2026
05-04 |
One of the first things we teach in highschool CS are number representations.
Students should get a good idea of how numbers can be represented before diving
into topics like error-correcting codes, compression, cryptography, or even algorithm design.
Probably the best access to the idea of presenting a number with respect to
some base was already presented in the textbooks of Juraj
Hromkovič for primary school students: coin systems.
There is an interesting piece of history here in that
almost all coin systems that ever existed and exist are canonical,
which means that they have the property that, for any price x you want to pay, a simple greedy approach
results in the smallest possible number of coins to use: take the largest
coin of value at most x as often as possible; continue with
the second-largest coin of value at most x; and so on.
One can come up with some coin system for which this is not the case.
(You may want to pause and think about one; three coin types suffice.)
As a matter of fact, people did, for instance, when designing
the British pre-decimal coin system (which was used until 1971) and
which contained denominations (coin types) 1/2, 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, 30, 60, and 240.
If you want to pay a price of, say, 48, the greedy approach takes one coin of value 30,
then one of value 16, and then one of value 2, while there is an optimal solution that
uses two coins of value 24.
How full of joy I was to find out (well, being told by my student
Philip Whittington, that is) that this problem is actually very closely
connected to a very important one in the large-language-model pipeline:
Tokenization is the problem of defining a set of tokens (the
smallest units on which to work on in what follows) that
can be used to represent a given text over characters in, say, a way
that is compressed best possible.
Using some beautiful gadgets and reductions—just like in the
good old days—, Philip, Violeta Kastreva (who
was visiting our group as part of the ETH Summer School Research fellowship
program, SSRF), Tiago Pimentel, and I were
able to show that different variants of this problem are
APX-hard, even if we only consider binary alphabets over which the original
strings are defined. If the alphabet is unary, the problem is still NP-hard.
And exactly this problem corresponds to computing a best coin system.
Further Reading
- The paper presented at ICLR 2026
- The preceding paper by Philip, Tiago, and Gregor Bachmann
- A paper by David Pearson, from which I stole the above excursion about the British pre-1971 coin system
- An article about the 2025 edition of the SSRF
#Theory
|
2026
04-30 |
 I am happy to share that registration is now open for the 15th Swiss Day for Computer Science Education (“Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht,” STIU), taking place on June 19 at ETH. Note that this is a Friday this year.
This year's edition will feature 11 workshops for prospect or in-service teachers, or anyone else who is interested in teaching Computer Science in K-12. Topics covered include programming education, STEAM, unplugged activities, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.
I am honored to welcome our special guests Andreas Bollin and Roderick Bloem from Austria, who played a pivotal role in establishing the new subject "Informatik und künstliche Intelligenz," and Michael E. Caspersen from Denmark, where 51 pilot schools (and thus 280 classes) will integrate CS into their curricula.
For the fifth time, the finals of the Swiss CS Beaver Competition together with the award ceremonies will be a part of STIU, and we will award the rector's STEM prize and the ABZ medal of honor to individuals and institutions that have made a special contribution to sustainable computer science education.
photo by Markus Burren
I am looking forward to welcoming you at STIU 2026 in a little more than one and a half months.
Further Reading
#ABZ #Informatikbiber #STIU
|
2026
03-31 |
Are you a Computer Science teacher in the greater Zurich area,
looking for peers to talk about your lessons, Computer Science education in general,
to get inspiration on how to teach a certain topic, or simply to expand your network?
Of course you are! Then I am happy to point you to a fantastic initiative of
two of our former students, Rob Branchat and Patric Rousselot, who
organize a monthly get-together (“Stammtisch”) in central Zurich. The dates are already
fixed and announced for May through August, and a registration would be welcome to
make planning easier. I will, of course, try to show up on some of these dates. .
It indeed seems that recently at least some parts of Computer Science education are
becoming a fast-moving target. Large Language Models,
interdisciplinarity, potential focus subjects, and so many
other topics pose questions to which no one knows all the answers.
Let us try to approach them together; in an informal setting, with a cold beverage.
Further Reading
#Lehrdiplom
|
2026
02-28 |
This year's “Informatiktage” will take place from March 16 to
March 21 and feature three ABZ workshops, all dedicated to programming
education. As last year, Joël Lindegger will offer a creative way into
coding with XLogoOnline–this time focussing on adults, who maybe want to
get a glimpse of what their kids are doing in primary school (or so I hope).
Clemens Bachmann will introduce a new WebTigerPython feature implemented by
Joël and him, namely a browser-based implementation of GameGrid, with two
workshops aimed and students and their teachers, respectively. The original
GameGrid was written in Java and very popular among teachers as it allows a
comprehensive introduction to object-oriented programming. Of course, simply
porting such a Java library with all its asynchronicity to run in the browser is
far from trivial, which is why it had to be rewritten from scratch and uses
PyGame under the hood.
WebTigerPython now supports a majority of the PyGame features, with more to come.
Actually, if you have any particular feature requests, please let us know.
Further Reading
#ABZ #Informatiktage #TigerPython #XLogoOnline
|
2025
12-29 |
Also this year, the CS Beaver Competition was attended by an unprecedented number
of students from all of Switzerland, namely more than 53'000. This means that
the number of participants (1) increased by more than 3000 compared to last year, and
that it (2) continues to increase since the Swiss Beaver was launched 15 years ago.
graphic by Susanne Datzko
Like every year, we will organize the finals at ETH together with the
“Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht.”
Further Reading
#Informatikbiber
|
2025
12-06 |
With “ETH Unterwegs” (ETH on the move) ETH regularly visits
high schools in Switzerland to introduce the university as a whole and in
particular, what it means to study in its different programs. This week we
visited the “Kantonsschule” in Schaffhausen.
There are no entrance exam for most programs at ETH Zurich; anyone holding a Swiss
“Matura” is admitted and can enroll. This includes the
Bachelor's degree program in Computer Science.
photo by ETH / Ulrike von Groll
I was very happy to meet some old friends there, including two former
students who now work as computer science teachers. In order to give the
students a flavor of what makes computer science a scientific
discipline and not just a collection of digital tools, I talked about
one of the things I like to talk about most: computability and the roots
of computer sciene.
Further Reading
#K-12 #Talk
|
2025
11-18 |
November 13 was the 2025 National Future Day (the “Nationaler
Zukunftstag”) in Switzerland, a day where thousands of children accompany
their parents to work, or can join different companies and educational
institutions including ETH. This is obviously an event worth supporting in
the strongest possible way; so just like in the last years, the ABZ contributed
with a workshop Code Artists, organized by Joel Lindegger, on Python
programming (using WebTigerPython), and that was a full success.
At the same time, our colleagues at PH Bern conducted a workshop Creative
Robotics For Girls, led by Urs Wildeisen, that used XLogoOnline and the
Swiss-made xBot. The latter can carry a pen and thus be used to draw on paper.
photos by PH Bern / Urs Wildeisen
What made this workshop special, however, was the integration of the
Arts aspect by not only allowing the robot to draw, but to use its LED
lights in combination with bulb exposure photography to create some fantastic
pictures. I would conjecture that this a great way to experience self-efficacy.
Further Reading
#XLogoOnline
|
2025
11-15 |
Yesterday I visited Denmark's beautiful Odense to join the doctoral committee of
Magnus Berg Møhring together with Rob van Stee and Lars Rohwedder.
Magnus has done some fantastic work on online algorithms with predictions,
advised by Kim Skak Larsen, Lene M. Favrholdt, and Joan Boyar.
photo by Michael Steensen Next to studying how well predictions can be utilized for well-studied
graph and resource allocation problems, Magnus' main contribution is building
up a complexity theory that is centered around a parameterized version of Asymmetric String Guessing and
based on a kind of prediction-preserving reduction. Both hardness and membership
(and thus completeness)
results have been established for a large number of natural problems, introducing
some structure into the study of online algorithms with predictions.
Further Reading
#Defense #Theory
|
2025
10-30 |
One caveat that always killed my enthusiasm about block-based programming was
the inability to support the concept of modularity in a meaningful way.
