The students in our school have shown a desire to learn about computer science. After attending CCSC last year with a scholarship from Cerner Corporation, I became interested in teaching an Intro to Programming course at our school. I hope to teach more than an introduction to programming and computational thinking. I am hoping to inspire a future engineer or technology entrepreneur.
Our high school (9-12) has an enrollment of just over eight hundred students.
Our school district is located in a rural community. Last year our school received the Blue Ribbon Award at the national level. We have a large population of free/reduced lunch students, yet because we have a local hospital and university in our town, we have quite a few students who come from a professional background. Taking dual credit college courses is very popular with our students. They score very well on EOC and ACT tests. We offer a limited number of electives and began to realize we needed to add computer science to our course offerings. For the spring 2015 school semester, students will be able to take Intro to Programming. The class enrollment is maxed out at this time. We are hoping that students will enjoy the course and that we will be able to add an AP or dual credit computer science course for the next school year.
My Project
During the spring 2015 semester, my students will begin Intro to Programming by learning computer and programming basics, along with computational thinking. After they become knowledgeable with coding and a little bit bored with writing code, I would like to introduce the ActivityBot. My class has twenty-seven enrolled, so I will assign students to groups of three, each group with their own robot to build and program. I can see the anticipation on their faces as they open the boxes and take inventory of the pieces and parts that will eventually become their robot to program. Once they have completed the building process, and learned basic programming commands, it is my hope that students can compete in the classroom with their robots following mazes and making sounds. In the future, I envision that our students would be able to host robotic competitions for other area schools thus, motivating them to promote computer science.
The donations from this project will improve my classroom by providing a hands-on way for students to learn about coding.
Hopefully, some will be inspired to pursue a degree and career in computer science. If even one is inspired to become an engineer or technology entrepreneur, then I will feel this new computer science endeavor was a success.
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