Hello Parents, 

Thank you very much for trusting us and letting us work with your children. I am Dr. Meize Guo (Dr.G also works) from the Doceo Center at the University of Idaho. I mainly work with pre-service teachers in teacher education programs and in-service teachers for professional development. And my research focused on technology integration, computer science education, and STEM education. 

This curriculum was designed as a PBL (problem-based learning) experience for the Girl Scout Junior Troop. We will work with your children for ten hours in the Doceo Center, and they might need extra hours to improve their design and artifacts. The children will use computers, the Internet, and different educational robots to learn basic computer science / computational thinking concepts and basic block-based coding skills. Lynn Baird and Melica Haarr helped review the course content. 

I would love to transfer this informal CS/CT learning experience into a research project. Therefore, your reflections and the progress of the children's learning will be recorded for the purpose of research. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of Idaho approved this research. The data collection and data analysis will strictly follow the IRB guidance. I have the content forms, which include detailed information for you. Here are some highlights: 

• Participating in this research is completely voluntary

• All participants' personal information will be kept anonymous

• Children's portraiture rights will be strictly protected

If you have any questions regarding the curriculum or the research, please feel free to contact me at meizeguo@gmail.com. I would love to explain the details. 

Sincerely, 

Meize