One very central part of problem solving or computational thinking, namely
problem decomposition, is mentioned more and more explicitly in almost
all CS curricula I have had a look at recently.
Of course, this is a good thing. And in my opinion, there are only a few ways to foster
problem decomposition in a more tangible way than by defining a subroutine,
module, or function when programming. The lack of such a functionality
in early block-based programming environments always made me hesitant to be a strong
advocate of the paradigm.
Of course Scratch allows to build one's own blocks for a long time now, and
for Snap! this is even a very central theme. I am more than happy that
the Midi version of XLogoOnline now also joined
the club. Implementation was done by Rafael Fernandes as part of his Master thesis, which
I supervised together with Jacqueline Staub from the University of Trier—who is the force
behind XLogoOnline, and who should get all the credit together with Rafael.
With this new addition, computational thinking skills, in particular problem
decomposition, can be fostered in an even stronger way when primary school students
use XLogoOnline Midi.
Further Reading
#XLogoOnline
|
2025
10-03 |
Yesterday I gave a talk about the future of schools, in particular with a focus
on the role of generative AI and its impact on how we teach
and what we teach. Of course: I don't know, and neither does anyone else.
Still I was very happy to be invited to Fribourg and speak in front of
teachers of all kinds of subjects about what I consider to be some reasonable
assumptions regarding what some aspects of school may look like in, say, ten or
twenty years from now.
photo by Oliver Hirt First off, I hope that some things will actually not change, for instance, the
automony of schools and teachers that we have in Switzerland. Second, teachers do
not only have much more freedom in what and how they teach than in many other
countries; but the very profession of being a teacher is viewed as a much more
worthwhile career choice than at many other places. At least in my personal experience,
Switzerland looks up to its teachers—as it should—much more than
other countries to theirs. Third, I hope the
permeability of the Swiss education system will remain unchanged.
Now of course, things will look different in a decade or two, and recent
changes due to the unprecented advances in generative AI will leave a mark. To me personally
this first and foremost means to think about whether our curricula should be
affected in any way. I am actually rather hesitant with respect to the extent
the basics behind, say, transformers or neuronal networks can be didactically
reduced in a meaningful way to make them part of K–12 curricula.
But I think some central points can indeed become part of school education, and allow the
students to take a look behind the scenes of our modern world.
Then of course there are those that, apparently driven by some fear of
being left behind, franticly call for abandonning, for instance, programming
education all together: “Replace it by prompt engineering, because that is
the skill that is from now on essential to software developers,” they say. Frankly, if
that is what some people think, then maybe these people wanted to teach programming
for (what I consider) the wrong reasons anyway. It was never about making
every school student a future software engineer.
But I also understand that for the general public, and for schools and
teachers in particular, there are more pressing questions; such as what the
future will look like with respect to homework or the
“Maturitätsarbeit.” Of course there are very simple answers,
most prominently: “It will be more important to assess the students'
process, when, say, working on a project, and not just the mere results of
their work.” or “We will have to make sure that theses will be
defended by more thorough oral presentations and subsequent questions.”
Sure, but implementing such changes will
cost time and money. Here I do see some potential for new tools that may indeed
help future teachers—never to replace them, but to support with, for
instance, internal differentiation. The important thing here is that educators
should decide where and how they could benefit from such support, and critically
evaluate whether technology does offer a real perspective. It must not be the
other way around, just using tools because they are there now and it would be a
mistake not to use them—for whatever reason.
Further Reading
#K-12 #Talk
|
2025
08-19 |
 Swiss teams are constantly successful at science olympiads. This is in particular true for computer science and this is in particular true for females—for instance, Myriam Faltin
just won gold and Seraina Maag won bronze in Germany at the European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI) a few weeks ago.
For the next round, the Swiss Olympiad in Informatics (SOI) organizes a number of
“girls only” events. These will prepare for a participation in the olympiads, are completely free of charge, and
open to all levels (beginners explicitly included). There is an on-site kickoff event in Bern on
September 27, followed by weekly online courses.
So if you teach a class with a few potential (female) participants, let them know.
And speaking of things you can do with your class:
the new round for the SOI will start on September 1 and will be open until September 26.
Further Reading
#SOI
|
2025
08-01 |
Both my alma mater RWTH Aachen University and ETH are part of the ENHANCE
network, which consists of ten European universities that joined forces in order
to drive forward different scientific and educational initiatives. One of
those is a platform to allow students enrolled in one of the member
universities to visit a selection of courses offered by other members.
Specifically, this means that ETH students can sign up for the respective
courses and earn so-called micro-credentials.
This year, the Theoretical Computer Science Group of RWTH Aachen University
offers an exciting course Algorithmic Battle.
Teams of students battle each other by both building algorithms for
given problems and at the same time finding weaknesses in their opponents'
algorithms; quoting from the course description:
In this lab, teams will be formed to then compete against each other on five
different problems. For each of the five problems, the teams write a generator
for hard problem instances, and a solver that should efficiently solve the
instances of the other groups. The five problems will be choosen to represent a
wide range of problem classes, e.g., will be problems in P, NP, parameterized
problems, graph or string problems, approximation problems or not, maybe
with heavily restricted space, …
Further Reading
|
2025
07-05 |
On June 25, the “Ausbildungs- und Beratungszentrum für Informatikunterricht” (ABZ) organized
the Swiss Day for Computer Science Education (“Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht”, STIU)—for
the 14th time by now. CS teachers of all grades and schools from inside and
outside of Switzerland could choose from thirteen workshops with different
topics to get new inspiration for their own classes. As every year, I could not be prouder of the amazing educators
and scientists we could get to visit us, and share their ideas and experiences.
For myself it was a goose-bumps-inducing experience to
see the STIU banner flying at ETH's main building for the first time.
The STIU featured contributions from April Wang, ETH professor for Educational Technologies,
on AI Literacy; Tim Bell, who received the STEM Medal of the rector last year, on CS unplugged;
EPFL professor Francesco Mondada on debugging assessment; and many more.
For the fourth time now, the event was co-located with the finals of the Swiss “Informatikbiber”
competition. This year, we had a record-breaking number of “Biber” participants (over 50'000), and
it was a special honor to me to hand out the medals to all 71 finalists together with ETH rector
Günther Dissertori.
The best three of each of the five age categories recevied the large golden medal—accompanied by
frenetic applause of parents and teachers.
What made this year's edition of the STIU particularly special, and also—at least
in part—motivated the theme “Konstruieren statt konsumieren”
(Construction instead of consumption) was the co-location with the
Constructionism conference, which we organized together with PH Zurich.
Specifically, three of the workshop proposals for Constructionism 2025 were
accepted as STIU workshops. Moreover, visitors of the STIU could visit the Wednesday sessions of
Constructionism, which also contained topics outside of pure CS education and
had a somewhat broader scope. In turn, Constructionism attendees could visit the
STIU and in particular join the celebrations of the finalists of the Swiss
“Informatikbiber.”
The first two days of Constructionism 2025 were held at ETH, while days 3
and 4 took place at the Zurich University of Teacher Education (PHZH).
The conference was attended by roughly 120 participants, and featured paper
presentations, interactive workshops, and posters from 22
countries—many of which were outside of Europe such as Australia, Brazil,
Canada, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Uruguay, and the US. What a fantastic experience
to see such a crowd come together.
Thanks to everyone involved, and in particular to Bernadette Spieler and Tobias Schifferle from PHZH for organizing the
conference with me.
Further Reading
#ABZ #Constructionism #Informatikbiber #STIU
|
2025
07-04 |
 ETH's Department of Mathematics currently has an exciting opening for a factulty position
either as Professor or Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) with a focus on
Mathematics and Didactics of Higher Education.
Successful candidates will shape how mathematics will be taught in the department
with both respect to curriculum design and use of emerging technologies.
From the call:
The new professor will be responsible, together with other members of the department, for teaching undergraduate (German or English) and graduate level courses (English) for students of mathematics, natural sciences, and engineering.
