Building a Comprehensive K-12 CS Pathway at Your School

[Music] so again a Welcome to our attendees here today I have opened up the chat so that you can interact and ask questions today so please feel free to open up your chat and be ready with your questions I'm happy to answer them today all right let's get started talking about CS Pathways K through 12 my name is Stephanie Bennett I'm a professional development specialist here at COD HS and I'm really excited to join you today and talk about all of the great curriculum these high quality instructional materials that we have available for you here at codehs so I did drop a link to these slides in the chat so if you'd like to follow along on your device with the slides you may however I will keep broadcasting them here from my desk also so for our half hour 45 minutes here today we're going to talk about what Cod HS is I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about the why behind computer science you know it's a relatively new subject matter in K through 12 education and sometimes it's a good reminder to go back and think about the why behind what we are doing we will talk about both state specific and general Pathways that our curriculum team has built here at codehs and then I would love to spend a little bit of time also talking about how you recruit students to your CS program you know graduation requirements in computer science are definitely coming I am actually based in Indiana and we have a new computer science graduation requirement here in the state of Indiana and that's wonderful but you know not always the most motivating thing for students to get involved in a subject matter so you know we will talk about how we can inform educate and excite our students about computer science especially if you don't have a requirement driving them into your computer science programming so like I said we do have some options for interactions here today the Q&A is open and again I've also open open the chat up to everyone so that you can drop questions there also and so we'll go ahead and get started if you are new to codjus we would love to sign up have you sign up for a free account at kodj.com signup our teacher accounts are always free our Middle School and High School curriculum is always free and then once you explore our curriculum fall in love with it you know we hope that you will ALS also learn to love our teacher tools also that we provide in our Pro licenses so definitely sign up for a free account explore the curriculum see what all the excitement is about and the great products we're building and then if you're interested in a pro account and want to explore that more I'll give you that information at the end of our session here today so we also love to provide you with some evidence that you spent time with us here today if you need to have hours for license renewal or if you you know need to show proof that you attended here today for any reason you can click on the link in the chat and then get a certificate of completion for our time spent here together today now you will need to be logged in to your cods teacher account before you click on that link and know that it's not a complicated process you'll just see thank you for attending web page displayed once you click the link and that's all you need the certificate of completion will be emailed later all right so what is cod HS we are a comprehensive platform for teaching computer science K through 12 we provide Elementary curriculum Middle School curriculum and lots and lots of High School curriculum and that curriculum of course is all encompassed in a web-based platform where your students will log in and experience some really great computer science learning and practice not only around coding but also around other computer science topics like hardware and software cyber security and more so very very comprehensive curriculum we also offer professional development you know that you're here today with me both online and offline and then of course I was talking earlier about our Pro licenses and how they come with really awesome teacher tools and resources and so definitely check out those options on the platform with that free account or log to your pro account here today so our student facing resources really provide a great interactive and engaging exper learning experiences for your students they they get instant feedback frequently with our autog graders while they're coding and they can you know do all of their work on our just one website which is great and again those tools for teachers around grading and academic integrity and all of this is in our web-based platform no additional downloads or plugins needed so now that we know a little bit about codehs let's talk about the why behind computer science so I want to talk a little bit about the computer science landscape across the United States and also consider how we might use backwards planning you know we're teachers we love our backwards planning consider how we might use our portrait of a graduate or our district mission and vision statements to help us consider why we're teaching Cs and also the building blocks that are needed in order to meet the goals of our portrait of a graduate or our district vision and Mission so let's start with the computer science landscape here in the United States so really really beneficial for me today I was so lucky that csta has Rel released their 2024 state of Computer Science Education report and I just linked that in the chat for you if you'd like to go download that report it just came out very very recently and so I was able to update all this information and these statistics I'm going to share with you so what you see up on the screen right now is a map of the