Get started teaching AP Computer Science A (AP CSA) with CodeHS in this summer webinar. Learn how to use CodeHS tools and curriculum to introduce students to Java programming, prepare for the AP CSA exam, and build confidence in your first year teaching the course.
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[Music] Good morning everybody. Thank you all so much for joining us for this getting started teaching APCSA summer webinar. we're super excited y'all are here. if you all want to, as you're coming in, say hello in the chat, put your name, school, where you're where you're, joining us from. we love seeing you as all here, and we're super excited that you all chose to spend, Monday afternoon in the summer with us. Thank you all so much for being here.
Oh, the chat's disabled. There. It should be hopefully be good now. Yeah, it should be enabled now. I I just did that. So, check back.
All right. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
so we yeah, we'll we'll get through these intro slides while y'all are doing that. and then we'll get to the the main event here. so Kim, if you want to go on the next slide.
so we have Kim Hansen, one of our fabulous teacher trainers leading the webinar today. Kim, I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit.
All right. So I teach in Vancouver, Washington in a STEM magnet program. our program is about 250 students within a larger school of 2000. so our students get the benefit of a comprehensive high school while still having a small school feel. I've taught CSA for about 10 years. I also teach AP computer science principles, video game programming, and intro to coding with Python. This is my second year with CodeHS. in my 38th year teaching both math and computer science.
I did teach six years in the middle school, so I've done that as well. the rest has been high school. So, and here I am.
Awesome. We're super excited to present on APCSA and share Kim's expertise with you all. My name is Steve. I'm a PD specialist with codes.
We also have TJ who is here as a PD specialist with Code HS as well. we both taught APCSA in the classroom before. we're here to answer kind of your questions too. So if you have questions of the platform feel free to put them in Q&A, anything that comes up and we'll be answering those throughout the presentation. all right. So our agenda. So, one of the big things that we're going to talk about today is we have a course overview for you because you are probably familiar.
but the course changed from last year to this year. College Board rolled out some updates for 2526.
We are super excited at CodeHS to have a College Board endorsed course already ready to go for you. It is our Cortado course. And so that'll be like a big part of today is going to walk you through kind of some of those changes and what you can see in our new Cortado course. We'll talk about the AP exam and how you prep for that. We'll talk about some cool resources that CodeHS has available. both specifically AP, so unique APCSA resources, but also just some stuff that is is on the platform in general for you to use as a teacher. And then we'll get some tips for teaching from from Kim her various expertise and stuff she does in her classroom to be super successful with ABCSA. you have the slides link TJ's put in the chat a few times. You'll get the recording as soon as we're done. but that's the rough overview of what we're going to be talking about today.
So we already mentioned this the like it's great to have everyone in the chat and see where everyone's logging in from. We're super excited y'all are here. the best way to ask a question is in the Q&A because that's where we can actually make sure it gets answered.
so if you have specific questions, feel free to use the Q&A. Walcam is presenting and we'll get those questions answered. and again, super excited y'all are here and we're looking forward to engaging with you all about this course.
So, if you need a code account, we're going to have a workshop section link coming to you in a bit. But if you have not have a code account, you can do codes.comsignup and join for free. if you already have an account, that's great. And we'll send a workshop link out here shortly where you can click and actually be in the workshop and explore the course with us. But if you need an account, TJ just put that link in the chat to make a free codejs account.
And if you're here for the first time with us and you might be wondering what is code. so we are a comprehensive platform for teaching computer science.
We have elementary school curriculum, we have middle school curriculum, we have high school curriculum. So we really are K12 all web- based or you do not need to download anything extra to be able to use code HS. It's all in your browser.
We offer online and offline professional development. you're at an online session right now, but we love going to schools and kind of helping and present as well.
and we do have a full software platform. We are we are our own LMS. We have an IDE and integrate to LMS's as well, but we have teacher tools and resources to help you have the best classroom you can.
and again, we're going to talk about a lot of the features on CodeHS today if you've never used it before. But in addition to being our own coding environment, we also have LMS features can submit assignments immediately and you can give feedback immediately.
We have so many grading and tracking tools for teachers a lot with academic integrity and just kind of like progress monitoring. and we are all web- based. We do not need any downloads or plugins. All you need to use our our platform is the internet. It's a super great platform. We're super excited you're choosing us and you're here at this webinar.
All right. Anything else? That's it, Kim. All right. Here we go. We're going to give first the course overview of the new Cortado course.
so there's a a link there for you of the course overview on Cody HS's website and the syllabus. it's about 135 contact hours and that's average. I went through and looked at the actual hours on it. It's between 120 and 150 hours. And when I first saw that, I thought, "Oh, wait. That's not enough. I have 180 hours in my school year, but that's I'm kind of slow." So, it actually works out pretty well. and that that's great because it gets you up until the test and then you have time afterwards to do something else after the test. So, it's good that it's only 135 hours.
and that was I figured out about 27 weeks. So, and our school year is 36 weeks. So, it works out. and they put a link both of those links in the chat, it looks like. so the syllabus breaks down like the pacing as well.
So, there's the the course follows the new College Board units, which is great. So it's a good match up with the College Board units. so there's four units using objects and methods. And so that's just like the basic fundamentals, variables, data types, expressions, input, output. and then also the math class and string class. So there's a little bit of an introduction to classes, but it's not the main unit on classes.
Then selection iteration. So all the if statements, for loops, while loops, nested for loops, and while loops too.
and then the third unit is where we get into classes, which is my week point. but I do my best with that. so class design, object-oriented programming, encapsulation, all those fun topics. took me about six years to figure that out. I I learned programming in the 80s so we didn't have all that. and then data collections is the new stuff. So the data and text files and then they took out inheritance. So so the array lists 2D arrays and arrays are in the data collections unit and that's the heaviest unit four. so what they did is they took the collegeboard units and consolidated units 1 through 8 and 10 and took out unit 9 which was inheritance.
Just like with all the the cods courses, their supplemental modules it's at the bottom of the course. They did leave in sorry my person keeps texting me. they did leave in the inheritance unit if you want to use it.
so you could you could assign that and do that as well, which would add to your course. Then they've got the College Board courses or labs, Eleven's lab, Make Pine Picture Lab.
Those are the old labs that you could use. And then the newer labs, consumer, celebrity, and steganography.
You can also go into the Nitra course and bring in any of the of your favorite activities, but this cretado course is all brand new content. So there if there is anything in the nitro course that you really liked doing, you could bring that in as well.
So yeah, this stuff's at the bottom of the course.
And as I said, it's all new curriculum.
It's was developed in response to the updated CSA framework from the College Board. it replaces outdated Nitro course. There's all new lesson videos.
There's interactive note pages. So, it's a different style. there's activities. There's simulations which are some animations. And then there's assessments that are different because there's only four units. There's a mid-unit assessment and that has 10 multiple choice questions and one F FRQ which is great because before it was just multiple choice questions and then the end of unitit assessment has 20 multiple choice questions and two FRQ questions. but don't forget you can always make more quizzes on your own. there's AI Creator which is an additional purchase but it works really well. I made some AI creator quizzes myself last year. and that works really well. So if you want to add more quizzes in there because there's only those four units you can do that.
this course is aligned to the AP structure. and so there's a nice easy back and forth between AP classroom and codes.
The other thing about this course is there's a deeper integration between with AP computer science pedigogy. and you'll see that in just a few minutes with the prim model and we'll talk about that in a few minutes.
So as we said the college board update is they added the text files and data sets.
They removed the inheritance unit. They did not get rid of incursion recursion.
recursion is in unit 4.
They consolidated units 1 through 8 and 10 and 10 was the recursion.
so it's in unit four and if you look on page 16 of the CED, which you can just if you want to find the CED, it's really easy. APCSA CED 2025.
If you just Google that, you can find it pretty easy.
But on page 16, it has the weighting of each of the four units on the multiple choice exam, but the heaviest unit is unit four, which is probably why it's the biggest unit in CodeHS.
yeah, and I've got another slide coming up that's got the waiting on it, too.
so again, it's more than an update. It's organized differently. there's new activities, exercises, and then there's the examples are really cool. They're like there's some reading and then there's something to for the kids to run some code. then there's more reading and something for them to run the code. but it's not like the Nitro course where there was a video or slides and then a quiz examples that the kids could just run and not really do anything with if they wanted to. And then exercises.