This is an amazing opportunity for anyone with a strong background in
mathematics, who is passionate about teaching.
Applying is possible until August 31, 2025.
Further Reading
#Opening
|
2025
06-13 |
Being a researcher in the learning sciences requires a diverse set of skills from different domains;
of course, you should have a deep understanding of the respective subject you are talking about, but you
also need a background in the basics of educational psychology.
Both content knowledge and pedagocial knowledge are critical in order to ask the right (research) questions
and select sound methods to answer them.
In order to equip the next generation of educational scientists with all they need, EPFL and ETH launched the
Joint Doctoral Program in the Learning Sciences (JDPLS), chaired by Manu Kapur and Pierre Dillenbourg.
Typical students may have a Master's degree in,
say, computer science, and can then enrol into the JDPLS under the supervision of one professor from EPFL and one from
ETH. I am currently cosupervising two amazing students with Francesco Mondada being their frist supervisor.
photo by EPFL / Manuel Bernal Lecina Once a year, the supervisors and students get together for a summer school where students of the different
cohorts present their work and receive feedback. Also this year, I had a great time being part of it, and
once again learned a lot.
Thanks to everyone involved!
Further Reading
#
|
2025
05-19 |
The Austrian Computer Society (“Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft”, OCG) just celebrated its
50th anniversity. On this occasion a symposium with different talks, panels, and poster sessions was organized from May
13 to 14 in Vienna.
I was invited to give a talk about the current state of computer science in Swiss schools,
and in particular how programming education can be implemented in a spiral curriculum.
photo by OCG / Irina Scheitz In the light of recent disruptive events, I spent a significant part of my talk on how programming education may
develop in the next years—in particular when the code writing abilities of generative AI gets
better and better. Bottom line, I do not think that we should abandon programming education all together, just
as we should not abandon calculus simply because “machines are better at it.”
At least for this audience, this was a rather uncontroversial take. Happy anniversary, dear OCG!
Further Reading
#K-12 #Talk
|
2025
05-13 |
Today, Simon Weber defended his doctoral thesis on unique sink orientations (USOs), which
model a very broad class of computational problems such as linear programs.
Simon proved a wealth of non-trivial and in parts quite surprising connections between USOs and different
complementarity and division problems. His results build on findings by Jiří Matoušek and his
main advisor Bernd Gärtner.
photo by Manuel Wettstein One of my personal favourite results was the introduction of a promise problem
P-LIN-Bellman that proved as a very powerful tool to show polynomial-time equivalence
of different problems. While making a few very significant steps towards resolving
some long standing open problems in theoretical computer science, Simon's work also
shed some light on which important questions to tackle next.
Further Reading
#Defense #Theory
|
2025
05-09 |
 Registration for the 14th Swiss Day for Computer Science Education (“Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht”, STIU), taking place on June 25 at ETH, is now open.
We again have the privilege of hosting inspiring and stimulating workshops led by computer scientists and educators from all around the world. This year prospect or in-service teachers, or anyone else who is interested in teaching Computer Science in K-12, can pick from a total of 13 workshops, which revolve around programming education, unplugged actities, cyber security, and artificial intelligence.
As is tradition by now, the finals of the Swiss CS Beaver Competition together with the award ceremonies will be a part of STIU,
and we will award the rector's STEM prize and the ABZ medal of honor to individuals and institutions that have made a special contribution to sustainable computer science education.
I am particularly proud of co-locating this year's STIU with the Constructionism Conference 2025, which we are organizing together with the Zurich University of Teacher Education (PHZH).
Further Reading
#ABZ #Constructionism #Informatikbiber #STIU
|
2025
04-22 |
On April 11, students from “Kantonsschule Menzingen” visited ETH's Department of Computer Science.
Alexandra Maximova from the ABZ organized a workshop on educational robotics. The students programmed the micro:bit/Maqueen
with WebTigerPython, for instance, enabling the robot to run through a maze.
Here are some visual impressions.
Further Reading
#ABZ #K-12 #TigerPython
|
2025
04-13 |
This year's “Informatiktage” featured different contributions from the ABZ.
As in the last editions, one focus was on programming education for novices with Turtle Graphics.
The target audience were students between the ages of 10 an 12, who used the XLogoOnline platform
to learn about loops, functions, parameters, and other programming concepts.
Here are some visual impressions.
photos by ETH Zurich / Andreas Eggenberger
A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to this amazing experience. See you next year!
Further Reading
#ABZ #Informatiktage #K-12 #XLogoOnline
|
2025
03-19 |
One of the features that made TigerJython so successful in the classroom is
its at the same time neat and powerful debugger. It was therefore also one of
the features that was dearly missed and consequently most requested by many users of
WebTigerPython.
I have even heard stories about people, who were hesitant
to switch to the new web version due to the lack of a debugger.
Well, these days are over!
WebTigerPython now features a visual debugger that is inspired by Tobias Kohn's original one for the desktop version.
It is still in its beta state (like the whole platform), but so far the feedback is very positive.
You can step through your code, define your own breakpoints, and see what is going on on a dedicated
panel that displays relevant information comprehensibly and without overburdening the user.
As with many other features, the debugger was developed as a thesis project at ETH. More specifically, Theo Stijve
implemented a prototype as his Bachelor project, which was then further extended by Clemens Bachmann
and Justin Calle.
Feel free to try it, and let us know if you should have any feedback.
Further Reading
|
2025
02-07 |
Switzerland's education system is rather complex with individual states (the “Kantone”) having a lot of autonomy.
But also individual schools and even teachers have quite some independence; say, with respect to how to reify the federal (high level) framework curricula (the “Rahmenlehrpläne”) for the upper grades.
In my opinion this autonomy is both what makes being a teacher something so fulfilling in Switzerland, and it in turn provides solid education to the students as teachers are well trained and highly motivated.
(The following description is slightly simplified.)
Roughly 20 % of Swiss students obtain the General Higher Education Entrance Qualification (the “Schweizer Matura,” roughly what is called “Abitur” in Germany, or “baccalauréat” in France) from a Swiss high school (a “Gymnasium,” sometimes also called “Mittelschule” or “Kantonsschule”).
As a consequence, a rather small fraction takes the direct path to a University.
Another group, around 16 %, gets the “Berufsmaturität” that grants access to the Universities of Applied Sciences (the “Fachhochschulen”); this usually happens in combination with doing a more applied vocational training (the German “Ausbildungsberufe”). Another way to join a “Fachhochschule” is by obtaining the “Fachmaturität,” which can be obtained by joining a “Fachmittelschule” instead of a “Gymnasium”; this is done by a rather small fraction.
However, one of the peculiarities of the Swiss education system is its permeability, that is, access to the universities can also be obtained using alternative routes.
- The aforementioned “Berufsmaturität” and “Fachmaturität” can be complemented by the so-called “Passerelle” exam, which, when passed, allows the student to enter any of the universities.
- What's more, the “Schweizerische Maturitätsprüfung” (SMP), an external exam, is basically open to every adult Swiss citizen, in particular those that did not get their “Matura” from one of the high schools. The preparation may happen completely autodidactically or by enroling to a private school that offers corresponding programs.
In my opinion, both of these exams play an important role in creating more equal opportunities. The “Schweizerische Maturitätskommission” organizes both the “Passerelle” and SMP two times each year in the three linguistic parts of Switzerland — and I am very proud and excited to be this spring session's president for the German part.
And I would like to wish everyone involved good luck! Hope to see some of you at ETH in a couple of years.
Further Reading
|
2025
01-23 |
One of the projects our group is currently working on is an
interactive tool CyberQuest to promote awareness for different topics of
cybersecurity. The tool is developed by Sven Grübel in cooperation with
the Zurich Information Security and Privacy Center (ZISC).
CyberQuest features a mock social media platform where students can interact
with each other, e.g., by creating and liking posts, and follow their classmates.
The target group are students of upper-secondary school, i.e., roughly of grades
10 to 12. What's more, CyberQuest features different tools that allow
the students to take a look behind the scenes, e.g., what data is generated
and stored in cookies when logging into the social media platform.
