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Ask Slashdot: Good Homeschool Curriculum For CS??

Posted by timothy on from the ok-now-track-the-family-budget dept.

dingo_kinznerhook writes "I grew up in a homeschooling family, and was homeschooled through high school. ( I went on to get a B.S. and M.S. in computer science; my mom has programming experience and holds bachelor's degrees in physics and math — she's pretty qualified to teach.) Mom is still homeschooling my younger brother and sister and is looking for a good computer science curriculum that covers word processing, spreadsheets, databases, intro to programming, intro to operating systems, etc. Does the Slashdot readership know of a high school computer science curriculum suitable for homeschooling that covers these topics?"

3 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. Dietel & Dietel by Sonny+Yatsen · · Score: 5, Informative

    As far as intro to programming goes, when I took High School Computer Science, our textbook was the Dietel & Dietel C++ How to Program. It was definitely aimed at the beginner to intermediate level programmers and did a pretty good job at explaining fundamentals of programming to a bunch of high school sophomores and making it understandable. As I recall, you can probably go through several chapters per class because it's not so dense and impenetrable that you need bash your way through.

    Here's a link to the 7th edition: http://www.amazon.com/How-Program-7th-Paul-Deitel/dp/0136117260
    However, there are plenty of copies of 6th editions floating around for pretty cheap. If I recall correctly, copies of the 5th edition are even available for download for free, which makes the curriculum that much more cost-effective.

    Anyway, best of luck, hope that helps.

    --
    My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
    1. Re:Dietel & Dietel by jd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Good advice.

      My thought: It doesn't matter where you learn or how you learn, the fundamentals are universal.

      AQA offers a suggested schooling curriculum and past papers for the exams they set. Sure it's UK not US, but C is C, HTML is HTML, MS Office is MS Office and small furry creatures from alpha centauri make great soup if you put them in the blender for long enough.

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      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  2. Re:programming practice by Sonny+Yatsen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't Forget MIT's OpenCourseWare Intro to Computer Science lectures. It might move at a faster pace than for a high school student, but it should give your mother some idea as to how to structure the lessons and concepts.
    http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/video-lectures/

    --
    My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.