Good Grief Have I Been This Busy?

Wow, it has been four months since my last post! I guess things got busier than I thought. In addition to the normal grind of teaching here is what has been filling my time:

• Finishing up the leading of a PLTW online training in their new CS Essentials curriculum
• The holidays (fa la la la la)
• The flu over break (blarf)
• Starting up a new semester at school
• Trying to get the CSTA Kansas chapter reboot up and running

I have been dutifully reading my favorite bloggers in CS education, and it is good to know that to one degree or another, it seems we contend with many of the same issues. For me, I have been wrestling with whether or not the PLTW CSP curriculum is the right fit for my students. We are a NMSI (National Math and Science Initiative) school, and with the grant that comes with that is a lot of training and support, which is great! In addition to me getting to go and work with colleagues three times a year, they send a person to my school on three Saturdays to help my AP students prepare for the AP exams and performance tasks. All great for their learning as well as mine.

What is becoming more clear to me, though, is the fact that the PLTW CSP curriculum, while quite good in and of itself, isn't really tailored towards the AP stuff as much as others. Yes, I know there are strong negative sentiments out there about the AP, but the reality for me is the fact that my school is highly committed to AP classes that fall under the NMSI flag, and considering the grant is well into six figures I understand why.

The guy who comes in here for the Saturday Study Sessions uses the code.org curriculum, and has used some of their materials for these sessions. I do use certain elements from the code.org CSP curriculum to fill the gaps I perceive in the PLTW CSP materials, and I do pull a few activities from other sources as well. What I am trying to figure out is whether or not using the code.org CSP as my primary curriculum would better prepare my students for our school's intended target, success on the AP. I would probably supplement the code.org version with programming in things outside of their JavaScript in Code Editor, most likely in Python and App Inventor, since those are the two things with which I have the most familiarity.

And of course, in addition to trying to build my programming skills in general, there is the never ending quest for best ways to teach CS. I'm looking forward to hopefully building up a stronger network of the CS teachers here in Kansas so that we can share and chat and work towards common goals in Kansas, and of course look very forward to going to CSTA in Omaha this summer.

Feels good to be back blogging again!