The latter comes with a number of
intentional security issues, and the ultimate goal is to “hack”
it and impersonate a different user (who is not a real person and has only been created for this purpose).
At this year's “Informatiktage” Sven will give a workshop to
students to present CyberQuest and discuss corresponding cybersecurity topics.
Further Reading
|
2024
12-20 |
Today, Urs Hauser, under the supervision of Elsbeth Stern and myself,
defended his doctoral thesis on transfer effects
of programming education in high school. In a beautifully designed study involving
almost 40 Swiss high school classes (and around 750 students), Urs investigated whether any
transfer effects would register with respect to computational thinking, spatial
abilities, or complex problem solving skills when programming with
Turtle graphics or educational robotics.
His findings provide evidence that indeed transfer skills do
manifest quite clearly with respect to computational thinking skills
and spatial abilities, and in particular that physical computing
leads to larger effects for female novices than for their male
colleagues. The latter hypothesis is something you will hear
quite often from teachers that taught with robots (including myself).
Yet, there is (with some exceptions) mostly annecdotal evidence,
and I am not aware another study that provides such strong support.
Further Reading
|
2024
12-18 |
For the first time since its establishment, over 50'000 students took part in
the Swiss edition of the Computer Science Beaver Competition. This is a huge
success for which all credit is due to the phantastic organizers at the Swiss
team and the SVIA, and which would not be possible without the steady support of
Hasler foundation.
graphic by Susanne Datzko
I am already excited to host the finals at ETH during the STIU 2025.
Further Reading
|
2024
12-11 |
 Niklaus
Wirth, one of the most influential pioneers of computer
science, passed away in Zurich on January 1st of this year. His contributions
to software engineering and especially to programming languages are
fundamental, unique, and simply amazing. And they have had a huge impact on
computer science education worldwide.
With this special issue we are
thanking Niklaus Wirth for his pioneering work in the
development of programming languages and in informatics education, and saluting his
life's work.
Both editors are very thankful for the great privilege to present eight papers that were
very carefully selected and each fall into one or more of the above three categories.
Walter Gander was a colleague of Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich, as well es a very
close friend. In his paper
(pages 783–790),
he designs a novel recursive algorithm for
quadrature in Pascal. In the introduction, he also provides some historical background on
the early years of the language. Complementing, Tobias Kohn and Jacqueline Staub, both
ETH alumni, take a deep dive into the history of Pascal and its place in the programming
language landscape
(pages 837–868).
In particular, they compare Pascal with Python and
analyze their common roots, similarities, and differences.
Two papers discuss the impact that Pascal had in particular in Eastern European
countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Valentina Dagienė, Gintautas Grigas, and Tatjana
Jevsikova describe
(pages 735–765)
in a lot of fascinating detail how Pascal shaped early programming education in Lithuania.
Maciej Sysło tells the exciting story of the central role Pascal played in Poland
(pages 869–882),
and why it was the language of choice for many who
took part in competitive programming.
Three of the papers do not directly address Pascal, but introduce programming
languages that follow the above call for simplicity. Paul Biberstein, Thomas Castleman,
Luming Chen, and Shriram Krishnamurthi present CODAP Transformers
(pages 723–734),
which adds functions to the CODAP programming environment with a focus on data science
education. Judith Gal-Ezer and Smadar Szekely introduce the gaming platform Spark by MyQ
(pages 767–781)
that aims at fostering computational problem-solving abilities in school
students of grades four and beyond. In an autoethnographic paper, Felienne
Hermans describes the history of her programming language Hedy
(pages 791–822),
and what drove her design decisions, in particular why her language is built
around cognitive load theory.
Finally, Michael Kölling
zooms out and looks at the bigger picture of programming
education and the design of programming languages
(pages 823–836).
His conclusion is that there will never be “the” programming
language, and that every generation of learners needs their own language.
Citing from Kohn's and Staub's paper: “Even Wirth himself hoped that
Pascal would make way some day to the next steps in evolution and not become a
hindrance to progress itself.” But even if everything is just a snapshot
and the world keeps spinning, Pascal left a giant mark (and is still used by
many), and so did Niklaus Wirth.
Further Reading
|
2024
11-02 |
 One of the things I am currently very excited about is
the MINTerlink project brought into life by Ursina Markwalder. It allows prospect
teachers for upper secondary school (for instance, students in ETH's “Lehrdiplom”)
to visit primary or lower-secondary schools and do a placement as part of a seminar
in the respective teacher education program.
A new platform that allows students to enter their preferences and get matched to
a school is now live and can be accessed through the official website.
MINTerlink is a collaboration of PH Zurich and ETH together with many other Swiss
universities of teacher education and LMU. A significant amount of the funding stems
from the Innovedum fund of ETH.
Further Reading
|
2024
09-21 |
On September 19, ETH got visited by a class of 12-graders
from “Gymnasium Bellinzona” to work with robots. The students
got an introduction to robotics from the Computational Robotics Lab and
then programmed the Maqueen using WebTigerPython.
Further Reading
|
2024
08-28 |
The Constructionism Conference 2025 will take place in Zurich from June 24 to June 27.
It will be organized by both ETH and PH Zurich and take place at both campuses.
I am happy to co-chair this edition and be part of the long and rich tradition of the
conference that was formely known as Eurologo. The 2025 theme is
“Building communities, bridging ideas,” and we invite papers, symposia,
and workshops that address how constructionist ideas may change tomorrow's classrooms.
The paper deadline is mid-January 2025.
What I am particularly excited about is that the conference will be colocated with
the “Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht” (the STIU 2025) so that
attendees can also visit STIU workshops.
Further Reading
|
2024
07-31 |
 ETH's Center for Computer Science Education (ABZ) is hiring. We are looking for a new colleague, who can support us with
- organizing and teaching outreach activities, and
- developing different teaching platforms.
Candidates should hold a Master's degree in Computer Science and be passionate about teaching, which should be clearly indicated in their CV.
The position is 50 % and funded for one year, with the possibility of being extended.
Applications including a motivation letter, CV, list of publications, and short research and teaching statement can be sent to me directly via email until August 20.
Further Reading
- Update: Applying is no longer possible.
|
2024
06-14 |
The by now 13th “Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht” took place on June 12 this year. There have again been more than 120 teachers attending workshops by different shapers of computer science education from inside and outside of Switzerland.
One of my personal highlights was handing out the ABZ awards to Nadine Fröhlich, Zsuzsa Pluhár, and the school Volketswil for their continuous dedication to advance computer science education. Johannes Kapfhammer rightfully received the SOI medal, and both Tim Bell and Walter Gander received the rector's STEM award.
The tribute to Walter Gander was accompanied by standing ovations, simultaneously celebrating his 80th birthday. His quote of the day is more accurate than ever: “I am 80 years old. I've been programming for 60 years now and I still love it!”
As in the last three years, the STIU was colocated with the national finals of the Informatics Beaver competition. There were 80 finalists out of more than 46000 girls and boys that took part in the first round of the competition.
A particular surprise was due to the youngest kids, where seven of them performed so well that we had to give a gold medal to every single one of them. What's more, we had a couple of children that already took part in the finals two of three years ago.
Further Reading
|
2024
05-29 |
 Springer Nature Can we efficiently compute optimal solutions to instances of a hard problem from optimal solutions to neighboring (i.e., locally modified) instances? For example, can we efficiently compute an optimal coloring for a graph from optimal colorings for all one-edge-deleted subgraphs? Studying such questions not only gives detailed insight into the structure of the problem itself, but also into the complexity of related problems; most notably graph theory's core notion of critical graphs (e.g., graphs whose chromatic number decreases under deletion of an arbitrary edge) and the complexity-theoretic notion of minimality problems (also called criticality problems, e.g., recognizing graphs that become 3-colorable when an arbitrary edge is deleted).
In this paper, we focus on two prototypical graph problems, Colorability and Vertex Cover.