US showing the percent of high schools in each state offering foundational computer science and again this was just updated in 2024 and in 2024 State budgets allocated more than $88 million to Computer Science Education and that allowed 60% of US public high schools to offer foundational computer science which was up just a smidge from 57 and a half% last year but know that you know that's still demonstrative of some disparities that do exist to access to to Computer Science Education in high school the survey found that 37% of middle schools are offering computer science and in the past year 6.4% of high school students enrolled in a foundational computer science class now if all students took one computer science course in their High School career then we could expect to see enrollment more around 25% but it's just 6.4 of high school students so I love those statistics just to kind of paintt the picture of where we're at in this burgeoning field of K through 12 computer science learning and teaching and I would also like to share the recent reimagining CS Pathways report summarized why Computer Science Education is a necessity for all students they said quote students of all identities and chosen career paths need quality Computer Science Education to become informed citizen and confident creators of content and digital tools and we're going to get a little bit deeper into that why right now because that strikes a chord with me I believe that computer science education is important so that students can start seeing themselves not just as passive users of Technology but creators of and creators with technology and when we equip all students with the knowledge and skills they need to excel in many different subject areas we're going to touch on computer science skills inevitably in this increasingly digital world that we live in I also love to advocate for the youngsters crucial Early Access and ident identity formation as a computer scientist can start as young as kindergarten there are wonderful engaging lessons both online and offline of course for our youngest learn ERS around computer science we also can hook students who maybe traditionally wouldn't see themselves as computer scientists by cultivating student creativity and engagement in Hands-On learning many folks who you know didn't come from a computer science background find it an unexpected fact that creativity and computer science go hand in hand I mean there are a thousand ways to solve a Computing problem right a a programming problem and many of your students will show great creativity in solving problems in their computer science classes another piece of the Cs education classroom that I love is developing a growth mindset this is very personal for me I will admit that I am a lifelong perfectionist something I've dealt with my entire life and it wasn't until I got to computer science that programming and coding just forced me to accept that things are going to be iterative it's not going to be perfect the first time when I'm coding when I'm troubleshooting with a device it's got to be iterative and I cannot tell you how really proud of myself I am that I kind of grown in that capacity that now I'm willing to try things even if I'm pretty sure they're not going to work and so really I hope you can tell how personal this one is to me I I absolutely will advocate for for From Here to Eternity about this growth mindset piece in computer science also something I'm very passionate about is computational thinking so I believe firmly that computational thinking has so much to provide in interdisciplinary connections and helping students have a shared vocabulary around what proficient problem solving looks like so computational thinking involves decomposing big problems into smaller pieces it involves abstraction by only focusing on the important parts of a problem it involves pattern recognition it involves algorithmic thinking making sure that the steps we're planning to solve a problem are in the right order we haven't missed any so that we always get this outcome that we're looking for and I think that those computational thinking practices and that vocabulary if we can help students establish the vocabulary of what they're supposed to do when they approach a problem will make it so much easier for teachers and students to have discussions about problem solving not only in computer science but in other subject areas also so I'll step off my soap box now I'm just really passionate about Computer Science Education and let's talk about backwards planning and as we're approaching building a computer science pathway talking about the why and the the what so I want you to think about your District vision and Mission or your portrait of a graduate if you have one I want you to think about any kind of social emotional learning district initiatives or 21st century skills SK initiatives that your district is implementing and also thinking about enrollment enlistment employment you know after secondary education where are our students going that is the whole purpose of school right to produce citizens who can contribute through enrollment enlistment employment and through their ideas and through their work ethic and so thinking about the students that you want to see leaving your District upon graduation how can we backwards plan a CS pathway that follows along with your portrait of a graduate that supports your 21st century skills and your District initiatives around enrollment enlistment and employment you know computer science is absolutely pervasive in all Industries and many many careers these days and so if we're thinking about the student who are leaving our doors after graduation what are the skills and knowledge we want them to have