This has got a lot of variety in the curriculum. So, it's it's actually pretty cool. You're going to really like it when you see it. and then it has the prim model style examples versus just here run this and then you're done. and the the prim style activities or explorations have an a text file in there and the kids have to answer the questions in the text file. And you can either do those together as a class or you can have the kids do those on their own.
And the nice thing is this is not just reorganizing the Nitro course. The very few of the activities were reused. it is endorsed by the college board. So you can just use their syllabus when you do your course audit. and it is currently live. So you you're going to be able to see it today. We're going to have a link for you to in just a minute to see everything.
I think it went live towards the end of May. almost every lesson includes that prim exploration and it helps students understand complex programming concepts. PRM is a researchbased instructional framework in computer science education. And so you could look it up in other contexts, not just it's not just a coded test thing. and it guides students step by step from reading and modifying existing code to independently creating their own programs. And so, PRIM stands for predict, run, investigate, modify, and make.
And so that's what they do. And then they answer questions like I said in the text file that's built into the lesson.
So rather than just copying codes and writing programs, they do this prim model.
and since there is this new course, you're going to probably want to make a new course. Recommend that you don't make that till the end of summer. You're going to get to see one here. Like I said, here's the course. you can enroll in this workshop session.
use that as what you want to play around with this summer, but don't make your course for the students until the end of summer until everything's like completely settled.
So, let's have everyone get a chance to enroll in that. The links in the chat.
I've got three example things for you to look into in just a second, but let's get everyone into the course. You need to have a code account to do this.
Okay, what we're going to do is take five or six minutes. so you need to be signed into your code account and then go to this course. Again, the link was in the chat.
And here are the three that we'd like to see everyone give a try. There's an example tutorial and this is the one where you'll like read part of it and then there's embedded in it is a bit of code for you to run and then there's a simulation which is kind of an animation which is great on a 2D array and then a print model so you get to see that. Make sure that you click on the investigate text file so you see what that's about.
And let's take about five minutes or more for you to give those a try. Please put questions in the chat or the question and answer Okay, that was about 5 minutes. if you have any questions, put those in the chat or the Q&A. or thoughts on that and let's go ahead and move on. but you now have when you're in that course, so you have access to look at all the different activities in there. Hopefully you notice that it's not just like the same thing in every unit. There's a quite a variety of different activities in there.
All right. Everybody gets to submit their course audit this year because it's a new curric because there's new units and the College Board changed everything. So, even if you're an experienced teacher with APCSA, you get to submit your course audit because I've been at this for 10 years, but I still had to submit my course audit. So, and you're in order to gain access or call your in order to put AP on your course title, and use AP classroom and the practice tests and the progress checks, you need to do the course audit. If you're a new teacher, you have to do this anyway. So, but we all get to do it this year. The nice thing is CodeHS is a approved provider. So you can just select their syllabus and say this is what I'm gonna do and you don't have to use they don't have to make your own syllabus which is great because doing that and getting it approved is a nightmare.
All right when I did this this year and the directions for doing this are in the chat which is this link down here at the bottom. what I learned is I what I did is I went to the administrator and said, "Could you please add my course so I can do the course audit?" That was backwards. So, normally an administrator, if you're already approved, the administrator adds the course and approves it. But what I had to do this year is I had to add the course, then add the syllabus, then my administrator approved it. That was the order of things for it this year. even though like I've done this before.
So, you're going to want to create your College if you're new to this, you need to create your College Board account and then add the course. And if you're experienced teacher, log into your College Board account and then add the course like my other my APCS principles class, I can't add the course because I already have an approved syllabus. Administrators got to do it.
But for this course, I had to add the course. and then do the syllabus part and all that. I have to attest to everything. I'm gonna do the 20 hours of labs and everything else. And then, then I contacted my administrator and had them do it. I would recommend doing this now, especially if you're going to take an AP summer institute so that you'll have access to AP classroom if you're going to do anything with that with your summer institute. So if you have ad like our administrators work until the end of June. So if you do this now and get a hold of your administrator, they could approve it and then you would have access to AP classroom for your summer institute.
Just a thought. if if you can get that going because it didn't take me more than like five minutes to do the course audit because I was able to use CodeHS's syllabus.
All right, exam overview.
Our favorite part of the year.
They are revising the exam but not a whole lot.
So instead of 40 questions, there are 42 questions, it's still an hour and 30 minutes. And instead of 50% of the exam, it's now 55% of the exam score.
And then section two is still four questions. still an hour and 30 minutes and it's 45% of the exam score.
The FRQ's, they're telling us what they are, which is awesome. the only one that changed is FRQ3.
So instead of arrays and array lists, it's this is where the data analysis comes in the data and text files. data analysis with array list. So it's arraylist rather than arrays or array list.
So we still have methods and control structures for F FRQ1 class design for F FRQ2 and then F FRQ4 is going to be 2D array.
And the question in the Q&A was is what we had before going to still work. I would imagine you could still use the F FRQs that we had before as practice.
and we'll see later in the APC or the codes hub there's F FRQ practices in there. But the College Board said in their exam revisions that the questions are shortened, which is a awesome because those questions were like three pages long before. I don't know how much more shortened they are and I haven't looked in the CED to see if they've got good examples in there, but shortened would be really nice especially because it's still an hour and 30 minutes. so it might be a while before we have a lot of good examples of that, but it wouldn't hurt to give them the longer ones and then if they got the shorter ones on the exam, they'll be a lot better off.
All right, let's break it down. Section one again, 42 questions. Here's the breakdown of the percentages.
So, mostly unit two and four. not as much on class creation as the others.
So, but still again the four units that we're going to be working in. What I like about the new organization is it's just four units and I can remember four units instead of eight units and I have to figure out which unit is which. So, it's broken down nice and easy. You just have four units to remember.
so there's a layout for section one and again heavy in that unit 4 which is probably why unit 4 is the longer one for codess.
And then section two is different. It's not 36 questions, it's 20 or not 36 points, it's 25 points, which I thought, well, now how are they going to divide that by four?
But they did. They split it up.
So FRQ1 is seven points, FRQ2 is seven points, and then the data analysis and array list is five points, and then the 2D array is six points. So that'll be fun to remember.
U for a total of 25 points and again 45% of the exam score.
You can find this on page 145 of the CED.
so you got access to that.
And so we're going to need some new scoring guides to help us go through that with the kids. But I still think the old FRQs are going to be good.
practice for the kids. They won't know the difference.
They're not paying attention anyway. here's a sample FRQ. This is not the entire thing. This is just part of a new sample question.
so it's the same going to be the same format in terms of like they're giving you the information above the method.
you know, there's directions.
The new FRAQ's start on page 199 of the CED.
So there is there is some information there. so there's some samples, but as always when you're showing the kids, especially if you're new to this, when you're showing the kids the samples, definitely show them how they're scored. So have them either score each other's FRQs or score their own. Don't just score it for them.
have them look at how they can get partial credit and encourage them like even if you don't know how to do the whole thing, look for things like at least use the first at least use the method created in the first part in the second part. just use it somewhere correctly so you'll get that point or create the object, you know, like at least do part of it to get partial credit even if it doesn't make sense in your in your program. this one's question one, which is supposed to be seven points, and it only adds up to five. So, I don't know. this must be part of the directions, but definitely show them the scoring guide when you're going over the, you know, the questions with them.
Don't just score it for them and tell them how they did.
And then it looks like the penalties are pretty similar. I don't know that that's going to change much. I don't show this to my students until the end of the year, maybe right before the exam. and I do still take points off as we go. if they're not doing it right, because I want them to do it right. but there are things that, they will take points off for, and it's mainly like if it's going to, cause a problem, then they'll take a point off.
like if they use a variable but they didn't declare it. if there's code that causes a side effect or causes a problem or if they use square brackets versus get in terms of array or array list.
But what gets me is they don't like if you use like I will usually I don't know if I always take points off but if they use less than or equal to instead of use it as one symbol instead of two I usually complain about that with if they I do it on paper. They can't do it on a computer obviously but or use the wrong kinds of brackets length or size. I'm surprised they don't take points off for that but there's only so many points so I guess not. but missing semicolons. I usually complain about that with my students code throughout the year, but as we get towards the end and they're doing a practice FRQ, then I wouldn't take points off.