For example, we show that it is NP-hard to compute an optimal coloring for a graph from optimal colorings for all its one-vertex-deleted subgraphs, and that this remains true even when optimal solutions for all one-edge-deleted subgraphs are given. In contrast, computing an optimal coloring from all (or even just two) one-edge-added supergraphs is in P.
We observe that Vertex Cover exhibits a remarkably different behavior, demonstrating the power of our model to delineate problems from each other more precisely on a structural level.
Further Reading
|
2024
04-22 |
 Schneider Verlag Hohengehren I have edited a book containing 20 interviews with 21 Computer Science teachers and didactics professors from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland on how to teach Computer Science at different levels of K–12 education. The German book has just appeared in “Schneider Verlag Hohengehren.”
Contributions are from Armin Barth, Andreas Bollin, Dirk Bongartz, Bernhard Brunner, Jens Gallenbacher, Susanne Grabowski, Mareen Grillenberger, Juraj Hromkovič, Tobias Kohn, Peter Micheuz, Corinna Mößlacher, Arno Pasternak, Alexander Repenning, Marianne Rohrer, Patric Rousselot, Carsten Schulte, Bernadette Spieler, Jacqueline Staub, Jörg Steinhäuser, Jan Vahrenhold, and Nils van den Boom.
The interviews all contain the same 10 questions that address both opportunities and challenges of having Computer Science as an integral part of K–12 curricula. I conclude with a summary of common themes and differences in the interviews. Surprisingly, there is a lot agreement with respect to many of the central topics such as the importance of computational thinking or how Computer Science can contribute to general education.
Further Reading
|
2024
03-30 |
 The 13th Swiss Day for Computer Science Education (“Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht”, STIU) takes place on June 12, at ETH.
We again have the privilege of hosting a number of computer scientists and educators from all around the world that offer a total of 16 workshops focussing on new and time-tested approaches towards teaching core concepts of Computer Science, introducing new insights and tools, etc. For instance, the by now Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit Tim Bell will give a workshop on where students are encountering CS concepts in their everyday life.
As in the last two years, the finals of the Swiss CS Beaver Competition together with the award ceremonies will be a part of STIU.
What's more, we will award the rector's STEM prize and the ABZ medal of honor to individuals and institutions that have made a special contribution to sustainable Computer Science education.
Registration is now open.
Further Reading
|
2024
03-20 |
As mentioned earlier, the school subject Computer Science will receive another upgrade in Switzerland, starting from August 2024 and being rolled out over the next couple of years. So far, it is a so-called obligatory subject (“obligatorisches Fach”); as a future basic subject (“Grundlagenfach”) the grade will appear on the final “Matura” certificate just as the other STEM subjects, languages, or history.
What's more, schools can now decide to offer Computer Science as a focus subject (“Schwerpunktfach”), which means a strong increase in lessons. The curricula have are currently worked out.
 photo by ETH Zurich / Sandra Herkle Walter Gander, Juraj Hromkovič, and I gave an interview on the history, present, and past of the subject.
Further Reading
|
2024
02-02 |
 photo by ETH Zurich / Andreas Bucher Niklaus Wirth passed away on January 1, just a few weeks before his 90th birthday. His contributions to Computer Science education, in particular making programming accessible to non specialists, cannot be stressed enough. But it has been tried: he rightfully received the Turing award in 1984 “for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages, EULER, ALGOL-W, MODULA, Oberon,” and for us as educators probably most importantly – Pascal.
In his memory, Juraj Hromkovič and I edit a special volume of Informatics in Education.
We welcome all submissions that deal with programming languages designed for educational purposes.
The abstract deadline is February 20.
Further Reading
|
2024
01-16 |
 The third version of WebTigerJython will now rightfully carry the name “WebTigerPython” and is available in beta at webtigerpython.ethz.ch from now on. I am very excited about this release, in which we incorporated much of the feedback, we received from educators over the last couple of years.
With finally transitioning from Skulpt to Pyodide as the underlying technology, we can utilize the full power of Python 3.
At the same time, the key features that make up TigerJython have been kept (that is, reimplemented from scratch for the most part).
Moreover, more functionality was added such as support for educational robotics. In a nutshell, WebTigerPython comes with:
- Full functionality of Python 3.11
- Enhanced error messages
- Improved display in the browser, especially on portable devices
- Turtle graphics with both the
gturtle-module and the standard Turtle module, as well as the repeat-loop (Example)
- Robotics (via USB) with micro:bit/Maqueen and Calliope/Calli:bot
- Support for modules like
numpy, sympy, matplotlib, etc. (Example)
- Support for mouse (Example) and keyboard (Example) events
For smooth usage, we recommend using a Chrome-based browser (currently, other browsers do not support WebUSB, which is needed for controlling the robots).
The old version can of course still be accessed at webtigerjython.ethz.ch.
Further Reading
|
2023
11-30 |
 ETH's department of Computer Science announced an opening for an assistant professorship (tenure track) in Theoretical Computer Science.
We implement a tenure track system equivalent to that of other top international universities.
If you have any further questions, contact me directly.
Further Reading
|
2023
11-09 |
The Computer Science Beaver competition started on November 6 and will be open until November 17, so there is still time to sign up. So far it seems like the number of participants increased once more – in particular in the Suisse Romands.
 graphi by Susanne Datzko For Ukrainian children in Switzerland, the organizers offer the opportunity to participate directly in the Ukrainian “Bober” in their national language. This offer is well used despite the extra effort on the part of the teachers.
As in the last two years, the finals will be colocated with STIU.
Further Reading
|
2023
11-04 |
The third book of the series “Informatik für Maturitätsschulen” has now been published by Klett and concludes the series.
The book is for secondary schools and contains a basic introduction to algorithm design techniques and data structures such as linked lists, binary trees, and hashing; the former two are also implemented in Python. What's more, essential first pinciples of articificial intelligence are introduced, and it is discussed what it means for an algorithm to “learn.” The book presents the third one in the series “Informatik für Schweizer Maturitätsschulen.”
Further Reading
|
2023
10-14 |
 ETH's VIS is the official
Association of Computer Science Students at ETH Zurich, established already in 1984.
Among the many amazing activities that VIS organizes is the annual VIScon with its goal to take participants “on a
journey to explore what lies beyond the lecture halls.”
A significant part of the event is hackathon that lasts three days, this year from October 20 to October 22.
I am happy and honored to give a talk about Computer Science at schools in Switzerland on October 21.
Further Reading
|
2023
10-03 |
The Constructionism Conference 2023 will take place at Columbia University in New York. I am excited to give a keynote “A spiral curriculum of Constructionist ideas” about some recent developments in Switzerland and beyond.
The conference is colocated with FabLearn 2023.
Further Reading
|
2023
09-24 |
 photo by Richard Lee Davis EPFL and ETH Zurich organize a common program for doctoral students in the interdisciplinary field of the Learning Sciences: the EPFL–ETH Zurich Doctoral Program in the Learning Sciences (JDPLS).
On September 22, I had the pleasure to give a keynote “Computer science education – where we come from, stand, and go” at the JDPLS summer school in Murten. I sketched the current state of Computer Science Education and its history, together with an outlook on what it may look like in a couple of years. My main takeaway message is: a lot has been done, but we live in pioneering times where even more remains to be done.
Further Reading
|
2023
08-19 |
 On September 5, I will be giving a talk about creativity and critical thinking in Computer Science education at the University of Basel.
I will present a few examples of how to implement these two aspects especially in Computer Science lessons in primary school.
The event is organized by Primalogo who, in cooperation with our ABZ, organizes Logo and computational thinking classes for 5 and 6 graders in Basel.
The talk will be held in German.
Further Reading
|
2023
07-10 |
On June 28, the Matura Recognition Ordinance promoted Computer Science to basic subject. With this, it will count towards Matura. The bigger picture is that now Computer Science is a fixed part of the whole K–12 curriculum in Switzerland.
