CS Principles Course

LPFI and UC Berkeley’s “Beauty and Joy of Computing” Collaborate to Bring CS Principles to SMASH Scholars

SMASH Berkeley CS photoStarting in the fall of 2015, SMASH scholars in their junior year of high school will be offered an opportunity to participate in the new Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) preparatory course (Beauty and Joy of Computing) to be offered by the University of California, Berkeley. The innovative, blended learning, out-of-school course will include in-person instruction on Saturdays, as well as online learning components and virtual instruction by one of the course’s developers, Teaching Professor Dan Garcia.

SMASH scholars enrolled in the course will serve as a pilot cohort for LPFI’s AP CSP offerings and the College Board’s course accreditation process for BJCx. In addition to learning about programming languages, the College Board requires participants in Computer Science Principles courses to submit performance tasks as part of scoring their AP CSP assessments.

The Beauty and Joy of Computing course was developed to broaden participation to groups underrepresented in computer science. The AP CSP portion of the course is comprised of three sections, the first of which has been offered at SMASH during the 2015 summer. The remaining two sections will be completed on Saturdays during the 2015-16 academic year.

For more information about LPFI’s Computer Science Initiatives, contact Danielle Rose, Director of Programs.

References: “College Board and NSF Expand Partnership to Bring Computer Science Classes to High Schools Across the U.S.”: https://www.collegeboard.org/releases/2015/college-board-and-nsf-to-bring-computer-science-classes-to-high-schools