What is CS Discoveries?
Computer Science Discoveries (CS Discoveries) is an introductory computer science course that empowers students to create authentic artifacts and engage with computer science as a medium for creativity, communication, problem solving, and fun.
Designed with equity in mind
CS Discoveries is designed from the ground up to be an accessible and engaging course for all students, regardless of background or prior experience. It provides students opportunities to engage with culturally and personally relevant topics in a wide variety of contexts and aims to show all students that CS is for them.
Focus on creation
We know that giving students agency in their learning is a powerful tool for creating fun, engaging, and lasting learning experiences. CS Discoveries focuses on the skills that enable students to create and express themselves in a variety of contexts and media. Whether they are developing their own website, designing an app, building a game, or creating a physical computing device, students are empowered to bring their ideas to life.
Completing a K-12 pathway
CS Discoveries is designed to fit naturally between our CS Fundamentals courses and our CS Principles course. While each of these courses is designed to be an age-appropriate entry point to computer science.
Students with previous experience will find many new topics to explore, and they will revisit familiar topics in novel and more challenging contexts.
Supports for new-to-CS teachers
CS Discoveries is specifically designed to support new-to-CS teachers. The curriculum includes detailed lesson plans, and frequent teaching tips. The accompanying forum is an active community of support that teachers can use to discuss their practice and find additional resources. Teachers can also apply for our professional learning program for further support.
Flexible Implementation
CS Discoveries was specifically designed for 7th to 9th grade classrooms and can be used in either middle school or high school.
The two semesters build on each other, allowing the course to be taught as a single semester, two sequential semesters, a full-year course, or even integrated into
existing technology classes.
Powerful tools with a high ceiling
CS Discoveries introduces students to tools and programming languages that are accessible for beginners while offering more advanced students opportunities to create sophisticated projects.
Using our existing App Lab programming environment and our new programming environment, Game Lab, students will be able to transition from blocks to typed code at their own pace while learning JavaScript.
Students will also develop maker skills through the study of physical computing at a very accessible cost.
Problem Solving
This unit is a highly interactive and collaborative introduction to the field of computer science, as framed within the broader pursuit of solving problems.
Through a series of puzzles, challenges, and real world scenarios, students are introduced to a problem solving process.
They will return to repeatedly throughout the course.
They then explore how computers represent and process information in order to solve certain kinds of problems.
The unit concludes with students designing an application that could help address a problem of their choosing.
Web Development
In this unit, students are empowered to create and share the content on their own web pages.
They begin by thinking about the role of the web, and how it can be used as a medium for creative expression.
As students develop their pages and begin to see themselves as programmers, they are encouraged think critically about the impact of sharing information online.
They also learn how to be more critical content consumers.
They are also introduced to problem solving as it relates to programming, as they learn valuable skills such as debugging, commenting, and structure of language.
At the conclusion of the unit, students compile their work to create a personal website they can publish and share.
Interactive Games and Animations
In this unit, students build on their coding experience as they create programmatic images, animations, interactive art, and games.
Starting off with simple, primitive shapes and building up to more sophisticated sprite-based games, students become familiar with the programming concepts and
the design process computer scientists use daily.
They then learn how these simpler constructs can be combined to create more complex programs.
In the final project, students develop a personalized, interactive program.
Along the way, they practice design, testing, and iteration, as they come to see that failure. Failure and debugging are an expected and valuable part of the programming process.
The Design Process
This unit transitions students from thinking about computer science as a tool to solve their own problems towards considering the broader social impacts of computing.
Through a series of design challenges, students are asked to consider and understand the needs of others while developing a solution to a problem.
The second half of the unit consists of an iterative team project, during which students have the opportunity to identify a need that they care about.
Prototype solutions are both on paper and in App Lab.
Students test their solutions with real users to get feedback and drive further iteration.
Data and Society
This unit is about the importance of data in solving problems and highlights how computers can help in this process.
The first chapter explores different systems used to represent information in a computer and the challenges and tradeoffs posed by using them.
In the second chapter students learn how collections of data are used to solve problems.
They learn how computers help to automate the steps of this process. The chapter concludes by considering how the data problem solving process can be applied to
an area of the students’ choosing.
Physical Computing
In Unit 6, students further develop their programming skills, while exploring more deeply the role of hardware platforms in computing. Harkening back to the Input/Storage/Processing/Output model for a computer, students look towards modern “smart” devices.
They will understand the ways in which non-traditional computing platforms take input. Also, how these platforms provide output in ways that couldn’t be done with the traditional keyboard, mouse, and monitor.