Further Reading
|
2023
06-30 |
What will school look like in ten or twenty years? What roles do language models and Chatbots play, and how do teachers react if they suspect that a student used them for their homework? In an interview with PH Graubünden I tried to provide my thoughts on these and some related questions.
Further Reading
|
2023
05-28 |
 The twelfth Swiss Day for Computer Science Education (“Schweizer Tag für den Informatikunterricht”, STIU) takes place on June 21, at ETH. Teachers of all levels can pick two of twelve workshops focussing on new approaches towards teaching core concepts of Computer Science, introducing new insights and tools, etc.
For the first time my group and I will organize the event. Just as last year, the finals of the Swiss CS Beaver Competition together with the award ceremonies will be a part of STIU.
Further Reading
|
2023
05-18 |
 photo by Louis Rafael Rosenthal The Swiss Klett Verlag interviewed Juraj Hromkovič and me for the magazine “Rundgang.” We had an informal chat about Computer Science education in Switzerland, about the things that have been accomplished in recent years, and about the challenges that remain.
The bottom line is that none of us will be bored in the near future—which is good news, of course.
Further Reading
|
2023
04-23 |
 ETH's Center for Computer Science Education (ABZ) is hiring. We are looking for a new colleague, who can support us with
- creating teaching material,
- organizing and teaching outreach activities, and
- research in CS education and related fields.
Candidates should hold a PhD in a STEM field and have a strong background in both Computer Science and Computer Science Didactics.
The position is fulltime and funded for one year, with the possibility of being extended.
Applications including a motivation letter, CV, list of publications, and short research and teaching statement can be sent to me directly via email until May 10.
Further Reading
- Update: Applying is no longer possible.
|
2023
04-19 |
I am in the program committee of WiPSCE 2023 taking place in Cambridge from September 27 to 29, 2023.
We invite you to submit a paper, report, or poster for the 18th
Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (WiPSCE 2023) and to join
us in Cambridge, England.
Research in primary and secondary computing education is a young
field with strong ties to national educational systems. Nevertheless, its
theories, methods, and results are internationally applicable and of interest
to researchers and practitioners in the field. WiPSCE aims at improving the
exchange of research and practice relevant to teaching and learning in primary
and secondary computing education, teacher training, and related research.
Accepted papers will be published in the WiPSCE 2023 proceedings
as part of the ACM International Conference Proceedings Series.
Further Reading
|
2023
03-29 |
 There is little about my job that I enjoy more than teaching (there is a small number of things on par, however). And while I do not have a particular kind of favorite audience or content, exciting young students for Computer Science is one of the most rewarding things I do.
At this year's “Informatiktage” I had both the priviledge and the pleasure to work with girls of grades 5 and 6.
I should have known, but I was still taken by surprise about how quick they would grasp basic programming concepts. What a great experience to with such bright “Meitlis”!
Further Reading
|
2023
03-23 |
 ETH's department of Computer Science announced two openings for senior scientists with focus on education.
Being a senior scientist at ETH comes with a lot of academic freedom. Besides being responsible for courses of (typically non-major) Bachelor and Master programmes, there is room to implement ones own ideas, for instance, with respect to research. You would be joining an amazing team that is in integral part of the department.
Further Reading
|
2023
01-11 |
 This year's “Informatiktage” take place from March 27 to April 1. This time, I will give two introductory programming workshops, one for girls of grades 5 and 6, and one for everyone of grades 7 to 9.
There are other offers for both individuals and school classes. It is a good idea to browse the website and have a look at the many intersting offers.
Further Reading
|
2022
11-20 |
 ETH's department of Computer Science announced an opening for an assistant professorship (tenure track) in Educational Technology.
nt has an outstanding reputation (ranked number 4 worldwide, in the most recent Times Higher Education Ranking) and continues to put strong an emphasis on education.
We implement a tenure track system equivalent to that of other top international universities.
If you have any further questions, contact me directly.
Further Reading
|
2022
11-15 |
The Computer Science Beaver competition started on November 7 – open to any students of grades 3 to 13, who are interested in Computer Science. It is quite amazing to see that participation in Switzerland is larger than ever. If you (or your class) has not yet signed up, there is still time until November 18.
We again plan to have the finals colocated with STIU.
 graphic by Susanne Datzko Further Reading
|
2022
10-18 |
 The October issue of “Bildung Schweiz” features an article on computational thinking. Together with Tamara Piker, a former student of our CAS program, I had the opportunity to talk a little about the importance of this concept an its broad applicance with respect to the classroom.
Further Reading
|
2022
09-30 |
The Center for Computer Science Education (ABZ, “Ausbildungs- und Beratungszentrum für Informatikunterricht”) is very active in the promotion of gifted students. We are currently designing teaching material for students around the ages of 13 to 18 with a focus on Python programming. To this end, we are looking for someone to support us with designing and testing the material.
The part time position is funded for half a year; starting early 2023.
If you are interested, you may consider sending a cover letter and your CV to Elizabeta Cavar until November 10.
Further Reading
|
2022
08-09 |
This year's i-CAMPs took place from August 2 to August 5 at PH Graubünden in Chur. As always there were three different groups for students of different ages (roughly the three “Zyklen” of obligatory school). This time, the oldest students (roughly grades 7 to 9) used Python to program the Calliope and Callibot.
Below are some visual impressions of the workshop.
|
2022
06-02 |
On June 23, I will be giving a small talk about complexity theory aimed at a general public as part of the series “Pizza, Philosophy, and Science” organized by Reatch. There is a maximum of 30 participants, and the talk will take place a ETH's main building – a subsequent discussion will be accompanied by pizza.
The talk will be held in German.
Further Reading
|
2022
05-20 |
 This
first Swiss Day of Computer Science Education (“Schweizer Tag für den Informatikunterricht”, STIU) after the Corona interruption takes place on June 8, at ETH.
This year's edition is rather special:
For the first time in the history of the Swiss CS Beaver Competition (with almost 37000 participants in 2021), we are holding the final of all age groups with corresponding award ceremonies as part of STIU.
Besides that — and as usual — teachers will find a selection of exciting workshops on Computer Science lessons for all age categories from kindergarten to high school, that is, all of K–12.
As a highlight for all visitors, throughout the event Jens Gallenbacher's exhibition “Abenteuer Informatik” can be visited — with him as personal guide. STIU is closed with the award ceremonies of the CS Beaver final and with the honors for Computer Science teaching and for the promotion of STEM teaching.
I will be contributing a workshop on algorithmics in Python for grades 7 to 12.
Further Reading
|
2022
04-12 |
The canton of Grisons (“Graubünden”) is – next to being tremendously beautiful and inhabited by some of the nicest people I have ever met – both large and mountainous.
As a result, there are some rather small schools at rather remote places.
To approach this problem, PH Graubünden owns a dedicated vehicle (the so-called “MINTmobil”) that brings STEM material to these schools.
With the project “MINTo the Mountains” we are designing new teaching materials for different STEM subjects.
On April 11, we visited Küblis and programmed the Callibot with the students using Python. We did have some technical difficulties, but overall this first round was very successful. It was a true pleasure to see how quickly the students picked up writing their own code.
Further Reading
|
2022
03-17 |
 Learning and thus teaching is best viewed as a continuous process, which
is why I am a fan of spiral curricula. In that spirit, we want to bring together STEM teachers
for different levels with the project “MINTerlink”.
Prospect high school teachers assist teachers of primary school, gaining in-class
experience while getting a better picture of the background of their future students.
Conversely, primary school teachers benefit from assistants with a very strong
technical background. Our goal is communication at eye level and a broadened horizon
for both parties. Moreover, the lessons learned will be documented, analyzed, and
archived.
If you are a K-9 teacher at any Swiss school and would like to participate, you
may want to contact Ursina Markwalder who leads the project.
Further Reading
|
2022
02-02 |
 Springer Nature Randomized algorithms for classical (offline) optimization problems are usually assessed
by either their expected performance or the performance they achieve with some certain probabilty.
Both are closely related due to Markov's inequality:
if the algorithm performs well in expectation, repeatedly run it on the same instance and take the best result.
