K12CS.org: Microsoft, Google, Apple Identifying What 1st Graders Should Know

theodp writes: On Sunday, The Simpsons declared computer coding class the nation's latest educational fad (script). Proving Principal Skinner's point, K12CS.org on Thursday announced a New Framework to Define K-12 Computer Science Education, the collaboration of participants from a number of states (MD, CA, IN, IA, AR, UT, ID, NE, GA, WA), large school districts (NYC, Chicago, San Francisco), technology companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple), organizations (Code.org, ACM, CSTA, ISTE, MassCAN, CSNYC), and individuals (higher ed faculty, researchers, K-12 teachers, and administrators). "A steering committee initially comprised of the Computer Science Teachers Association, the Association for Computing Machinery, and [tech bankrolled and led] Code.org will oversee this project," explained a CSTA blog post. "Funding for the project will be provided by Code.org and the ACM. The framework will identify key K-12 computer science concepts and practices we expect students exiting grades 2, 5, 8, and 12 to know."

In a FAQ, K12CS.org envisions a Programming and Algorithms standard for 1st Graders that calls for the 5-year-olds to "Work collaboratively in clear roles (e.g., pair programming) to construct a problem solution of a sequence of block-based programming commands." A day before the announcement, Politico reported that K-12 CS education is expected to get a State of the Union mention this year, and that the White House and U.S. Dept. of Education have been trolling for CS success stories in conjunction with the announcement of a broad set of new commitments to CS Education in early 2016.

Comments

We need a different term for this

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't "computer science." This is assembly-line work.

Re:We need a different term for this

[Half-pint HAL]

This isn't "computer science."

The problem is that the most appropriate term, "computer literacy", has been hijacked to mean MS Office basic skills.

Delusional

[iamacat]

I am currently trying to get an 8 year old to complete hour of code classes. The classes are pretty good, with animated characters and concepts of functions, conditions and so on. But she has just barely enough patience and formal thinking to finish exercises with my help. If I am not around, she just starts randomly twiddling with blocks and gets frustrated that nothing works.

Now, some 5 year olds may be unusually good at this. But to teach this in classroom environment, with kids of different abilities and one instructor per 20 or more children, you probably need to wait till 4th grade at the earliest. Might be able to have one or two introductory classes to whet the appetite earlier, but not expect to get very far with it. Better to focus on basics like math.