Learning Computer Science shouldn’t have to wait until college
At every human’s core lies a desire to create and impact the world. And yet, most great ideas never make it past a conversation with a friend. In part, this is because our ideas often involve software, but very few of us know how to write code, leaving us unable to bring our ideas to life.
In the US, most students don’t have access to computer science education until they get to college.
Let’s change that.
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Technology has become the most effective platform to share ideas. With just a little education, hard work and access to a computer, anyone can build a product. And thanks to the Internet, we can share it with 3 billion people instantaneously.
In the world of tomorrow, students who can write software are far more likely to share the entrepreneurial conviction — that they can impact the world.
It is with these thoughts that College Board created the new AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) course. By letting educators teach CS with the languages and frameworks they prefer and grading students on projects, College Board has created a future-proof high school CS course.
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In response to College Board’s new course, Make School is launching Swift CSP (makeschool.com/swift-csp) — a curriculum that meets the requirements for AP CSP while teaching the most relevant skill in today’s industry: mobile development.
Why is mobile development so relevant? Look at the data — as of 2014, we are primarily using our mobile devices:
As its name indicates, Swift CSP will use Apple’s new programming language, Swift. By the end of the course, each student will have built their own iPhone app.
We’ll leverage Apple’s modern (yet under-utilized) interactive Playground environments to make exploration and understanding of programming fundamentals easy for beginners. How do Playgrounds work? When you update code on the left, you can instantly and visually see the result of your change on the right side.
Have a look for yourself:
For a long time, Make School has wanted to offer a modern computer science curriculum to high school educators, but the right framework hasn’t existed. Previously, even if teachers wanted to use our curriculum, students couldn’t earn college credit and schools couldn’t get funding.
Now that the right framework exists, we’re offering our curriculum to high school educators for free. We’re also creating curriculum maps, audits, unit plans, assessments, and even providing remote support. We’re making it easy for teachers to get an AP CSP class up and running so that any high school can offer computer science education to its students.
Who is Make School and why should you use our curriculum?
- In 2012, Make School taught the AP CS class at Menlo High School, one of the top high school CS programs in the nation. (The founders of GoPro, Bleacher Report and Zazzle are Menlo HS alumni.)
- In 2013, Make School taught MIT, Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley’s first ever mobile development classes.
- As of today, Make School has helped over 450 students from 50 countries ship their apps to the App Store.
- For three years in a row, Make School students have been invited to present apps they created at the White House.
- Make School’s curriculum is up-to-date with industry standards and influenced directly by our partners, including Lyft, LinkedIn, and Tilt.
If you’re interested in using our curriculum at your school, fill out this form and we’ll send you more information, including samples of our curriculum and information on our professional development workshops this summer!
If you have feedback or questions, let us know. You can contact me and the rest of the Swift CSP team at swiftcsp@makeschool.com.