This does not work for online algorithms, because those have one shot only to compute a solution.
However, it is indeed possible to use some interesting amplification technique to transform a randomized
online algorithm that performs well in expectation to one that performs well with high probability.
Basically, you simulate the former and cleverly “restart” it every now and then.
Our paper “Randomized Online Computation with High Probability Guarantees,” in which we do just this,
has just been published at Algorithmica (open access).
It is actually one of my favorite results.
A huge thanks to my coauthors Rastislav and Richard Královič and Tobias Mömke.
Further Reading
|
2022
01-21 |
 Are you a girl and would you like to learn about computer programming?
You will have the chance at this year's “Informatiktage”.
I will be giving a workshop
“Python für Schülerinnen” for girls in grades 7–12.
Absolutely no preknowledge is assumed, all you need to bring is motivation
and being excited about creative problem solving.
Not yet sure? You may want to learn about a particular
pioneer with respect to ever programming a computer
or
another one that came up with one of the first high-level programming languages ever. Notice any similarities?
The workshop will take place on March 29 from 14:00 to 17:00.
Further Reading
|
2021
11-30 |
 Starting in autumn 2022, students of PH Graubünden that want to become
K–6 teachers will study under a new curriculum, which includes two courses
on Computer Science instead of one (like currently). More specifically, there will be a basic course on
Computer Science and a second course with its focus on teaching Computer Science
interdisciplinarily. Yet another course will be devoted to media sciences so
that there is a total of 6 ECTS for the module “Medien und Informatik”.
Being a module, communicating the basic principles as part of other subjects is
inevitable — and actually very doable and even fun!
The interdisciplinary course will be a joint venture of all departments.
I am very happy that we were able to lay the foundation in the last years with our
two projects “Algorithmisches Denken in der Primarstufe” and
“Grundkonzepte der Informatik interdisziplinär fördern”.
Also starting in 2022, PH Graubünden will offer a new Master program for
grades 7–9, in collaboration with PH St. Gallen. Also there, students will
have a fair share of Computer Science and its didactics.
Further Reading
|
2021
10-16 |
October 1 marked the official end of the first run of our program. We were very happy
and proud to hand over the CAS diploma to twelve impressive teachers. It was quite
a ride, given that we had to switch to virtual classes more or less right after the kick-off events.
Then again, it makes me even prouder to see, what we have accomplished during this year.
Besides one participant, who unfortunately had to quit due to a medical condition, everyone
passed the program — and with quite remarkable results. There was definitely more than
one lesson to learn for us lecturers as well.
Congratulations to all!
We will start with the second run in February 2022. If you are intereseted, you can register
directly through the websites below. For any questions, contact me directly.
Further Reading
|
2021
08-03 |
 Our textbook “Informatik – Programmieren und Robotik” was just published by Klett.
The book is for secondary schools and contains an introduction to programming in Python (TigerJython), starting with the Turtle, moving to strings and lists, and finally robots. It starts at the very beginning, no prior knowledge is assumed. Concepts such as loops, variables, functions, Boolean values are introduced in small steps and with care. Numerous examples are complemented by a large number of exercises (and solutions). Moreover, there is a wealth of advanced exercises (and solutions) available online.
This book is the first of a series of Computer Science books for secondary school what will appear within the next years.
Further Reading
|
2021
07-14 |
From January 2017 to June 2021, we worked on interdisciplinary teaching units (“packages”) for grades K–9 that allow to foster aspects of computational thinking in different school subjects. This was the result of a collaboration with lecturers of PH Graubünden from all areas. We organized and conducted a large number of workshops for (prospects) teachers, demonstrating how central aspects of Computer Science can be covered in their Math, Language, or even Music classes.
The packages are now freely available online.
Further Reading
|
2021
06-05 |
I am in the program committee of ISSEP 2021 taking place in Nijmegen.
The International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution
and Perspectives (ISSEP) is a forum for researchers and practitioners in the
area of Informatics education, in both primary and secondary schools. The
conference provides an opportunity for educators and researchers to reflect
upon the goals and objectives of this subject matter, its curricula, various
teaching and learning paradigms and topics, as well as the connections to
everyday life — including the various ways of developing Informatics
Education in schools.
Further Reading
- ISSEP 2021 website
- Update: The paper submission is now open.
- Update: I will give a talk about “Teaching recursion”.
|
2021
04-02 |
 On March 22, Jacqueline Staub successfully defended her thesis
“Programming in K–6: Understanding Errors and Supporting Autonomous Learning”.
One of the results of her work is the online programming environment XLogoOnline, which by now
has its firm place in Switzerland's educational landscape and beyond.
Building upon
Seymour Papert's famous programming language, Jacqueline's version of Logo is far more than just
another implementation. In addition to a text-based environment, there are two block-based
versions that allow to foster basic programming concepts such as loops and parameters at a young age.
Moreover, the fully bowser-based tool comes with step-by-step code execution, advanced error messages,
and many other clever features.
Further Reading
|
2021
03-21 |
 This year's “Informatiktage” take place online. There will be a wealth of workshops
addressing Computer Science topics and how to teach them. I will be contributing a workshop
“Python für Lehrpersonen” for highschool teachers.
The workshop will take place virtually on April 13 from 14:00 to 16:30.
Further Reading
|
2021
03-01 |
I
king for excellent candidates to fill an open PhD student
position on didactics of Computer Science. The position will be fully funded
and in cooperation with ETH Zurich. If you are interested, you can contact me
directly via email.
Further Reading
- Update: Applying is no longer possible.
|
2021
02-02 |
The SI Magazin (of the Swissinformatics Society) published an
interview about our CAS programs for Computer Science teachers.
Further Reading
|
2021
01-07 |
 I am excited and honored to be invited to the seventh Dutch national symposium on software engineering (SEN Symposium 2021). I will be giving a talk “A turtle, a snake, and a tiger walk into a classroom…” about Computer science didactics, and in particular misconceptions of young programmers and how to tackle them. The talk we be on February 18 around 16:40.
Further Reading
|
2020
11-04 |
The videos of almost all talks are now available on the conference website. Just send me a mail if you need the login credentials.
Further Reading
|
2020
10-01 |
My group at PH Graubünden is looking for new members. Specifically, I have two openings for research associates. If you are passionate about STEM subjects with respect to both teaching and research, like to work in teams and take responsibility, you may be interested in having looking at the two links below.
Further Reading
- Update: Applying is no longer possible.
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2020
09-16 |
 I am very happy and proud to have made it to the finals of ETH's KITE Award 2020 with the project Critical Thinking in Teaching Computer Science basics, handed in with Juraj Hromkovič and Hans-Joachim Böckenhauer. Even more so after seeing the other three excellent projects that made it the finals.
Together with Tobias Kohn and Jakub Zavodny, I was also nominated with a second project Programming Clever Algorithms which basically describes our philosophy behind our course with the same name.
Congratulations to the Department of Environmental Systems Science for their project Environment Problem Solving.
Further Reading
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2020
05-21 |
In August 2020, I will be chairing a MFCS satellite workshop Online Algorithms with Advice and Related Models.
In computational complexity, advice commonly refers to side information supplied to an algorithm. In this workshop, we focus on online settings where the online player is given additional information on the yet unrevealed parts of the input sequence. Advice complexity theory studies such scenarios and how this additional knowledge affects the potential output quality. Of particular interest are information-theoretic lower bounds, that is, bounds that do not make any assumptions on the actual information that is supplied, but only on its quantity, and connections to related models such as randomized computations and machine learning.
Online algorithms with advice generalize many known approaches to get a more realistic picture of the hardness of online problems.
The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers who are interested in the concept of advice algorithms and in particular in connections to the aforementioned randomized algorithms and machine learning theory.
Due to the current situation, the workshop will be fully online. If you wish to attend, please contact me via email. A Zoom link will be sent to you prior to the workshop.
Further Reading
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2020
04-08 |
Together with some colleagues from PH Graubünden, PH Luzern, and ETH Zurich, I am publishing weekly programming challenges for primary and secondary school students.
 photo by Susanne Datzko For the former, we focus on Logo, while the latter are presented challenges in TigerJython.
