Communications of the ACM
Helping Students Crack Computer Science Code
Massachusetts' Beaver Country Day School is integrating software programming into every one of its subject classes.
Credit: Kathy Maeda/The Boston Globe
Massachusetts' Beaver Country Day School wants to integrate software programming into all of its subjects, and is experimenting with uses not only in math and science classes, but even in English and art. Just as people learn their first spoken languages through immersion, Beaver students will pick up coding languages similarly, without structured lessons.
"A lot of what we've been talking about is using it when it's organic, and just having students and teachers keep an eye out for those moments," says Beaver math department chairman Rob MacDonald. "So if there's somebody in the room who's already got some skills who can jump in and share that with the class, that's great. If the students need some new tools to do the coding work, we can teach them on the fly."
State education officials and technology groups are watching Beaver's integrated strategy as a promising way to introduce students to computer programming.
Last year, only 713 Massachusetts students took an Advanced Placement exam in computer science, according to Mass Insight Education.
The Massachusetts Computing Attainment Network, a coalition that includes Google and Microsoft, recently set out to help the state education department provide more computer science to interested students in all school systems.
From The Boston Globe
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