All the latest updates, podcasts, tools, and online guides to help facilitate your computer science classroom experience, in-person or online.
From childhood to adulthood, we travel down roads that shape our future and sometimes who we are as a person. We meet people along the way that influence our decisions and help craft us as professionals. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with one of these people, an amazing educational leader, Mr. Ted Howard, Chief Academic Officer at Tukwila School District. He is working to change the landscape of education for the better.
In this interview with Dominick Sanders, we discuss the importance of connecting with and listening to students, the impact of being a positive role model for kids, considering equity for individuals and across the entire state of South Carolina, what Dominick learned through their experience with Xposure STEM, Dominick’s plan for improving CS in South Carolina, Dominick’s experience with CSTA’s Equity Fellowship, how Dominick continues to learn and grow as a CS educator, thinking through intersectionality in relation to representation, and so much more.
In this episode, Jared O'Leary unpacks Bell’s (2021) publication titled “CS unplugged or coding classes? Perhaps a more appropriate question is ‘why not both’?” which argues there’s value in doing both unplugged and coding lessons.
In this interview with Mark Guzdial, we discuss the similarities and differences between constructionism and constructivism, think through when to situate and apply learning, discuss contextualized learning, creating multiple pathways for exploring computer science, problematizing subservient relationships with integrated curricula or courses, task-specific and domain-specific languages, using multiple learning theories through a multiperspectivalist approach, changes to public policy that Mark would make to help out CS educators and the field, and much more.
In this episode Jared O'leary discusses some example questions we can ask to encourage students to think deeper about computer science and computational thinking by unpacking two papers on using guiding questions in mathematics education. The first paper paper by Way (2014) is titled “Using questioning to stimulate mathematical thinking” and the second paper by Pennant (2018) is titled “Developing a classroom culture that supports a problem-solving approach to mathematics.”
In addition to the integration suggestions in our lesson plans and our discussion forum, our Scratch account has several studios that demonstrate the potential for integrating projects with Scratch.
Use this document to quickly access all of our ScratchJr and Scratch lesson plans and coder resources.
This spreadsheet is a curated list of more than 100 unplugged lesson plans and resources for elementary coders.
Our Moodle Lesson Ideas and Resources is curated by fellow teachers and instructional coaches we've worked with.
Join in on the conversation with colleagues and peers about all things computer science!
We’ve compiled some resources to help districts, teachers, and families cope with the rise of school closures around the nation.