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High School Computer Science: Look Ma, No Textbooks!
theodp writes: Computer Science Teacher Alfred Thompson wonders how other high school CS teachers use textbooks. "It's not a conversation I hear much about," he writes. Indeed, many teachers apparently don't rely on CS textbooks much at all. In fact, the highly-touted new AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) course does not require a CS textbook for students (sample College Board AP CSP syllabus), albeit to the chagrin of some. Some of the bigger providers of AP CSP curriculum -- e.g., BJC and Code.org, both of whom partner with Microsoft TEALS -- don't require a traditional CS textbook. But with teachers being recruited to teach Computer Science even if they don't have a CS background, should students learning CS have a textbook? Or is the high AP exam pass rate enjoyed by AP CSP students proof that no-more-books works?
If they want to teach computer science (and not software development or programming) a text on abstract algebra or discrete mathematics is likely going to help more than anything with "computer" in the title.
CS, much more than most other STEM fields, already has absolute loads of reference information and tutorials and explanations available online. A textbook is supposed to be one-size-fits-all volume with all you need to know to get to a certain level in a certain topic -- a really useful thing to have with no internet, or on a topic where the internet doesn't already have all that information in easily-accessible form, but with the tradeoff that everyone using that textbook gets taught in roughly the same way, which won't work well for all of them. For CS, especially high-school-level CS where you aren't dealing with the more complicated aspects of algorithm performance or CS theory, easily available resources outside textbooks can easily cover everything necessary while also allowing the versatility to more easily suit different teaching and learning styles.