Computer Science Teacher – Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson : Beware Boring The Smart Kids<\/a><\/p>\nI resemble the above remark. <\/p>\n
There are several reasons why I do it. If I didn\u2019t offer AP Computer Science at the same time as I teach other classes, I wouldn\u2019t have any students. I do draw a line on this \u2013 they have to be in a CS class, not a planning period or a tech period.<\/p>\n
I also am very strict about the prerequisite, so when the AP student walks into the room, they know what to expect. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny but I was laughing at myself, I have a Georgia Tech robot, and I\u2019m planning on taking it to school and getting my AP Kid (yes, there year I think I only have one), to write programs to make it work. I\u2019m also planning on using Media Computation.<\/p>\n
And yes, I point them in the right direction and get out of the way (it\u2019s probably a direct quote from something I said a workshop.<\/p>\n
In fact, I said to someone today that I was going to throw a bunch of really interesting stuff at him and if his head didn\u2019t explode he\u2019d probably get a 5 on the test. Unfortunately I think his head will explode.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the deal \u2013 when I teach AP CS on it\u2019s own I get incredibly bored myself. I had 10 max students and they stay busy working. My enrollment is lower these days and I would lose students if my schedule wasn\u2019t flexible. <\/p>\n
The good news, the kids that heads don\u2019t explode make a 5 on the exam and usually go on to major in CS. It must work.<\/p>\n
I also teach regular CS (Visual Basic) and PreAP (Java) at the same time. I use some \u201ctricks\u201d to do this. First, I record my instructions. I find that students prefer to listen to recorded instructions they can stop. At the same time, we still do discussions, especially on the fly when someone has a problem. <\/p>\n
However, I believe in teaching a project based course, and 80% of my time is spent waiting on them giving me something to grade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Of course in some high school computer science programs this gets taken to a bit of an extreme with several levels of computer science courses being taught in the same room by the same teacher at the same time. I\u2019m constantly amazed at how well so many teachers handle this sort of thing. Computer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kweaver.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}