Further Reading
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2020
02-05 |
At this year's Day for Computer Science Education (“Schweizer Tag für Informatikunterricht”, STIU), the STEM team of PH Graubünden and particularly its rector received the rector's STEM award.
 photo by Jan Lichtensteiger Further Reading
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2019
12-16 |
PH Graubünden and ETH Zurich launch two CAS programs for Computer Science teachers – one for primary school (10 ECTS) and one for secondary school (15 ECTS).
The two programs contain a shared module that deals with Computer Science competencies.
There are then two additional modules that deal with the didactics of programming and data science.
For primary school, both block- and textbased logo are used as programming languages; for secondary school, we focus on Python.
The CAS secondary school additionally contains a module on algorithmics.
No preknowledge is assumed. Successful participation leads to a Certificate of Advanced Studies PHGR ETH.
Registration is possible until the end of April 2020.
Further Reading
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2019
11-06 |
I am in the program committee of IWOCA 2020 taking place in Bordeaux.
Since its inception in 1989 as AWOCA (Australasian Workshop on Combinatorial
Algorithms), IWOCA has provided an annual forum for researchers who design algorithms
for the myriad combinatorial problems that underlie computer applications in science,
engineering and business. Previous IWOCA and AWOCA meetings have been held in Australia,
Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Singapore,
South Korea, UK, and USA.
IWOCA 2020 will take place in Bordeaux, France. Bordeaux is located in the South West of
France and is easy to reach by plane and by fast train (TGV). The region is famous for
its wines and its gastronomy. The city centre of Bordeaux is classified at the Unesco
World Heritage.
Further Reading
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2019
10-22 |
Recently, a Spotlights article “A passion for teaching” about the senior lecturer group of ETH's Department of Computer Science which I am part of has been published.
 photo by ETH Zurich / Anna Ettlin Further Reading
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2019
09-05 |
The workshop is now over, and we are very happy with the results. There were ten extremely interesing talks (in three sessions) introducing new models models and techniques revolving around reoptimization and dynamic algorithms.
Many thanks to the program committee and the session chairs Henning Fernau, Thomas Erlebach, and Tobias Mömke for the excellent collaboration. Below are some visual impressions of the talks.
Tobias Mömke |
Elisabet Burjons |
Henning Fernau |
Davide Bilò |
Thomas Erlebach |
Dennis Fischer |
Further Reading
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2019
08-12 |
From August 5 to August 9, PH Graubünden organized the second i-CAMPs in Flims. There was a total of more than 80 students of grades 3 to 9 (ages 9 to 15) from different schools. The goal was to teach them basic robotics on three different levels. My team (from PH Graubünden, ETH, PH Bern, and the University of Cambridge) took care of the oldest students, who programmed Lego's EV3 robot using Python (that is, TigerJython). We were extremely happy with the results.
Below are some visual impressions of the workshop.
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2019
07-15 |
The program for ARDA 2019 has now been compiled and published.
It consists of ten invited talks, which will be given in three sessions Reoptimizartion, Dynamic Algorithms and Neighborly Help, and Reconfiguration and Temporal Graphs.
Registration to ARDA can be done through the MFCS website; it is possible to register to ARDA only.
Further Reading
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2019
07-10 |
 The April volume, issue 2 of Informatik-Spektrum is a special issue on Education and Computer Science (“Bildung und Informatik”).
The in print version is now available.
I have contributed three articles that deal with teaching Computer Science at school.
“Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie programmieren” coauthored with Tobias Kohn argues that programming should always be taught within the context of the notional machine that is used.
“Wie Mathematik und Informatik im Unterricht voneinander profitieren können” written with Urs Hauser and Giovanni Serafini describes examples of where Mathematics and Computer Science can profit from each other; it consists of two parts.
Further Reading
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2019
04-25 |
I am in the program committee of SOFSEM 2020 taking place in Cyprus.
SOFSEM (SOFtware SEMinar) is an annual international winter conference devoted to the theory and practice of computer science. It presents the latest results and developments in academic and industrial research in leading areas of the field. The first SOFSEM was organized in 1974.
SOFSEM consists of invited talks by prominent researchers, of contributed talks selected from the submitted papers, and of the Student Research Forum. The program is organized in plenary talks and parallel tracks devoted to original research in the selected research areas. SOFSEM has a long-standing tradition of facilitating discussions and collegial interactions. It is well-known for its familiar and inspiring atmosphere and as a meeting place for active and leading computer scientists. SOFSEM is governed by the Steering Committee.
SOFSEM is a track — based conference. It features the traditional track on foundations of computer science and a number of other tracks that over the years have evolved to cover and address contemporary important areas, such as artificial intelligence, cryptography, security, verification, data science, knowledge engineering, social computing and human factors, software and web engineering, etc. The proceedings are published in the prestigious ARCoSS (Advanced Research in Computing and Software Science) subseries of Springer — Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.
Further Reading
- Update: The program is now online.
- Update: The paper submission is now open.
- SOFSEM 2020 website
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2019
03-04 |
I will be giving a workshop on Python and efficiency with Tobias Kohn at PyCon in Bratislava on March 23, 2019.
The target audience consists of Computer Science teachers for primary and secondary school.
We will be addressing things such as fast exponentiation and implement them in Python.
Further Reading
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2019
02-19 |
In August 2019, I will be chairing a satellite workshop Advances in Reoptimization and Dynamic Algorithms at MFCS 2019 in Aachen.
Paper submission will open mid-May.
Many practically relevant situations require to solve not only one singular instance of an optimization problem, but a sequence of them. This naturally gives rise to the question of whether the knowledge of a good solution for one instance can be used for facilitating the computation of a good solution for a related instance. Consider, for instance, the maintenance of a train schedule. In case of some local modification, e.g., a station closing down or being newly opened, we do not want to compute a new schedule from scratch, but we want to make use of the old schedule.
Problems like these have been considered from various viewpoints under various names. Analyzing one step of local modification (or sometimes a short sequence of steps) with respect to approximability of a hard optimization problem has been considered under the name of reoptimization. Conversely, dynamic data structures and dynamic algorithms consider an arbitrary sequence of modifications for some (not necessarily hard) problem.
There are many recent approaches bringing substantially new ideas to this field, for example,
new techniques to design PTASs for reoptimization problems,
robust reoptimization, i.e., making use of approximate solutions for neighboring instances, thus enabling the analysis of multi-step reoptimization,
constrained reoptimization, i.e., finding new solutions that are similar to the given old solution,
reoptimization in the presence of multiple given solutions to one or more related instances,
dynamic algorithms computing exact solutions in the framework of parameterized algorithmics.
The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from various areas related to reoptimization and dynamic algorithms.
Further Reading
- Update: The program is now online.
- Update: The paper submission is now open.
- ARDA 2019 website
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2019
02-02 |
I am in the program committee of ISSEP 2019 taking place in Cyprus.
The International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution and Perspectives (ISSEP) is a forum for researchers and practitioners in the area of Informatics education, in both primary and secondary schools. The conference provides an opportunity for educators and researchers to reflect upon the goals and objectives of this subject matter, its curricula, various teaching and learning paradigms and topics, as well as the connections to everyday life — including the various ways of developing Informatics Education in schools.
The conference focuses on educational goals and objectives of Informatics or Computer Science as a subject matter in primary, secondary and vocational education and their different realisation in compulsory and voluntary courses.
Further Reading
- Update: The program is now online.
- Update: The paper submission is now open.
- ISSEP 2019 website
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2018
12-07 |
Tobias Kohn, Jakub Závodný, and I have recently started a course for high school students that covers Python programming and basic algorithms and data structures.
The target audience are students that want to prepare for programming competitions such as a Olympiad in Informatics, or that think about studying computer science.
Kantonsschule Romanshorn includes visiting our course “Clevere Algorithmen programmieren” part of its Matura Talenta IT.
Further Reading
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