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Bringing a Rigorous Computer Science Principles Course to the largest School System in the United States
This project involves a partnership between the Education Development Center, the University of California-Berkeley, the New York City Foundation for Computer Science, and the New York City Department of Education. The project team will develop curricular materials, based on the Beauty and Joy of Computing course developed at University of California-Berkeley, for teaching Computer Science Principles at the high school level using the Snap! programming language. They will run in-person teacher-training programs each summer, and develop an online teacher development course. During the project, 100 high school teachers in New York City will be trained to teach this course, and early participants will also become teacher-trainers who will work with later participants. The teachers involved will become part of a Community of Practice that will continue to provide support for the teacher cohorts.

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Project Contributions

The Beauty and Joy of Computing in the Big Apple
"It is easy to think the study of computer science is synonymous with coding. Even worse, computer science is often confused with being adept at using a computing device to…
The Beauty and Joy of Computing Website
The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) is an introductory computer science curriculum developed at the University of California, Berkeley, intended for non-CS majors at the high school junior through…
The Beauty and Joy of Computing
"We last presented our Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) course in a special issue of ACM Inroads in June 2012. At the time, we taught BJC in two of…
BJC4NYC: Bringing BJC To New York City High Schools!
"High school teachers we've worked with so far have asked us for more K-12-friendly curriculum materials, including a teacher's manual, scope and sequence, and lesson plans. EDC, a very experienced…