Beauty and Joy of Computing 1-week Professional Development
Speaker: Dan Garcia – Millbrae, CA, United StatesTopic(s): Society and the Computing Profession
Abstract
The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) is a CS Principles (CSP) course developed at UC Berkeley, intended for high school juniors through university non-majors. It was twice chosen as a CSP pilot, and both the College Board and code.org have endorsed it. Since 2011, we have offered professional development to over 500 high school teachers. Through partnerships with EDC (Education Development Center), the New York City Department of Education, and CSNYC, our NSF-funded BJC4NYC project will be bringing BJC to 100 high school teachers in New York City, the largest and one of the most diverse school districts in the country. Our guiding philosophy is to meet students where they are, but not to leave them there. It covers the big ideas and computational thinking practices required in the AP CSP curriculum framework using an easy-to-learn blocks-based programming language called Snap! (based on Scratch), and powerful computer science ideas like recursion, higher-order functions and computability. Through the course, students learn to create beautiful images, and realize that code itself can be beautiful. Having fun is an explicit course goal. We take a "lab-centric" approach, and much of the learning occurs through guided programming labs that ask students to explore and play. In this week-long workshop, we will provide an overview of BJC, share our experiences as instructors of the course at the university and high school level, take participants through a typical week of the course, and give them all the resources they need to prepare them to teach the course themselves.
About this Lecture
Number of Slides: 50Duration: 2400 minutes
Languages Available: English
Last Updated:
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