what are the practices we want them to take with them out of the classroom and so thinking about your graduates how do we backwards plan to to that success and a lot of times you know we have to measure those things in test scores and I hate that but I I do want to prompt your thinking with you know potentially we want students to be proving their skills proving their knowledge and ability to implement practices via maybe AP tests or certification tests in industry and if that is our goal how do we plan up to that moment and I wanted to share this quote from Sean Razer who teaches in California he said I had 101 students take the AP exam and 95 passed with a three or better it is great to be able to know that we are providing them with such solid content throughout the year thanks to codehs and so you know if AP exams are part of your graduation requirements if they are you know a a symbol of how well your your Stu your students are doing as they are in many cases they are something to brag about and this teacher should be so proud of this accomplishment and so you know think of your graduates think of the skills the knowledge the practices you want them to possess and take out with them into the world and let's backwards plan from there whether your you the Pinnacle of your you know students CS journey is AP exams whether it's certifications from industry you know let's backwards plan from that moment all right so we've talked about the why let's get into the details we're going to start with State specific Pathways that cods has built and then we'll get to some more General Pathways that cods has built for your K to2 students so this first website I'm going to share in the chat is a place where you will be able to see what courses and potentially what Pathways Cod HS has built where we have aligned courses and or whole Pathways to your specific state standards and so definitely check out the website cod.com States click on your state and see what kinds of courses we have aligned to your state standards and see if we have have a recommended State pathway for you give you a minute to do that again so these are the states that we have specifically aligned to state standards for some of our courses if there is a pathway also aligned and available it will show up also on that page and so I would love to just give you an example of what that looks like here so let me pop over to this tab and I'll show you first with Kentucky and so Kentucky we do have some courses aligned to Kentucky computer science state standards fortunately we don't have a pathway built specifically for Kentucky but then I'll show you again Indiana's where I'm based and I know that not only do we have courses built for Indiana specifically for computer science standards alignment but we do also have Indiana pathway and so this page looks like this you can click into any of these courses to learn more about them so that's how to use that wonderful website from our from codehs so hopefully you do find some State specific content that's great for you if not we can take a look at what we are offering in our general Pathways so we do offer Elementary K through five computer science we also offer options for our middle schools and then we have several Pathways four in fact that we'll talk about today for our high school settings and so let's start with the elementary side of our curriculum and offerings we offer two course Pathways we have a computer science pathway so that would be a lesson specific specifically geared towards teaching computer science Concepts like sequences or Loops or conditional statements there are also some lessons included in there that are unplugged so maybe you'll get into a little bit of hardware and software things like that but we do also offer an interdisciplinary computer science pathway for elementary school and this would be great if your teachers in elementary schools are just struggling to find time to teach computer science that is definitely the number one Blocker we hear from elementary school teachers is that they don't have time to teach computer science so what we've done is we've taken common standards for science Ela math and we've created some computer science lessons that fit in with those subject matter Concepts so I'll show you what I mean here I'm going to take you to these Sample Elementary student projects so this first one is going to be a scratch Junior game where we're just navigating through a maze so when I start the program here I am this baby up here in the leftand corner and I'm going to navigate using these dots that have been programmed and move the baby through the Maze and this is one of our computer science lessons oh and I messed up and got sent back to the start so this is a computer science lesson where students are learning how to program multiple Sprites in scratch Jr now this second example I'm going to show you and this third example I'm going to show you obviously have some more interdisciplinary connections here we are using scratch to create a sort of click and learn interactive animation to learn about ecosystems so when I click on the sun oh I have to click the flag first the sun says I produce light and we can click the numbers one through four or click these Sprites and see oh I pressed one I'm a producer I use energy from the Sun to produce food so the plant is the producer and then when I press number two on my keyboard I'm a consumer I get my energy from eating plants so obviously you can see the great science connections there and then this one is a math interdisciplinary lesson where students are practicing with fractions so when I click the green flag I'm asked to move Gobo here this Sprite connected to my mouse cursor to 1/4 and so if I put Gobo