So, I don't show this to my students. I make them think that they have to have all these things perfect.
That's just me.
All right. So, now for some codes tools.
lots of resources in the codes website and this is a free feature the code AP hub. there's so much on there you're probably not going to get to it. I would recommend going to the code HS hub about once a month. I would just put something on your calendar to go to this code HS hub once a month and just remind yourself what's all there. and you just put a note on your calendar that says check out the a the APCSA hub on codes and look over what's there so that you don't forget what everything is. So, we're going to go there right now and take a look at what's there.
So, there's one for CSA and for CSP as well, just so you know. there's practice problems that the students can get to which we can click on. It's going to take a second. these I use and this comes up in the slides again in a minute, but these I use for students in class. if they finish with their work early, rather than moving forward, I recommend that they come here and do practice problems on whatever lesson that we're working on. it's an option for them. I let them choose if they want to work ahead, if they want to do this. and then I have them like if they finish a whole section, like send me a screenshot that they finished it just so I know. I don't give extra credit for this. I just expect that if they're done with their work early that they're working on something. And we'll talk about that more later, but so they can just click on this and do it and then it'll turn green if they've got it done. yellow if they started it.
So same color coding is in the grade book. There's also parsonage problems which are kind of cool. where they drag them they drag the code over into the thing. I'm not really going to do this, but and like it even has to be tabbed in if it's supposed to be tabbed in. and then they can check it, see if they're right, continue if they're if they've got it.
so there's lots of different topics in here in Java. they can choose any language if they wanted to, but there's the Java ones.
Oops. Okay. also in the AP Hub, there's a review course that you can assign.
There's the F FRQ center, which is totally awesome.
it's broken down by year and then it tells you like what topic is there. So, if you know your kids need to practice 2D arrays, then you might want to pick that question. There's the actual question and the scoring guide. You can assign it to your class and it'll put it at the bottom of your class. but it goes back to 2013. it doesn't have all of them, but it's got them, like I said, broken down by topic.
It's got the AP labs, which you can get off the College Board website, but they're conveniently here for you. and then you could go into it and assign it to your class. There's additional projects that are unique to College Board. I did the Monty Hall simulator with my class this year. that was really good and letter histogram which is which was good. And then if you click explore all it'll take you to lots more of them and you can search it by language. if you know of a certain one that you want you can search by that.
And then there's tutorials and then there's there's a CED how to do the course audit.
There's more information there and there was something I was looking for. Oh, there's just tutorials on different things in here. So, again, take time to look through the AP Hub once a month. Seriously, there's so much there that you're going to forget what's there. There's also something else you might want to look into over on the left. And look at the stuff over on the left side too in the menu. There's digital textbooks.
There's AP computer science a there's a whole textbook which I think is based on the eight units but still useful for you.
Okay.
Back to this. Also on the left side you can get to the question of the day. I put this on my I use plan book, but I put this on my lesson every day. and sometimes I do it and sometimes I don't, but I make it available to my students.
And there's a way to look and see who's been doing it, who hasn't been doing it. and so I, and again, I don't give extra credit for this, but I recommend that they do it. and I just kind of like when their grade is like needs to be rounded or doesn't, this might be the the thing that I look at whether or not they've been doing it.
but the question of the day, something I wanted to show you about that. over on the left, you can go down to question of the day and then they have them for all four courses.
And the last one was May 30th, but something I didn't know until today.
Maybe this is new. All of the May topics are here at the bottom.
And so you can pick a different day. So like if you're a little bit behind, you can pick a different day. And then the date is up in the top. If you want to get to the April ones, just change May to change like the month to April and then there's all the April ones in there. So if you get behind a little bit, you can go back to different months. And so I usually show these on the board and then the kids do them. They get the answer and then they tell me what the answer is. and then I get them all right.
So, the question of the day, is super helpful, helps them practice for the AP exam.
and it's usually if you're on pace with the course, then these are right, right, timely questions.
The FRQ center, we already talked about individual questions. yeah it's actually in reverse order but oh each question comes with option of autograded and ungraded versions. So there are some autograded ones in there.
I haven't tried that yet.
And then the codes practice we talked about.
so I really recommend that you have kids do that. Maybe sometimes you assign like one whole set of it as an assignment, but also make sure kids are aware of it.
suggest that they do it. If they get done early, just say, "Hey, you know what? Maybe you need to work on the practice problems." Or if they're not doing really well in a quiz, maybe say, "Okay, you can retake that quiz, but you need to do all the practice problems in that section first.
And then again, the interactive Java textbook you can get to by going to the menu on the left, go down to the bottom and then interact enter the Java textbook.
if we need to cover like a certain topic, that might be a great way to get some extra information about it.
And now I have a couple things just these are from me tips for teaching that I've gotten after teaching this for a while. This is my second year with codes, but like I said, my 10th year teaching CSA.
I check I'm not really a Facebook user and I don't post to Facebook really, but I do read a lot. and I get tons of ideas from codes educators and APCSA teachers. So, I read pretty much every day. People post all the time. a lot of resources, a lot of great like projects. I think one time I even got this link to a spreadsheet that was like all the FRQ's organized and tabulated by topic, which I think you could get if you went to APCSA teachers maybe and then searched for it, you could get that because you can go in and search for topics in there.
but these are all great Facebook groups to belong to. So a couple of them are codes specific. others are just computer science or one of them is just computer science a. so again, I'm not a big Facebook fan, but I get a lot of information and people post a lot of, great projects and if you have a question, you can post it and people will answer you right away. Several people will answer you right away.
All right. And now for my tip of the day.
This works. Believe it or not, this works if you start at the beginning of the year. So, and and I've done this for like 10 years. I'm done. Now, what is my catchphrase? So, my students, they they come in with a variety of skill levels.
They come in from the kids who've been coding since they were 10 and the kids who've never done any coding before.
And I think everyone experiences that. So some are just like super fast and they just want to race through the curriculum. What I usually do with code tests is I open one unit at a time, which I'm not sure what I'm going to do with only four units here, but I'll open the whole unit except for the quiz.
And then if they want to work ahead, I let them work ahead. and then but what I recommend is that they they have a a project that they're working on that they do instead of working ahead. So if they're done, they need to let me know I'm done with today's assignment. Now what?
And then first thing we look at, well, are you done? Is there something you could do to make today's assignment a little more interesting?
Or do you have missing work? Is there something you should be doing that you've forgot about?
Do you want to work ahead? That's an option. So, all of these are options or choices for them. So, and I think it really helps that these are all choices.
Do you have an exciting project hopefully in Java that you want to work on? And for some kids, getting done with their work so that they can work on their exciting project is is enough incentive.
Is there something in Java you want to work on that we are not working on in class? Do you want to follow a tutorial from W3 schools or or from some other website from Khan Academy or from something? Do you want to follow a tutorial so you can learn something that we're not learning in class?
Do you want to do some graphics or something that we're not doing? they can follow a tutorial or because they're in an AP class, do you want to do some AP AP practice questions? I have a Baron's guide in my classroom, they can do that. those coded tests practice questions are a great option, but this is not extra credit in my class. I do not do any extra credit in my classes.
and they do it, believe it or not. If this is the expectation from the beginning of the year, from day one, they actually do this. and it works and it's worked every year.
And this is including the kids who come from our middle school.
We have one middle school and the computer science teacher there has fun Fridays.
So every Friday the kids who are done with their work get to play games on the computer. So 20% of the year the kids play games on the computer and then they come to me and I can still get them to do this and it's just it's just an expectation. So I have this website that you're welcome to look at. I wouldn't necessarily point your kids at my website but you could make your own.
and it's I'm done now what? And I have some of it is just games that they could play but they're coding games. this flippy bit is kind of cool. And then I have some things in the classroom they could play with. I have a robot that they could play with. they could build a game. The rule in my classroom is if you have if you're playing a game, you have to have made it. So, you can play a game, but you have to make the game. but there's just a ton of different options here.
And as long as it's options and they get to choose, it seems to work out.
And so believe it or not, this works.
And then my next tip yeah that's it is a good rule.
All right. And then my next tip is using alternate assignments which may not be available just yet in Cortado but if maybe if you were using something from NITO you could use alternate assignments. but I'm going to demo this in just a second. a pro feature is you could fork an assignment and I'm going to try to find I was ready with this. Okay. So, let's say I have my assignments open.
oops. Those are just for responses. So, here's an exercise.
