I personally had a great AP CS teacher. It was my favorite class. I remember that most days we just went to class and worked on an assignment which was programming something specific in Java. The days we had lectures were always the worst. :D Point is, in HS you can put students in an environment where coding is fun quite easily.
Also, great idea. I'm still stunned about how little attention programming gets in schools.
My experience was equally awesome. My teacher was great, and definitely qualified. She had worked for NASA as a Software Engineer and she even lead a group of interested students in local programming competitions for UIL. Much of the structure she had set up mirrors what CodeHS does, which is really cool. People in the AP course were able to be tutors for people in the Pre-AP course as we shared a room, which helped both groups immensely, IMO.
I think this is a pretty solid product. In my opinion, it's definitely better than things that I've evaluated like it. Getting feedback on your submissions is huge, and having tutors there to help you is pretty awesome. It also solves some pretty glaring issues that still haven't been fixed in CodeAcademy for example. Of what I saw, there isn't a whole lot there yet, but hopefully there's a lot planned moving forward (or even in the non-free content). I think the real value in things like this is the visibility it gives to current students, and most of all the accessibility to new resources for them to keep learning, especially when they hit roadblocks.
Thanks for the comment. I think the few places where high school CS is done well is 100% due to having a great teacher. However, for CS in high schools... that is extremely rare.
Comments
I personally had a great AP CS teacher. It was my favorite class. I remember that most days we just went to class and worked on an assignment which was programming something specific in Java. The days we had lectures were always the worst. :D Point is, in HS you can put students in an environment where coding is fun quite easily.
Also, great idea. I'm still stunned about how little attention programming gets in schools.
My experience was equally awesome. My teacher was great, and definitely qualified. She had worked for NASA as a Software Engineer and she even lead a group of interested students in local programming competitions for UIL. Much of the structure she had set up mirrors what CodeHS does, which is really cool. People in the AP course were able to be tutors for people in the Pre-AP course as we shared a room, which helped both groups immensely, IMO.
I think this is a pretty solid product. In my opinion, it's definitely better than things that I've evaluated like it. Getting feedback on your submissions is huge, and having tutors there to help you is pretty awesome. It also solves some pretty glaring issues that still haven't been fixed in CodeAcademy for example. Of what I saw, there isn't a whole lot there yet, but hopefully there's a lot planned moving forward (or even in the non-free content). I think the real value in things like this is the visibility it gives to current students, and most of all the accessibility to new resources for them to keep learning, especially when they hit roadblocks.
Thanks for the comment. I think the few places where high school CS is done well is 100% due to having a great teacher. However, for CS in high schools... that is extremely rare.