Teach Computer Science with the Computing Ideas Course on CodeHS
We are very excited to announce the newest full-year course on CodeHS specifically designed for middle school and early high school students: Computing Ideas. Students learn foundational concepts around computational thinking, programming, and web design with a focus on project based learning. They’ll even get to make their own home page portfolio website to show off their cool projects!
Quick Resources:
- Information: https://codehs.com/info/curriculum/computing_ideas
- Get in Touch: https://codehs.com/learnmore
We call this course Computing Ideas because students are exposed to a variety of the most important and powerful topics in computing.
Why Computing Ideas?
We call this course Computing Ideas because students are exposed to a variety of the most important and powerful topics in computing. Students will explore ideas around questions such as: What is code? What is computer science? They’ll learn how to make their own programs and web pages, and learn about effects computing has had on our modern society. By the end of the course, students will write real code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and will build a portfolio website showing off their creative projects.
Computing Ideas shows students that computer science is everywhere and its affecting things that matter to them. It’s all about building connections. You can see on our “Coding in the Wild” blog articles from people who use coding in all sorts of fields from public policy to health care to economics to music.
What Students Will Build
Students will learn the basics of web development with HTML and CSS. Here you can see how students can design web pages using text or blocks.
Students will apply the skills developed in the web development unit to create their own website hosted on their own custom domain. This website will serve as a portfolio of all the creative projects the student creates in the course.
Students will learn the basics of programming with Karel the Dog to learn about logic, problem solving, and other coding concepts in JavaScript.
Computing Ideas Comes in Many Flavors
Since schools will be using this course in different ways in different grade levels, we have several flavors of the course available.
You’ll be able to choose the right version of your course depending on if you’d like to use blocks or text, which grade level you are teaching, and if you will be teaching the course over a semester or a full year.
Who is this Course For?
This course is meant to be a first time introduction to computer science, and does not require students to come in with any computer programming experience.
This course is aimed at 6th to 9th graders as a first course. Depending on what grade you are teaching and the number of hours of your course, we will recommend the right flavor of Computing Ideas to you.
This is a great introductory course for middle school and early high school students. Visit our Curriculum Pathways page to see suggested pathways in how it fits in with other courses.
I’m Interested!
If you are interested in teaching the Computing Ideas course at your school you can get in touch here: https://codehs.com/learnmore
If you have any other questions, please shoot us an email at hello@codehs.com to let us know!
