This summer I am rebooting my Computer Applications curriculum. Out of the millions and millions of resources I an reviewing Exploring Computer Science curriculum and the GenYes program to see how well these two can augment my existing curriculum that I taught for the first time last year at ISA.
My first somewhat surprising finding is that I actually was not far off in what material I chose to cover last year. Many of the same topics and even exercises show up in both curriculums. Even if I made no changes to my curriculum, then I would cover many of the same topics and even activities covered in both of these example curriculum I am reviewing.
That's all well and good, but I really believe that computer literacy alone is not enough. Students need to know how computer systems, networks, and software work in order to remove the mystery. Students will benefit in their ability to learn other from learning "the computational thinking practices of algorithm development, problem solving and programming”.
So the purpose of my class is evolving. I still must cover the literacy component, but my goal of the class will be to give the students an introduction to computer science through activities and challenges and hope a few of them will see this as an interest they would like to pursue.
Since our school doesn’t offer IB CS classes, this is the last CS class they can take in HS, so it’s gotta be good.
More soon.