on half well it shows me half the pizza but we're not not quite at one quarter so if I move Gobo to one quarter I get a little sound indicating that I have successfully found one quarter and when I move Gobo now to three qus I get my little sound yay I did it so definitely some very cool interdisciplinary connections available in our elementary platform so that's what it looks like from the student side what project students build and on the teacher side we have ready too slide decks that require very very little preparation for teachers we also provide lesson plann documents with standard alignments included we provide assessment rubrics for students programs starter code so that students can really focus on one coding concept at a time or redu ucing that cognitive load via those starter code programs we also provide example projects where the code is complete so the teacher can reference what everything should be at the end and we provide slide decks for students in both English and Spanish so if you have biliterate students in your community we do provide those translated slide decks so that's a very short recap of our elementary school offerings and we'll move on to middle school next remember you do have access to the chat if anybody has any questions while I go along just pop them in there and so for Middle School we have a very customizable approach to middle school so we know that every Middle School approaches computer science in a unique way and so I'm going to start here with kind of our smallest offering it's very customizable and so whether you need 5 hours 10 hours 30 hours of curriculum our Middle School mix and match course is going to be your goto for those smaller contact hours needed with students and so I will put a link to our Middle School course catalog in the chat so if you are interested in taking a look at this Middle School curriculum while I'm talking about it please feel free to click on that link in the chat so let's talk about mix and match so this course contains all of the cods introductory Middle School content and again it takes a very modular approach to that content where each of the modules contained in the mix and match course are about 10 hours of content and introduce students to a specific topic within the field of computer science now because it's modular teachers can remove and reorder the modules to create a course that meets the needs of their students in class setup these lessons were designed specifically for middle school students and they will explore topics in a variety of engaging and interactive ways so this course utilizes a blended classroom approach the content is a mix of web-based and physical activities and depending on the chosen modules students May write and run code in the browser create websites and digital presentations they might complete interactive activities on online or engage in in-person collaborative exercises with classmates and your teachers will be able to utilize the tools and resources provided by codhs to leverage time in the classroom and give focused one-on-one attention to students so definitely recommend this if you just need a little chunk of computer science for your middle school students now if you're looking for a little bit longer course maybe a semester elective then we also have some options in our Middle School pathway so our CS Explorations one course is about 50 hours of content and this course is an introductory course for early middle school students it's great for students who are completely new to coding or for students who are continuing on their coding Journey maybe coming from block coding and starting to transition into text based coding so students learn the basics of programming with Carol and Tracy are two Cod HS mascots they also learn Computing and digital citizenship the modules in this course are Standalone modules and can be taught in any order The Only Exception there is that students need to have completed Carol Adventures 1 before starting Carol Adventures 2 in CS Explorations too this is another 50-hour class it's a course again introductory but for upper middle school students this time it again works for students who are completely new to coding or are continuing their coding Journey again students start with the basics of programming with Carol the dog and learn how to code within the context of Art and game design students also explore how the internet works and how to make web pages with HTML and CSS it is 50 hours and those five modules in the course are Standalone modules and can be taught in any order we do recommend as maybe a prerequisite that students complete CS Explorations 1 before completing CS Explorations 2 however CS2 it does include optional introductory materials to support students who have not had the opportunity to complete CS Explorations one so finally on this list here for a middle school pathway we also include python Basics with Tracy 1 this is a 60-hour course and this course teaches students the basics of programming in Python students Learn Python commands functions control structures and user interaction by solving puzzles and writing creative programs for Tracy to follow and this does not have any prerequisites it is designed for complete beginners with no previous background in computer science because it is highly visual Dynamic and interactive so it makes it really engaging for those students who are new to computer science now we do have an option two here where students maybe take CS Explorations one python Basics with Tracy 1 and then python Basics with Tracy 2 Tracy 2 is again a 60-hour course and it teaches students extended Concepts in Python students learn how to use lists manipulate strings and work with files by solving puzzles and