Table of Contents

Week 4: Pre-AP Curricula and Challenges of CS Teaching

Week 4: Pre-AP Curricula and Challenges of CS Teaching

Objectives

Identify a variety of languages/approaches used in a Pre-AP HS course
Discuss which languages would work well and why more than one should be used
Discuss different approaches and syllabi for Pre-AP courses

Readings for Class Discussion

What (else) Should CS Educators Know? Gal-Ezer and Harel

http://alternatives.rzero.com/lang.html language comparison
http://www.python.org/workshops/2000-01/proceedings/papers/elkner/pyYHS.html python in HS
http://mcsp.wartburg.edu/zelle/python/python-first.html python first
http://www.strchr.com/first_language first language discussion
http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/python-teaching.htm Why Python

Topics

What are good introductory programming languages? [5 min]
- Brainstorm a list
What are the benefits of each language? [15 min]
- Are there certain topics/concepts when a certain language should be used?
Review different syllabi/course outlines for Pre-AP courses [15 min]

Lab

BlueJ download, installation, and tutorial.