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As computer science education expands across the state, schools, districts and school systems frequently ask “Where do we start?” The answer is that it is different for everyone - it is unique to each community. There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution but there is a tool that facilitates conversation among district personnel, school leaders, teachers, and partners. SCRIPT.
SCRIPT stands for
Strategic
CSforALL
Resource &
Implementation
Planning
Tool
It is a framework to guide teams of district administrators, school leaders, and educators through a series of collaborative visioning, self-assessment and goal-setting exercises to create or expand upon a computer science education implementation plan for their students.
AND it is happening in Iowa!
Iowa has more than 10 trained SCRIPT facilitators and 13 districts have worked through the framework in the two-day workshop.
Thank you to Grant Wood AEA, Corey Rogers, and Samantha Dahlby, for organizing and running the first Iowa SCRIPT workshop! It was a fantastic experience for everyone.
Stay tuned to for more information about future Iowa SCRIPT workshops.
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2-CS-02 -- Design projects that combine hardware and software components to collect and exchange data
Grade band: 6 - 8
Concept: Computing Systems
Sub-concept: Hardware & Software
Hardware and software work together as a system to accomplish tasks. Collecting and exchanging data involves input, output, storage, and processing. Hardware and software determine a computing system’s capability to store and process information. The design or selection of a computing system involves multiple considerations and potential tradeoffs, such as functionality, cost, size, speed, accessibility, and aesthetics.
Students could design an app and consider components including an accelerometer, GPS, and speech recognition. The choice of a device that connects wirelessly through a Bluetooth connection versus a physical USB connection involves a tradeoff between mobility and the need for an additional power source for the wireless device.
Iowa's CS Standards are the CSTA Standards
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ALGORITHM -- An algorithm is a sequence of instructions designed to perform a specific task.
Examples -
- A recipe. As you follow the steps precisely and in order consider would happen if you did some of the steps out of order, or if they added more or less than the specified amount of an ingredient.
- Getting from place A to place B. There might be multiple options - faster or more scenic or maybe less distance. This could simply be from the classroom to the cafeteria or from your house to Niagara Falls.
- Boarding an airplane
- Netflix movie recommendations
- Facebook Feed
Amazon Future Engineer + BootUp Elementary Computer Science Initiative www.afebootup.smapply.org
BootUp is working with Amazon Future Engineer to close opportunity gaps in computer science in underserved and underrepresented communities. Their initiative supports teachers as they engage students through interactive stories, animations, games, and more! The curriculum encourages creativity through project-based coding lesson plans that are personally meaningful to each student. Teachers are the driving force behind elementary coding programs that will empower students to become the next generation of game-changers.
Computer Science Web page - Check out the information and resources available.
Twitter - Do you tweet? Follow me at @wrenhoffman and be sure to use the hashtag #CSforIA for all your computer science related tweets.
Sharing - Do you have a story or an experience to share? I’d love to include examples of what is happening in schools and districts around the state in the next newsletter.
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