Oh, wait. These don't have the things on them.
This is the sample class, so it doesn't have the things on this side.
Where is my assignments? Sorry. Here we go.
if you click on the three dots on the side, let's let that load. If you click on the three dots on the side next to activity and choose remix, there's either alternate assignment or fork. And you can make changes to an activity. So, if you've got kids that are able to find answers on the internet, which they probably aren't going to be able to do that for Cortado right away, it'll be a while.
you can do this. So, if we open up the course, open up a lesson, and go to an exercise, click on the three dots on the right, and there's a remix option, which is kind of small right here.
So three dots on the side remix if there's an alternate assignment which again there may not be for this new course but you can also fork an assignment which you can create a new assignment or replace the current assignment if you want to so whichever one makes sense for you and then you can modify the assignment and make it your own so that if they copy you'll know that they copied something because it doesn't match your change that you make. if there is an alternate assignment, yeah, if there was an alternate assignment, you could pick between them and then you can always put it back if you change your mind later.
and there's a knowledgebased article link here.
on doing that.
So when those are ready, you'll be able to do that.
We are ending much earlier than I thought we were going to.
Are there any questions that I've missed that we should go over?
Steve or TJ? No.
Are we good? I think you you covered a lot. we some questions are coming in the Q&A, but definitely if you have any questions, feel free to put them in. and again, like all of Kim's tips or experience with CSA, like those are super good tips to use in your classroom in addition to everything we have. that website Kim made, the Google site is amazing. So, I've every time I've seen it, I've just clicked around it and been like, "Oh, I I learn a new thing every time I see it." So so definitely like thank you Kim for sharing all your experience with us but if you have any questions like please please please ask and yes cortado content is available for in free it's a you can use the cortado course as a free teacher as well so some of the featur some of the pro features you'll be able to use but the cortado course is there free for you to Okay.
All right. I can I can jump in here to kind of start wrapping things up here. Kim, thanks again for sharing all those resources. can't emphasize it enough. Yeah, take a look at you know, Kim's site and also like just the recommendations she gave as well. just super helpful. You know, if this is your going to be your first year teaching APCSA, you know, just between using the code HS cortado course and AP classroom, that is more than enough material that you need in order to get your students prepared for the exam. so you know my my two cents there is to just focus on you know getting familiar with the content and finishing it before the exam to give your students plenty of time to review. but yeah thank you Steve for answering that that question there as well. but yeah so in terms of you know where we go from here. So if again if this is your you're kind of new to CodeHS you're bound to have some questions or need some support and we we do have a wonderful support team at CodeHS that is here to help with whatever questions that you may have. I know some of you asked some great questions in the Q&A today and if you think of any after today, there are some different avenues of how you can reach out to support and be able to get some help there. So, if we could jump to the next slide. Perfect. so, we shared a couple knowledgebased articles today. the knowledge base is a fantastic resource not only just for APCSA but just codes in general just a how-to of like okay now now that I have the curriculum how do I set up my own section how do I add students to my sections you know you can type those things into our knowledge base and you're able to get you know find some short articles a lot of them have also a like one to two minute video that kind of walks you through demoing that. so you could find a lot of answers that way. The other great way that I like to use support is if you see there's that kind of like blue circle there with the little smiley face. you'll see that when you are on the site and maybe we can jump to the site to to show that.
but yeah, if we go out to like our main sections page or something.
Yeah, right in the bottom right there.
So, you click on that. and you can ask a question and that'll go directly to our live support team. And maybe you have a question about curriculum pacing or a question about debugging some code and you're just un you're not sure where to go, what to do. Our support team will, you know, they could tag a curriculum developer or one of our engineers and be able to, you know, just provide you whatever answer, whatever support you need. So, please take advantage of that. it's a wonderful resource to use. So I think between the knowledge base and then the the support icon that's I think that that's going to help answer most if not all of your questions there.
All right, let's take a look at we'll we'll keep moving forward there. And then just some additional resources. aside from, you know, our APCSA community with codes, we have a lot of different ways of how you can engage, as a computer science educator, we have, the codes certified educator area as well. and then we also offer micro credentials for students and also for teachers on our core programming languages. So, Java, Python, web design, web development, two levels of cyber security. And as a teacher, you can earn these micro credentials. and you get a certificate of completion. you get a a cool little micro credential badge that you can add to your LinkedIn and your u email signature, things like that. I know we mentioned our educator Facebook group. just another plug there. And then all of our other social media accounts. I believe our our Tik Tok has been pretty pretty funny lately. So, definitely take a look at that. there's some great resources there. And then in the bottom right there's the codehs.comfree PD. you know, that's how you were able to enroll in this PD. So, take a look. you know, check back in. every once in a while there'll be some additional webinars that we will be updating especially as we get closer to back to school season. so be on the lookout for those. Sign up for any and all of those yeah, resources.
All right. So, we'll go ahead and put the webinar survey feedback form into the chat. Please let us know you know, how this webinar went for you, what did you enjoy about it, what do you want to see in future webinars. So, we do you know appreciate the feedback we get there. And I'll go ahead and drop that link in the chat and a couple other things as we're just starting to wrap up too. So there's that webinar survey and then on the following slide we have a certificate of completion just for attending today. So, I'll go ahead and and drop that into the chat as well.
So, a couple things. You will need to be logged into codes. so just make sure whatever browser you are using, you're logged into CodeHS and then just click on that attendance link. and you'll get a certificate of completion for attending today as well.
And okay, yeah, let's head to the We got a couple more things to share. Two more things to share. next AP specific PD coming up. Getting started teaching AP CSP. So, if you're also going to be teaching principles for the first time or you want to get a refresher on that that's coming up on Wednesday, this Wednesday. So, if you can make it, awesome. Go ahead and register. But if you can't, you can still register and you'll receive, you know, all the resources and the recording from the the webinar. So, if you're interested in hearing what's going on there for APCSP, please I encourage you to register for that at codehs.com/freepd.
And then the last thing on the next slide, if you're interested in bringing codes to your school or district, you can check out codehs.com/learn more, and fill out a short form and our team would be happy to reach out and provide some more guidance and more support to, bring computer science more into your school and into your district.
So, we thank you for, you know, jumping in today. it seems like we've answered all all the questions that were in the Q&A, but if there are any more, we'll hang out for, you know, some time.
So, if there are additional questions, please go ahead and and add those in there. otherwise, if you've already filled out the webinar survey, you click the attendance link. that's really it. So, thank you so much for joining, for participating. Hope you found some value in this course. and yeah, best of luck teaching APCSA next school year. we're excited about all the new changes and whatever questions you may have throughout the school year. Please reach out to us. you know, using our support network, knowledgebased articles, we're happy to help and make sure that you have what you need in order to get your students to get all fives on that AP exam.
Steve, Kim, any other questions? any other comments that came through that I I don't think I saw any. Looks like they were all answered. So, thank you so much for doing that.
Yeah, and I would definitely like echo what TJ said like if you have any question at any time like use that support bubble goes directly to our wonderful support team that can help you pretty immediately. Yeah, any question you have that is about the platform or just kind of wondering if something's possible like please reach out to our support center because we love nothing more than helping our teachers. and thanks again Kim for a great presentation and sharing your wealth of expertise with us. Thank you.
And I use that support bubble pretty much every week. So when I was a code teacher I did too. Yeah, they help. And then now and then like if I need something they'll make a video like here's how you do it like and they make a personal video just for me on how to do something. So it's really awesome.
Yeah. As a as a forward I I love anytime I get to make a teaching video over over Loom to send out. It's fun. I've learned so much from just doing that.
I think we're if anyone has any other questions feel free to ask. We're we're we'll hang out for a bit. But thank you all again so much for joining us and spending your summer Monday with us where I was teaching in Maryland. We would This is still a school day for us.
Probably have like another week left.
Yeah. I was just thinking DC would was the same. Yeah. Yeah. We got out on Thursday last week. and that that's early for us to get up. My my birthday is June 21st and I feel like I ended up like there were so many times I worked on my birthday and when I was a when I grew up going to school, I never was in school on my birthday, but like in DC DC area, I think I taught on my birthday more years than I did not. A Yeah, mine's in July, so I never never had to go to school on my birthday. It was funny. Students are very down to celebrate your birthday as a teacher.
