CourseOutline
Course Outline (We will be touching upon the following Computer Science Topics)
Jobs
Currently my students are not prepared for any jobs. The course I am teaching is called Exploring Computer Science. It is designed as an introductory course to first develop process skills found within the coding field, but then to begin having them try to code (html & Scratch). The curriculum is designed so that everyone is participating and engaged, but most importantly it is designed to keep the student’s interest and to not overwhelm them. The follow up course to my ECS course is AP Computer Science Principles. I am being sent to 4 weeks of training this summer, so I will know more about the course in August. But it is following that course that my students should be able to get an introductory coding job.
Objectives
Exploring Computer Science is designed to develop in students the computational practices of algorithm development, problem solving and programming within the context of problems that are relevant to the lives of today’s students. Students will also be introduced to topics such as interface design, limits of computers, and societal and ethical issues. The Exploring Computer Science curriculum was developed around a framework of both computer science content and computational practice. This combination of both content and practices provides students with a sense of what computer scientists do. It provides students with a solid base to step into a more challenging coding class that will provide them with actual job skills, just not at this stage though.
Training Activity Hours
I have designed the course so that the students learn a skill either by looking into their prior knowledge or by recreating a model. The skills they learn from recreating the model they then use to solve new problem. The course is one year in length so the Training Activities take up most of that time.
Appropriateness of Instructional Materials
The developers of the ECS course have done an excellent job of providing the content topics that need to be presented to the students. Each topic touches upon those areas found in the computer science or coding world. Sometimes they will provide a lesson plan, but most of the time I am designing some sort of curriculum to get the points across.