CS0: The Beauty, Joy and Awe of Computing - 0 views
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Manuel Menezes de Sequeira on 19 May 10We propose to develop Computer Science 0 (CS0): a new introductory general service course, available to students across the university, to share the beauty, joy and awe of computing (Mcgettrick et al., 2008; Garcia et al., 2009). This course has the potential to serve as a model for a new CollegeBoard Advanced Placement course in the works (Astrachan et al., 2009), which could have national impact. Students will be gently introduced to programming and computational thinking using a new graphical programming language called Scratch (Maloney et al., 2004), with the emphasis on problems relevance to themselves and society. In addition to allowing more opportunities for creativity in the first computer science course, the language has been designed to make learning to program easier by preventing a common frustration for novices, syntax errors. It also supports a computer science "big idea", which is software reuse - it allows students to upload their finished graphical programs to the web which can then be run online in a web browser, downloaded, modified (or, "re-mixed") and re-uploaded. These "Web 2.0" features are the first to be integrated seamlessly into a programming environment, and we are encouraged by the existing active community of worldwide student developers. Finally, the new course will provide the opportunity to broaden participation in computing, a critical component to addressing the current computing enrollment crisis.