That's awesome. Yeah, they made a big deal out of it. So, I was like, "Okay, this this is cool. I'll I'll show up to work and be appreciated." Nice.
I think we again, if you have any questions in your hang, feel free to use the Q&A, drop them in the chat. but not have a great rest of your day.
[Music]
Oh, the chat's disabled. There. It should be hopefully be good now. Yeah, it should be enabled now. I I just did that. So, check back.
All right. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
so we yeah, we'll we'll get through these intro slides while y'all are doing that. and then we'll get to the the main event here. so Kim, if you want to go on the next slide.
so we have Kim Hansen, one of our fabulous teacher trainers leading the webinar today. Kim, I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit.
All right. So I teach in Vancouver, Washington in a STEM magnet program. our program is about 250 students within a larger school of 2000. so our students get the benefit of a comprehensive high school while still having a small school feel. I've taught CSA for about 10 years. I also teach AP computer science principles, video game programming, and intro to coding with Python. This is my second year with CodeHS. in my 38th year teaching both math and computer science.
I did teach six years in the middle school, so I've done that as well. the rest has been high school. So, and here I am.
Awesome. We're super excited to present on APCSA and share Kim's expertise with you all. My name is Steve. I'm a PD specialist with codes.
We also have TJ who is here as a PD specialist with Code HS as well. we both taught APCSA in the classroom before. we're here to answer kind of your questions too. So if you have questions of the platform feel free to put them in Q&A, anything that comes up and we'll be answering those throughout the presentation. all right. So our agenda. So, one of the big things that we're going to talk about today is we have a course overview for you because you are probably familiar.
but the course changed from last year to this year. College Board rolled out some updates for 2526.
We are super excited at CodeHS to have a College Board endorsed course already ready to go for you. It is our Cortado course. And so that'll be like a big part of today is going to walk you through kind of some of those changes and what you can see in our new Cortado course. We'll talk about the AP exam and how you prep for that. We'll talk about some cool resources that CodeHS has available. both specifically AP, so unique APCSA resources, but also just some stuff that is is on the platform in general for you to use as a teacher. And then we'll get some tips for teaching from from Kim her various expertise and stuff she does in her classroom to be super successful with ABCSA. you have the slides link TJ's put in the chat a few times. You'll get the recording as soon as we're done. but that's the rough overview of what we're going to be talking about today.
So we already mentioned this the like it's great to have everyone in the chat and see where everyone's logging in from. We're super excited y'all are here. the best way to ask a question is in the Q&A because that's where we can actually make sure it gets answered.
so if you have specific questions, feel free to use the Q&A. Walcam is presenting and we'll get those questions answered. and again, super excited y'all are here and we're looking forward to engaging with you all about this course.
So, if you need a code account, we're going to have a workshop section link coming to you in a bit. But if you have not have a code account, you can do codes.comsignup and join for free. if you already have an account, that's great. And we'll send a workshop link out here shortly where you can click and actually be in the workshop and explore the course with us. But if you need an account, TJ just put that link in the chat to make a free codejs account.
And if you're here for the first time with us and you might be wondering what is code. so we are a comprehensive platform for teaching computer science.
We have elementary school curriculum, we have middle school curriculum, we have high school curriculum. So we really are K12 all web- based or you do not need to download anything extra to be able to use code HS. It's all in your browser.
We offer online and offline professional development. you're at an online session right now, but we love going to schools and kind of helping and present as well.
and we do have a full software platform. We are we are our own LMS. We have an IDE and integrate to LMS's as well, but we have teacher tools and resources to help you have the best classroom you can.
and again, we're going to talk about a lot of the features on CodeHS today if you've never used it before. But in addition to being our own coding environment, we also have LMS features can submit assignments immediately and you can give feedback immediately.
We have so many grading and tracking tools for teachers a lot with academic integrity and just kind of like progress monitoring. and we are all web- based. We do not need any downloads or plugins. All you need to use our our platform is the internet. It's a super great platform. We're super excited you're choosing us and you're here at this webinar.
All right. Anything else? That's it, Kim. All right. Here we go. We're going to give first the course overview of the new Cortado course.
so there's a a link there for you of the course overview on Cody HS's website and the syllabus. it's about 135 contact hours and that's average. I went through and looked at the actual hours on it. It's between 120 and 150 hours. And when I first saw that, I thought, "Oh, wait. That's not enough. I have 180 hours in my school year, but that's I'm kind of slow." So, it actually works out pretty well. and that that's great because it gets you up until the test and then you have time afterwards to do something else after the test. So, it's good that it's only 135 hours.
and that was I figured out about 27 weeks. So, and our school year is 36 weeks. So, it works out. and they put a link both of those links in the chat, it looks like. so the syllabus breaks down like the pacing as well.
So, there's the the course follows the new College Board units, which is great. So it's a good match up with the College Board units. so there's four units using objects and methods. And so that's just like the basic fundamentals, variables, data types, expressions, input, output. and then also the math class and string class. So there's a little bit of an introduction to classes, but it's not the main unit on classes.
Then selection iteration. So all the if statements, for loops, while loops, nested for loops, and while loops too.
and then the third unit is where we get into classes, which is my week point. but I do my best with that. so class design, object-oriented programming, encapsulation, all those fun topics. took me about six years to figure that out. I I learned programming in the 80s so we didn't have all that. and then data collections is the new stuff. So the data and text files and then they took out inheritance. So so the array lists 2D arrays and arrays are in the data collections unit and that's the heaviest unit four. so what they did is they took the collegeboard units and consolidated units 1 through 8 and 10 and took out unit 9 which was inheritance.
Just like with all the the cods courses, their supplemental modules it's at the bottom of the course. They did leave in sorry my person keeps texting me. they did leave in the inheritance unit if you want to use it.
so you could you could assign that and do that as well, which would add to your course. Then they've got the College Board courses or labs, Eleven's lab, Make Pine Picture Lab.
Those are the old labs that you could use. And then the newer labs, consumer, celebrity, and steganography.
You can also go into the Nitra course and bring in any of the of your favorite activities, but this cretado course is all brand new content. So there if there is anything in the nitro course that you really liked doing, you could bring that in as well.
So yeah, this stuff's at the bottom of the course.
And as I said, it's all new curriculum.
It's was developed in response to the updated CSA framework from the College Board. it replaces outdated Nitro course. There's all new lesson videos.
There's interactive note pages. So, it's a different style. there's activities. There's simulations which are some animations. And then there's assessments that are different because there's only four units. There's a mid-unit assessment and that has 10 multiple choice questions and one F FRQ which is great because before it was just multiple choice questions and then the end of unitit assessment has 20 multiple choice questions and two FRQ questions. but don't forget you can always make more quizzes on your own. there's AI Creator which is an additional purchase but it works really well. I made some AI creator quizzes myself last year. and that works really well. So if you want to add more quizzes in there because there's only those four units you can do that.
this course is aligned to the AP structure. and so there's a nice easy back and forth between AP classroom and codes.
The other thing about this course is there's a deeper integration between with AP computer science pedigogy. and you'll see that in just a few minutes with the prim model and we'll talk about that in a few minutes.
So as we said the college board update is they added the text files and data sets.
They removed the inheritance unit. They did not get rid of incursion recursion.
recursion is in unit 4.
They consolidated units 1 through 8 and 10 and 10 was the recursion.
so it's in unit four and if you look on page 16 of the CED, which you can just if you want to find the CED, it's really easy. APCSA CED 2025.
If you just Google that, you can find it pretty easy.
But on page 16, it has the weighting of each of the four units on the multiple choice exam, but the heaviest unit is unit four, which is probably why it's the biggest unit in CodeHS.
yeah, and I've got another slide coming up that's got the waiting on it, too.
so again, it's more than an update. It's organized differently. there's new activities, exercises, and then there's the examples are really cool. They're like there's some reading and then there's something to for the kids to run some code. then there's more reading and something for them to run the code. but it's not like the Nitro course where there was a video or slides and then a quiz examples that the kids could just run and not really do anything with if they wanted to. And then exercises.
This has got a lot of variety in the curriculum. So, it's it's actually pretty cool. You're going to really like it when you see it. and then it has the prim model style examples versus just here run this and then you're done. and the the prim style activities or explorations have an a text file in there and the kids have to answer the questions in the text file. And you can either do those together as a class or you can have the kids do those on their own.
