Part of preparation is visiting some of the resources I have collected this semester. Speaking of resources, here are this week’s interesting links.
Should schools count coding as math? This keeps coming up. What do you think?
The Importance of Computer Games Development in the Computing Curriculum in Schools interesting article by David Renton
Massachusetts Board of Elementary &Secondary Education Draft Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards (DL&CS) are available for review. Have you looked at them? What do you think?
Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace – A very good read about Ada Lovelace written by Stephen Wolfram Founder & CEO of Wolfram Research Creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha & the Wolfram Language
The Big, Big Computer Science Gender Gap article on the CSTA Blog.
I hope you saw these announcements on my blog last week:
- CSTA Board of Directors Election Call for Nominations
- 2016 CSTA Annual Conference
- 2015-16 ACM/CSTA Cutler Bell prize closing soon
1 comment:
"Should schools count coding as math?" That question has been floating around since coding hit high schools. Thirty years plus+? It is still good for a heated discussion. I am sitting here watching the Oracle database get imported into Powerschool so I have about an hour to expound on this topic.
The way math is taught now by most schools - no. Of course the way most schools teach math now is about the same way schools taught math before the invention of the calculator much less the computer. Except for some graphing I could pretty much teach our curriculum as it was taught to me in the '60s.
If math curriculum were brought into the 21st century I would still say no, but only because CS/programming would be integrated into the math curriculum as a primary problem solving thread. Most of what we math teachers do in the classroom is only seen in the classroom except for the very few that go on to be professional mathematicians. Of course then we get into the baby with the bath water discussion. What do we get rid of in order to bring in programming?
If CS were introduced as a separate, stand alone substitute for a math course what would be missed mathematically? Would the loss justify the gain? Would a game writing course satisfy the math credit? What would constitute a math equivalency course? Does programming with Scratch or Alice count or would it have to be something math based using Python or Java?
Too big of a can of worms for this kid. Besides, my data base import is done. Back to work.
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