Users had improved accuracy when completing tasks, were significantly better able to orient when reading code, and felt better about completing the tasks when using the tool. Moreover, these improvements came with no significant change in task completion time over plain text, even for experienced programmers who navigate text using screen readers set to high words-per-minutes. 

Bootstrap:Algebra is a curricular module designed to integrate introductory computing into an algebra class; the module aims to help students improve on various essential learning outcomes from state and national algebra standards. In prior work, we published initial findings about student performance gains on algebra problems after taking Bootstrap. While the results were promising, the dataset was not large, and had students working on algebra problems that had been scaffolded with Bootstrap's pedagogy. This paper reports on a more detailed study with (a) data from more than three times as many students, (b) analysis of performance changes in incorrect answers, (c) some problems in which the Bootstrap scaffolds have been removed, and (d) an IRT analysis across the elements of Bootstrap's program-design pedagogy. Our results confirm that students improve on algebraic word problems after completing the module, even on unscaffolded problems. The nature of incorrect answers to symbolic-form questions also appears to improve after Bootstrap. 

Game programming projects are concrete and motivational for students, especially when used to teach more abstract concepts such as algebra. These projects must have open-ended elements to allow for creativity, but too much freedom makes it hard to reach specific learning outcomes. How many degrees of freedom do students need to make a game feel like one they genuinely designed? What kinds of personalization do they undertake of their games? And how do these factors correlate with their prior game-playing experience or with their identified gender? This paper studies these questions in the concrete setting of the Bootstrap:Algebra curriculum. In this curriculum, students are only given four parameters they can customize and only a few minutes in which to do so. Our study shows that despite this very limited personalization, students still feel a strong sense of ownership, originality, and pride in their creations. We also find that females find videogame creation just as satisfying as males, which contradicts some prior research but may also reflect the nature of games created in this curriculum and the opportunities it offers for self-expression.