My school has a three-week period between semesters called Winterim, where we offer an alternative curriculum. This year, I am taking the plunge and teaching an intro to computer coding. One of the biggest challenges of teaching at an all-girls school is sparking interest in computer science among my students. Hopefully, this minicourse will get a few girls inspired to pursue the subject further, and we can build on that. So, I’ll be writing a series of posts in the next couple of weeks to share with you what works and what doesn’t.
The basic course outline is this:
- Intro to coding through Scratch. (The screenshot above is from the Scratch programming environment.)
- Intro to Python by designing some simple games. For this part, I’m using Al Sweigart’s Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python. It’s available for free online here.
- Design your own Android apps. I’m using MIT’s App Inventor website in conjunction with the book App Inventor to do this. You need a Google account to log into the website.
- Time permitting, we’ll learn the basics of TinkerCAD, and print out some 3D projects.
I’ve spent the past couple of days exploring Scratch, and that will be the subject of my next post.
FracTad's Fractopia 