And the nice thing is this is not just reorganizing the Nitro course. The very few of the activities were reused. it is endorsed by the college board. So you can just use their syllabus when you do your course audit. and it is currently live. So you you're going to be able to see it today. We're going to have a link for you to in just a minute to see everything.
I think it went live towards the end of May. almost every lesson includes that prim exploration and it helps students understand complex programming concepts. PRM is a researchbased instructional framework in computer science education. And so you could look it up in other contexts, not just it's not just a coded test thing. and it guides students step by step from reading and modifying existing code to independently creating their own programs. And so, PRIM stands for predict, run, investigate, modify, and make.
And so that's what they do. And then they answer questions like I said in the text file that's built into the lesson.
So rather than just copying codes and writing programs, they do this prim model.
and since there is this new course, you're going to probably want to make a new course. Recommend that you don't make that till the end of summer. You're going to get to see one here. Like I said, here's the course. you can enroll in this workshop session.
use that as what you want to play around with this summer, but don't make your course for the students until the end of summer until everything's like completely settled.
So, let's have everyone get a chance to enroll in that. The links in the chat.
I've got three example things for you to look into in just a second, but let's get everyone into the course. You need to have a code account to do this.
Okay, what we're going to do is take five or six minutes. so you need to be signed into your code account and then go to this course. Again, the link was in the chat.
And here are the three that we'd like to see everyone give a try. There's an example tutorial and this is the one where you'll like read part of it and then there's embedded in it is a bit of code for you to run and then there's a simulation which is kind of an animation which is great on a 2D array and then a print model so you get to see that. Make sure that you click on the investigate text file so you see what that's about.
And let's take about five minutes or more for you to give those a try. Please put questions in the chat or the question and answer Okay, that was about 5 minutes. if you have any questions, put those in the chat or the Q&A. or thoughts on that and let's go ahead and move on. but you now have when you're in that course, so you have access to look at all the different activities in there. Hopefully you notice that it's not just like the same thing in every unit. There's a quite a variety of different activities in there.
All right. Everybody gets to submit their course audit this year because it's a new curric because there's new units and the College Board changed everything. So, even if you're an experienced teacher with APCSA, you get to submit your course audit because I've been at this for 10 years, but I still had to submit my course audit. So, and you're in order to gain access or call your in order to put AP on your course title, and use AP classroom and the practice tests and the progress checks, you need to do the course audit. If you're a new teacher, you have to do this anyway. So, but we all get to do it this year. The nice thing is CodeHS is a approved provider. So you can just select their syllabus and say this is what I'm gonna do and you don't have to use they don't have to make your own syllabus which is great because doing that and getting it approved is a nightmare.
All right when I did this this year and the directions for doing this are in the chat which is this link down here at the bottom. what I learned is I what I did is I went to the administrator and said, "Could you please add my course so I can do the course audit?" That was backwards. So, normally an administrator, if you're already approved, the administrator adds the course and approves it. But what I had to do this year is I had to add the course, then add the syllabus, then my administrator approved it. That was the order of things for it this year. even though like I've done this before.
So, you're going to want to create your College if you're new to this, you need to create your College Board account and then add the course. And if you're experienced teacher, log into your College Board account and then add the course like my other my APCS principles class, I can't add the course because I already have an approved syllabus. Administrators got to do it.
But for this course, I had to add the course. and then do the syllabus part and all that. I have to attest to everything. I'm gonna do the 20 hours of labs and everything else. And then, then I contacted my administrator and had them do it. I would recommend doing this now, especially if you're going to take an AP summer institute so that you'll have access to AP classroom if you're going to do anything with that with your summer institute. So if you have ad like our administrators work until the end of June. So if you do this now and get a hold of your administrator, they could approve it and then you would have access to AP classroom for your summer institute.
Just a thought. if if you can get that going because it didn't take me more than like five minutes to do the course audit because I was able to use CodeHS's syllabus.
All right, exam overview.
Our favorite part of the year.
They are revising the exam but not a whole lot.
So instead of 40 questions, there are 42 questions, it's still an hour and 30 minutes. And instead of 50% of the exam, it's now 55% of the exam score.
And then section two is still four questions. still an hour and 30 minutes and it's 45% of the exam score.
The FRQ's, they're telling us what they are, which is awesome. the only one that changed is FRQ3.
So instead of arrays and array lists, it's this is where the data analysis comes in the data and text files. data analysis with array list. So it's arraylist rather than arrays or array list.
So we still have methods and control structures for F FRQ1 class design for F FRQ2 and then F FRQ4 is going to be 2D array.
And the question in the Q&A was is what we had before going to still work. I would imagine you could still use the F FRQs that we had before as practice.
and we'll see later in the APC or the codes hub there's F FRQ practices in there. But the College Board said in their exam revisions that the questions are shortened, which is a awesome because those questions were like three pages long before. I don't know how much more shortened they are and I haven't looked in the CED to see if they've got good examples in there, but shortened would be really nice especially because it's still an hour and 30 minutes. so it might be a while before we have a lot of good examples of that, but it wouldn't hurt to give them the longer ones and then if they got the shorter ones on the exam, they'll be a lot better off.
All right, let's break it down. Section one again, 42 questions. Here's the breakdown of the percentages.
So, mostly unit two and four. not as much on class creation as the others.
So, but still again the four units that we're going to be working in. What I like about the new organization is it's just four units and I can remember four units instead of eight units and I have to figure out which unit is which. So, it's broken down nice and easy. You just have four units to remember.
so there's a layout for section one and again heavy in that unit 4 which is probably why unit 4 is the longer one for codess.
And then section two is different. It's not 36 questions, it's 20 or not 36 points, it's 25 points, which I thought, well, now how are they going to divide that by four?
But they did. They split it up.
So FRQ1 is seven points, FRQ2 is seven points, and then the data analysis and array list is five points, and then the 2D array is six points. So that'll be fun to remember.
U for a total of 25 points and again 45% of the exam score.
You can find this on page 145 of the CED.
so you got access to that.
And so we're going to need some new scoring guides to help us go through that with the kids. But I still think the old FRQs are going to be good.
practice for the kids. They won't know the difference.
They're not paying attention anyway. here's a sample FRQ. This is not the entire thing. This is just part of a new sample question.
so it's the same going to be the same format in terms of like they're giving you the information above the method.
you know, there's directions.
The new FRAQ's start on page 199 of the CED.
So there is there is some information there. so there's some samples, but as always when you're showing the kids, especially if you're new to this, when you're showing the kids the samples, definitely show them how they're scored. So have them either score each other's FRQs or score their own. Don't just score it for them.
have them look at how they can get partial credit and encourage them like even if you don't know how to do the whole thing, look for things like at least use the first at least use the method created in the first part in the second part. just use it somewhere correctly so you'll get that point or create the object, you know, like at least do part of it to get partial credit even if it doesn't make sense in your in your program. this one's question one, which is supposed to be seven points, and it only adds up to five. So, I don't know. this must be part of the directions, but definitely show them the scoring guide when you're going over the, you know, the questions with them.
Don't just score it for them and tell them how they did.
And then it looks like the penalties are pretty similar. I don't know that that's going to change much. I don't show this to my students until the end of the year, maybe right before the exam. and I do still take points off as we go. if they're not doing it right, because I want them to do it right. but there are things that, they will take points off for, and it's mainly like if it's going to, cause a problem, then they'll take a point off.
like if they use a variable but they didn't declare it. if there's code that causes a side effect or causes a problem or if they use square brackets versus get in terms of array or array list.
But what gets me is they don't like if you use like I will usually I don't know if I always take points off but if they use less than or equal to instead of use it as one symbol instead of two I usually complain about that with if they I do it on paper. They can't do it on a computer obviously but or use the wrong kinds of brackets length or size. I'm surprised they don't take points off for that but there's only so many points so I guess not. but missing semicolons. I usually complain about that with my students code throughout the year, but as we get towards the end and they're doing a practice FRQ, then I wouldn't take points off.
So, I don't show this to my students. I make them think that they have to have all these things perfect.
That's just me.
All right. So, now for some codes tools.
lots of resources in the codes website and this is a free feature the code AP hub. there's so much on there you're probably not going to get to it. I would recommend going to the code HS hub about once a month. I would just put something on your calendar to go to this code HS hub once a month and just remind yourself what's all there. and you just put a note on your calendar that says check out the a the APCSA hub on codes and look over what's there so that you don't forget what everything is. So, we're going to go there right now and take a look at what's there.
