The Computer Science K-12 Express
Issue #3, November 10, 2017
Your weekly resource to discover what is happening in K-12 computer science around the district and the world. Feel free to use any of the ideas or resources in these newsletters as you prepare your computer science lessons that will be shared at the end of the Computer Science: Building a Foundation for Student-Choice course on February 7, 2018.
News You Can Use
Code.org is hosting no-cost, one-day workshops for K-5 educators interested in teaching computer science. The workshops will be held in the Windsor High School Collaboration Space, February 3, 2018 and will cover courses 1-3 and offer supplies needed to teach courses. For more information check out the flyer linked here.
Connected Coding
CAS Barefoot has a great teaching activities webpage for students 5-11 years of age and has a filtering tool to help narrow down a teacher's focus. While it has activities connected to Scratch and Bee-Bots it also has a wealth of unplugged activities. By the way, CAS stands for Computing At School! Check it out below!
This week in Computer Science
Google offers a free online course on how to teach Computational Thinking. The course is divided into five sections, each focusing on the following:
- Introducing Computational Thinking: What is CT? - What is computational thinking, where does it occur, why should you care, and how is it being applied?
- Exploring Algorithms - Walk through examples of algorithms used in your subject. Recognize why algorithms are powerful tools to increase what you can do and that technology can be useful for implementing and automating them.
- Finding Patterns - Explore examples of patterns in various subjects and develop your own processes for approaching a problem through pattern recognition.
- Developing Algorithms - Increase your confidence in applying the computational process to a given problem and recognize how algorithms can articulate a process or rule.
- Final Project: Applying CT - Create a statement of how CT applies to your subject area and design a plan to integrate it into your work and classroom.
Shoutouts
This week we would like to give a shoutout to Mandy Smith, WHS Math, for sharing the Bootstrap website with us. Bootstrap crafts research-based curricular modules for grades 6-12. It's materials reinforce core concepts from algebra, enabling non-computer science teachers to adopt introductory materials while delivering rigorous and engaging computing content drawn from computer science classes at universities like Brown, WPI, and Northeastern. Check it out below!