writing creative programs for Tracy to follow so the content taught in the python Basics with Tracy one course should definitely be covered before beginning Tracy 2 all right so what if you need a full year elective for your middle school well then we have you will never run out of curriculum with code HS we have lots to offer your middle school students so if you need three years of full year electives this is what I would suggest I would do CS Explorations one with sixth grade do CS Explorations 2 with seventh grade do python Basics with treat one in 8th grade but add in additional shorter curricular curricular units from our catalog so examples might be programming with microbit now of course those require Hardware but if your teachers have access to microbit Hardware then it could be very very cool for your middle school students to have that Hands-On Computing experience maybe you select our introduction to AI for Middle School course that's a brand new one we release this year 20 hours long maybe you want your students to really dig into web design we have a middle school course for them and then a Roblox now I will say Roblox does require an additional software download but if you have questions about that I'm happy to answer it so what does this look like on the student side we'll have an example gift there of Carol moving around a world depositing balls as she goes and so Carol is really interactive really Visual and fun for students and then we also have the Tracy modules of course so let me pull up an example of what these programs look like so when I click run here you'll see Carol in this world with a tree where she's got to build a ladder to get up to that gray dot really fun and visual for students again then we have a drag and drop area here I do not know the right answers to this so I'm just going to demonstrate the drag and drop and then we have a example of an animation made with Tracy the turtle so you can see just how Visual and fun these programs are for your middle school students all right next we'll talk high school so we have four Pathways like I said for high school computer science and again thinking about your portrait of a graduate thinking about your skills and your knowledge you want students to leave high school with we can kind of incorporate lots of different computer science subject fields of study into your curriculum and offerings and help students become really proficient and successful and ready for careers and College so this first pathway I'm going to talk about is the AP Computer Science pathway and you can see there that in 11th grade we suggest students sit for the apcsa exam and we have a whole course built out for that called Nitro and so if that is a something you're interested in your students preparing for then let's work backwards from Nitro we should have them sit for ABCs and Python and also take intro to computer science and JavaScript Corgi so the Corgi course is a full year 125 hours really basic introduction to computer science lots of programming with Carol in there and Graphics also so very Visual and fun and in the intro to Cs and JavaScript course the apcsp course is 125 hours I think some schools do teach this course in a semester but is it the apcsp course is the newest AP course from college board and it introduces students to foundational concepts of computer science and explores the impact of computing and Technology on our society so really really interesting topics and discussions and debates for students to have in an apcsp course we're recommending here that students use the Python programming language although we do offer JavaScript apcsp Python apcsp and a cyber security apcsp so then students would tackle our apcsa course it is a 130 hours of content provided from codehs so a year-long course and it is designed to help students master the basics of java and it equips them to successfully pass the college board apcsa exam at the end of the school year so definitely some prerequisites here for apcsa we recommend that students complete students in the apcsa course have successfully completed a firste high school algebra course because it's important that students understand that computer science builds upon a foundation of mathematical reasoning and so students will find much more success in apcsa if they have taken algebra and also definitely we recommend that they've taken at least our introduction to computer science course and potentially like in this pathway the apcsp course also we round this pathway out with data structures in C++ this is another 130h hour full year course and this one focuses on different ways to store data Beyond just traditional variables and lists and so students get into Maps cues sets and apply them in larger real real world assignments and projects so a hefty course at the end of this pathway but your students could come out of it with two AP credits so that's our first flavor our first pathway for high school we also have a cyber security pathway and it starts with web design Picasso it's 140 Hour full year course where students use HTML and CSS to design websites no prerequisites for that one it could definitely easily be a freshman level course fundamentals of cyber is a 125h hour course and this is a really fun one we've just revamped this one this summer so it's very interactive includes some labs for students and some really fun activities like a capture the flag if you're into cyber security you know what I mean apcsp again I was saying when we're talking about apcsp python we have different flavors of apcsp here is our cyber security version and there are no official prerequisites for the apcsp course it is meant to be a firsttime introduction to computer science but we do recommend that