So, there's one for CSA and for CSP as well, just so you know. there's practice problems that the students can get to which we can click on. It's going to take a second. these I use and this comes up in the slides again in a minute, but these I use for students in class. if they finish with their work early, rather than moving forward, I recommend that they come here and do practice problems on whatever lesson that we're working on. it's an option for them. I let them choose if they want to work ahead, if they want to do this. and then I have them like if they finish a whole section, like send me a screenshot that they finished it just so I know. I don't give extra credit for this. I just expect that if they're done with their work early that they're working on something. And we'll talk about that more later, but so they can just click on this and do it and then it'll turn green if they've got it done. yellow if they started it.
So same color coding is in the grade book. There's also parsonage problems which are kind of cool. where they drag them they drag the code over into the thing. I'm not really going to do this, but and like it even has to be tabbed in if it's supposed to be tabbed in. and then they can check it, see if they're right, continue if they're if they've got it.
so there's lots of different topics in here in Java. they can choose any language if they wanted to, but there's the Java ones.
Oops. Okay. also in the AP Hub, there's a review course that you can assign.
There's the F FRQ center, which is totally awesome.
it's broken down by year and then it tells you like what topic is there. So, if you know your kids need to practice 2D arrays, then you might want to pick that question. There's the actual question and the scoring guide. You can assign it to your class and it'll put it at the bottom of your class. but it goes back to 2013. it doesn't have all of them, but it's got them, like I said, broken down by topic.
It's got the AP labs, which you can get off the College Board website, but they're conveniently here for you. and then you could go into it and assign it to your class. There's additional projects that are unique to College Board. I did the Monty Hall simulator with my class this year. that was really good and letter histogram which is which was good. And then if you click explore all it'll take you to lots more of them and you can search it by language. if you know of a certain one that you want you can search by that.
And then there's tutorials and then there's there's a CED how to do the course audit.
There's more information there and there was something I was looking for. Oh, there's just tutorials on different things in here. So, again, take time to look through the AP Hub once a month. Seriously, there's so much there that you're going to forget what's there. There's also something else you might want to look into over on the left. And look at the stuff over on the left side too in the menu. There's digital textbooks.
There's AP computer science a there's a whole textbook which I think is based on the eight units but still useful for you.
Okay.
Back to this. Also on the left side you can get to the question of the day. I put this on my I use plan book, but I put this on my lesson every day. and sometimes I do it and sometimes I don't, but I make it available to my students.
And there's a way to look and see who's been doing it, who hasn't been doing it. and so I, and again, I don't give extra credit for this, but I recommend that they do it. and I just kind of like when their grade is like needs to be rounded or doesn't, this might be the the thing that I look at whether or not they've been doing it.
but the question of the day, something I wanted to show you about that. over on the left, you can go down to question of the day and then they have them for all four courses.
And the last one was May 30th, but something I didn't know until today.
Maybe this is new. All of the May topics are here at the bottom.
And so you can pick a different day. So like if you're a little bit behind, you can pick a different day. And then the date is up in the top. If you want to get to the April ones, just change May to change like the month to April and then there's all the April ones in there. So if you get behind a little bit, you can go back to different months. And so I usually show these on the board and then the kids do them. They get the answer and then they tell me what the answer is. and then I get them all right.
So, the question of the day, is super helpful, helps them practice for the AP exam.
and it's usually if you're on pace with the course, then these are right, right, timely questions.
The FRQ center, we already talked about individual questions. yeah it's actually in reverse order but oh each question comes with option of autograded and ungraded versions. So there are some autograded ones in there.
I haven't tried that yet.
And then the codes practice we talked about.
so I really recommend that you have kids do that. Maybe sometimes you assign like one whole set of it as an assignment, but also make sure kids are aware of it.
suggest that they do it. If they get done early, just say, "Hey, you know what? Maybe you need to work on the practice problems." Or if they're not doing really well in a quiz, maybe say, "Okay, you can retake that quiz, but you need to do all the practice problems in that section first.
And then again, the interactive Java textbook you can get to by going to the menu on the left, go down to the bottom and then interact enter the Java textbook.
if we need to cover like a certain topic, that might be a great way to get some extra information about it.
And now I have a couple things just these are from me tips for teaching that I've gotten after teaching this for a while. This is my second year with codes, but like I said, my 10th year teaching CSA.
I check I'm not really a Facebook user and I don't post to Facebook really, but I do read a lot. and I get tons of ideas from codes educators and APCSA teachers. So, I read pretty much every day. People post all the time. a lot of resources, a lot of great like projects. I think one time I even got this link to a spreadsheet that was like all the FRQ's organized and tabulated by topic, which I think you could get if you went to APCSA teachers maybe and then searched for it, you could get that because you can go in and search for topics in there.
but these are all great Facebook groups to belong to. So a couple of them are codes specific. others are just computer science or one of them is just computer science a. so again, I'm not a big Facebook fan, but I get a lot of information and people post a lot of, great projects and if you have a question, you can post it and people will answer you right away. Several people will answer you right away.
All right. And now for my tip of the day.
This works. Believe it or not, this works if you start at the beginning of the year. So, and and I've done this for like 10 years. I'm done. Now, what is my catchphrase? So, my students, they they come in with a variety of skill levels.
They come in from the kids who've been coding since they were 10 and the kids who've never done any coding before.
And I think everyone experiences that. So some are just like super fast and they just want to race through the curriculum. What I usually do with code tests is I open one unit at a time, which I'm not sure what I'm going to do with only four units here, but I'll open the whole unit except for the quiz.
And then if they want to work ahead, I let them work ahead. and then but what I recommend is that they they have a a project that they're working on that they do instead of working ahead. So if they're done, they need to let me know I'm done with today's assignment. Now what?
And then first thing we look at, well, are you done? Is there something you could do to make today's assignment a little more interesting?
Or do you have missing work? Is there something you should be doing that you've forgot about?
Do you want to work ahead? That's an option. So, all of these are options or choices for them. So, and I think it really helps that these are all choices.
Do you have an exciting project hopefully in Java that you want to work on? And for some kids, getting done with their work so that they can work on their exciting project is is enough incentive.
Is there something in Java you want to work on that we are not working on in class? Do you want to follow a tutorial from W3 schools or or from some other website from Khan Academy or from something? Do you want to follow a tutorial so you can learn something that we're not learning in class?
Do you want to do some graphics or something that we're not doing? they can follow a tutorial or because they're in an AP class, do you want to do some AP AP practice questions? I have a Baron's guide in my classroom, they can do that. those coded tests practice questions are a great option, but this is not extra credit in my class. I do not do any extra credit in my classes.
and they do it, believe it or not. If this is the expectation from the beginning of the year, from day one, they actually do this. and it works and it's worked every year.
And this is including the kids who come from our middle school.
We have one middle school and the computer science teacher there has fun Fridays.
So every Friday the kids who are done with their work get to play games on the computer. So 20% of the year the kids play games on the computer and then they come to me and I can still get them to do this and it's just it's just an expectation. So I have this website that you're welcome to look at. I wouldn't necessarily point your kids at my website but you could make your own.
and it's I'm done now what? And I have some of it is just games that they could play but they're coding games. this flippy bit is kind of cool. And then I have some things in the classroom they could play with. I have a robot that they could play with. they could build a game. The rule in my classroom is if you have if you're playing a game, you have to have made it. So, you can play a game, but you have to make the game. but there's just a ton of different options here.
And as long as it's options and they get to choose, it seems to work out.
And so believe it or not, this works.
And then my next tip yeah that's it is a good rule.
All right. And then my next tip is using alternate assignments which may not be available just yet in Cortado but if maybe if you were using something from NITO you could use alternate assignments. but I'm going to demo this in just a second. a pro feature is you could fork an assignment and I'm going to try to find I was ready with this. Okay. So, let's say I have my assignments open.
oops. Those are just for responses. So, here's an exercise.
Oh, wait. These don't have the things on them.
This is the sample class, so it doesn't have the things on this side.
