Exploring Computer Science was recently mentioned in a Smithsonian article on Educating Americans for the 21st Century…
Special Report: Educating Americans for the 21st Century
Kids may know their way around a computer, but in order to get a job in the new economy, they will have to know how to write a program, not just use one.
By Peg Tyre, published May 23, 2013 on Smithsonian.com.
“What the computer science community has been slow to grasp is that there are a lot of different people who are going to need to learn computer science, and they are going to learn it in a lot of different ways,” says Mark Guzdial, a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author of the well-respected Computer Education blog, “and there are a lot of different ways people are going to use it, too. ”
Over the next five years, with support from the National Science Foundation, an equally rigorous but more wide-ranging and widely applicable course called “Exploring Computer Science” is expected to take a place beside AP computer science. It’s about time, says Guzdial. “Giving students a course that will provide them with the computer skills they need—not to become a programmer but to easily interface with computers in their own fields, “ he believes, will help stoke flagging enthusiasm for the subject by appealing to a broader range of high school students and align education with useful career-centered computer skills.