B6- NC Computer Science Standards Review

Kim Good

Blog #6

4/15/2020

EDTC 6037

 NC Computer Science standards are that computational thinking is a key to 21st Century skills that help students both to understand and take advantage of computing in various domains.  The standards are well aligned with the purpose, rationale, and goals.  Over the last few years, I have seen significant growth in interest in teaching computer science in education as early as primary school. The curricular are being revised to either reform or introduce the subject of computing, computer science of informatics. In schools and media, advertisements place a lot of emphasis on  "coding" as the main topic to engage students to be creative with technology as well as understanding the fundamental principles of computer science. Computer Science standards are available to educators but are not being taught to students due to a lack of knowledge about Computer Science. 

Computer Science in grades K-8 in North Carolina could be integrated into the core academic areas (English Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, & Science) in order to support students & teacher leaders in the teaching & learning of the academic content area. Computer Science in math could include graphs, recursive formulas, counting, logic, probability, and matrices. Methods may be used in designing algorithms and computer systems, as well as in software engineering. Science unlike electrical and computer engineers, computer scientists deal mostly with software and software systems; this includes their theory, design, development, and application. Computer scientists design and analyze algorithms to solve programs and study the performance of computer hardware and software. In healthful living with physicians and caretakers using technology to take better care of their patients. Disease surveillance projects are computer-based surveillance systems, which are used for rapid transmission and analysis of morbidity data. As an educator, my school technology support is the administrators and technology facilitators to advocate for resources the school needs to support the curriculum. The admin could support the TF in reaching out to Computer Science experts outside of school about volunteering time to offer professional developments for teachers to learn how to teach CS. Also,  reaching out to Microsoft to see if they offer any free online tutorials to support the learning of computer science concepts. https://news.microsoft.com/features/cracking-the-code-to-helping-educators-learn-and-teach-computer-science/

Potential challenges or issues for classroom teachers could be lack of support for the educational personnel and learners; lack of teacher competencies to use certain software; Insufficient financing of teacher professional developments in ICT field, of appropriate computer hardware and software.