Where is my assignments? Sorry. Here we go.
if you click on the three dots on the side, let's let that load. If you click on the three dots on the side next to activity and choose remix, there's either alternate assignment or fork. And you can make changes to an activity. So, if you've got kids that are able to find answers on the internet, which they probably aren't going to be able to do that for Cortado right away, it'll be a while.
you can do this. So, if we open up the course, open up a lesson, and go to an exercise, click on the three dots on the right, and there's a remix option, which is kind of small right here.
So three dots on the side remix if there's an alternate assignment which again there may not be for this new course but you can also fork an assignment which you can create a new assignment or replace the current assignment if you want to so whichever one makes sense for you and then you can modify the assignment and make it your own so that if they copy you'll know that they copied something because it doesn't match your change that you make. if there is an alternate assignment, yeah, if there was an alternate assignment, you could pick between them and then you can always put it back if you change your mind later.
and there's a knowledgebased article link here.
on doing that.
So when those are ready, you'll be able to do that.
We are ending much earlier than I thought we were going to.
Are there any questions that I've missed that we should go over?
Steve or TJ? No.
Are we good? I think you you covered a lot. we some questions are coming in the Q&A, but definitely if you have any questions, feel free to put them in. and again, like all of Kim's tips or experience with CSA, like those are super good tips to use in your classroom in addition to everything we have. that website Kim made, the Google site is amazing. So, I've every time I've seen it, I've just clicked around it and been like, "Oh, I I learn a new thing every time I see it." So so definitely like thank you Kim for sharing all your experience with us but if you have any questions like please please please ask and yes cortado content is available for in free it's a you can use the cortado course as a free teacher as well so some of the featur some of the pro features you'll be able to use but the cortado course is there free for you to Okay.
All right. I can I can jump in here to kind of start wrapping things up here. Kim, thanks again for sharing all those resources. can't emphasize it enough. Yeah, take a look at you know, Kim's site and also like just the recommendations she gave as well. just super helpful. You know, if this is your going to be your first year teaching APCSA, you know, just between using the code HS cortado course and AP classroom, that is more than enough material that you need in order to get your students prepared for the exam. so you know my my two cents there is to just focus on you know getting familiar with the content and finishing it before the exam to give your students plenty of time to review. but yeah thank you Steve for answering that that question there as well. but yeah so in terms of you know where we go from here. So if again if this is your you're kind of new to CodeHS you're bound to have some questions or need some support and we we do have a wonderful support team at CodeHS that is here to help with whatever questions that you may have. I know some of you asked some great questions in the Q&A today and if you think of any after today, there are some different avenues of how you can reach out to support and be able to get some help there. So, if we could jump to the next slide. Perfect. so, we shared a couple knowledgebased articles today. the knowledge base is a fantastic resource not only just for APCSA but just codes in general just a how-to of like okay now now that I have the curriculum how do I set up my own section how do I add students to my sections you know you can type those things into our knowledge base and you're able to get you know find some short articles a lot of them have also a like one to two minute video that kind of walks you through demoing that. so you could find a lot of answers that way. The other great way that I like to use support is if you see there's that kind of like blue circle there with the little smiley face. you'll see that when you are on the site and maybe we can jump to the site to to show that.
but yeah, if we go out to like our main sections page or something.
Yeah, right in the bottom right there.
So, you click on that. and you can ask a question and that'll go directly to our live support team. And maybe you have a question about curriculum pacing or a question about debugging some code and you're just un you're not sure where to go, what to do. Our support team will, you know, they could tag a curriculum developer or one of our engineers and be able to, you know, just provide you whatever answer, whatever support you need. So, please take advantage of that. it's a wonderful resource to use. So I think between the knowledge base and then the the support icon that's I think that that's going to help answer most if not all of your questions there.
All right, let's take a look at we'll we'll keep moving forward there. And then just some additional resources. aside from, you know, our APCSA community with codes, we have a lot of different ways of how you can engage, as a computer science educator, we have, the codes certified educator area as well. and then we also offer micro credentials for students and also for teachers on our core programming languages. So, Java, Python, web design, web development, two levels of cyber security. And as a teacher, you can earn these micro credentials. and you get a certificate of completion. you get a a cool little micro credential badge that you can add to your LinkedIn and your u email signature, things like that. I know we mentioned our educator Facebook group. just another plug there. And then all of our other social media accounts. I believe our our Tik Tok has been pretty pretty funny lately. So, definitely take a look at that. there's some great resources there. And then in the bottom right there's the codehs.comfree PD. you know, that's how you were able to enroll in this PD. So, take a look. you know, check back in. every once in a while there'll be some additional webinars that we will be updating especially as we get closer to back to school season. so be on the lookout for those. Sign up for any and all of those yeah, resources.
All right. So, we'll go ahead and put the webinar survey feedback form into the chat. Please let us know you know, how this webinar went for you, what did you enjoy about it, what do you want to see in future webinars. So, we do you know appreciate the feedback we get there. And I'll go ahead and drop that link in the chat and a couple other things as we're just starting to wrap up too. So there's that webinar survey and then on the following slide we have a certificate of completion just for attending today. So, I'll go ahead and and drop that into the chat as well.
So, a couple things. You will need to be logged into codes. so just make sure whatever browser you are using, you're logged into CodeHS and then just click on that attendance link. and you'll get a certificate of completion for attending today as well.
And okay, yeah, let's head to the We got a couple more things to share. Two more things to share. next AP specific PD coming up. Getting started teaching AP CSP. So, if you're also going to be teaching principles for the first time or you want to get a refresher on that that's coming up on Wednesday, this Wednesday. So, if you can make it, awesome. Go ahead and register. But if you can't, you can still register and you'll receive, you know, all the resources and the recording from the the webinar. So, if you're interested in hearing what's going on there for APCSP, please I encourage you to register for that at codehs.com/freepd.
And then the last thing on the next slide, if you're interested in bringing codes to your school or district, you can check out codehs.com/learn more, and fill out a short form and our team would be happy to reach out and provide some more guidance and more support to, bring computer science more into your school and into your district.
So, we thank you for, you know, jumping in today. it seems like we've answered all all the questions that were in the Q&A, but if there are any more, we'll hang out for, you know, some time.
So, if there are additional questions, please go ahead and and add those in there. otherwise, if you've already filled out the webinar survey, you click the attendance link. that's really it. So, thank you so much for joining, for participating. Hope you found some value in this course. and yeah, best of luck teaching APCSA next school year. we're excited about all the new changes and whatever questions you may have throughout the school year. Please reach out to us. you know, using our support network, knowledgebased articles, we're happy to help and make sure that you have what you need in order to get your students to get all fives on that AP exam.
Steve, Kim, any other questions? any other comments that came through that I I don't think I saw any. Looks like they were all answered. So, thank you so much for doing that.
Yeah, and I would definitely like echo what TJ said like if you have any question at any time like use that support bubble goes directly to our wonderful support team that can help you pretty immediately. Yeah, any question you have that is about the platform or just kind of wondering if something's possible like please reach out to our support center because we love nothing more than helping our teachers. and thanks again Kim for a great presentation and sharing your wealth of expertise with us. Thank you.
And I use that support bubble pretty much every week. So when I was a code teacher I did too. Yeah, they help. And then now and then like if I need something they'll make a video like here's how you do it like and they make a personal video just for me on how to do something. So it's really awesome.
Yeah. As a as a forward I I love anytime I get to make a teaching video over over Loom to send out. It's fun. I've learned so much from just doing that.
I think we're if anyone has any other questions feel free to ask. We're we're we'll hang out for a bit. But thank you all again so much for joining us and spending your summer Monday with us where I was teaching in Maryland. We would This is still a school day for us.
Probably have like another week left.
Yeah. I was just thinking DC would was the same. Yeah. Yeah. We got out on Thursday last week. and that that's early for us to get up. My my birthday is June 21st and I feel like I ended up like there were so many times I worked on my birthday and when I was a when I grew up going to school, I never was in school on my birthday, but like in DC DC area, I think I taught on my birthday more years than I did not. A Yeah, mine's in July, so I never never had to go to school on my birthday. It was funny. Students are very down to celebrate your birthday as a teacher.
That's awesome. Yeah, they made a big deal out of it. So, I was like, "Okay, this this is cool. I'll I'll show up to work and be appreciated." Nice.
I think we again, if you have any questions in your hang, feel free to use the Q&A, drop them in the chat. but not have a great rest of your day.
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