if possible students have taken our intro to CS course prior to any AP courses they take and then students would round out this journey with our Advanced Cy cyber security course this is a 145 hours and it is the Capstone of this pathway students will learn Advanced topics in the field of cyber security including Advanced cryptography Network risk assessment and cyber defense and they should definitely have taken fundamentals of cyber before attempting Advanced cyber security now you'll see that I've included on this slide two of our certifications so cods does offer certification exams we have seven State approved certification exams across different programming languages including Java JavaScript python HTML and CSS and cyber security students can take or retake as many certifications exams as they want using our vouchers that your District would purchase with a license from codehs these are really flexible exams are given on your schedule at the time you select is most suitable for your students and your teachers and students receive a pass fail notification after the exam after students pass they receive a congratulation email including a downloadable certificate to keep with them for their records so cyber security level one you would sit for that exam after completing fundamentals of cyber security and I will give you a link to our knowledgebase article in the chat about the exam cyber security level two you would sit for that exam after completing the advanced cyber security course and so again I will put a link to more information about this certification in the chat all right I'm running out of time here unfortunately but I do want to point out we have two additional path Pathways we have a python pathway looks very similar to our other Pathways except this one really helps students gain lots and lots of confidence and Mastery in just one language Python Programming here and we do have a certification available to go along with students sitting for the AP exam so I'll put a link to that level one python certification in the chat if you're interested so again students could come out of here with an AP CSP score and a certification from Cod HS and our final pathway will talk about today is our we web development pathway this one is really really engaging and interesting for students it's so visual I when I started my computer science journey I started in web development and JavaScript and I loved it because it was so immediately rewarding you could just see that web page you were building right away and I loved that so highly recommend our web development High School pathway Picasso is a 140h hour full year course Corgi we've already talked about when we were talking about our apcsa pathway the web development course is 145h Hour full year course and mobile apps is 125h hour course very fun for students to get to that mobile apps course for sure so we do have two certifications connected to our web development pathway the design level one certification exam is approved by the Virginia Texas and South Carolina Departments of education so cool recognition there and students would take the web design level one exam after taking the web design course our web development level one certification exam is approved by the Virginia Department of Education and the South Carolina Department of Education and students would sit for that after taking the web development course so if you would like to explore these Pathways in Greater depth or any of these courses in Greater depth I have put a link to our catalog in the chat filtered to those High School courses so I'm so sad we're out of time to talk about ways to grow your CS program but if you have access to the slides I will put that in the chat one more time before we leave then you can check out these Great Links and resources I have included here for you to [Music] peruse so thank you so much for joining us today want to give a little shout out to some other resources we have available to you you can become a cods certified educator earn a micr credential with cods join our Facebook group or follow us on social media so let me get you some links here in the chat if you are interested in any of these additional resources we do also offer more PD as I'm sure you are aware so check out our free PD coming up and finally I will just ask that you take a minute to give us some feedback on this session I hope that I have given you lots of information on how to plan out your K through 12 computer science pathway for your district and giving you some options and some useful information if I've done that I would love to hear about it if you were expecting a little bit different information out of this webinar I would also love that feedback so please take a moment here before we leave to fill out that webinar survey I'll also put the certificate of completion Link in the chat once again we have like I said additional free PD opportunities coming up so I will put a link to those in the chat check that out we do have our coding Coast to Coast Road Trip happening right now our CS Ambassador is on the road he's left the Midwest headed up to New England to do lots of school visits so if you areed interested in Blake our CS Ambassador coming to visit your school definitely check out our road trip and put in an application to have him come visit and finally right from the top of the session I promised you that I would provide you with way a way to find out more about bringing Cod HS to your school or district and those fabulous Pro Tools we have available so if you'd like to learn more check that out and thank you so much for being here today I appreciate the time we've spent together if there are no questions then we're free to go have a great evening [Music]