What is "Computer Science for High School" project?
The main aim of the "Computer Science for High Schools" project is to advertise the modern teaching of computer science in public schools. The project is financed by Google and run by various educational institutions around the world. By far the most popular form of the project is to organize short workshops for teachers (lectures, laboratories, hands-on exercices). During these workshops teachers become familiar with modern tools that allow to make computer science lessons more interesting to pupils. The ideas for workshops are very diverse, just as diverse are the conditions in which computer science is being taught around the world.
This year we are one of three Polish universities who have received workshop grants. Our plan is simple: using the combined forces of Faculty of Computer Science at Poznan University of Technology and Wielkopolska Branch of the Polish Information Processing Society we will prepare at least two free workshops. The first workshop is aimed at the teachers from junior high schools who teach basic computer science, the second workshop addresses the needs of teachers from high schools. We want to present the teachers from Wielkopolska region a broad spectrum of tools readily available on the market, that could be used to prepare computer science lessons compatible with the requirements specified by the Ministry of National Education. Computer science lessons can be thrilling and entertaining, not only for a small group of computer geeks, but for 90% of pupils, who think of computer science today solely as games and Facebook.
The ultimate goal of our project is not only to present teachers with ideas and inspirations for their lessons. True, we want to show them what tools are available and can be used in the classroom. We want to encourage them to teach computer science using games, collaborative work, group assignments, we want to convince them to use services such as wikis, online editors, blogs, etc. But most importantly, we want to make them think anew of computer science teaching, to prepare their own lessons and to share these lessons with other teachers. If we manage to organize a small community of dedicated computer science teachers who will publish their lessons in a public repository, we will then consider our project a success!