Pomona Unified MyCS Workshop (July 21-25, 2014)

Welcome!   We look forward to working with you to share and improve our middle-years CS curriculum, MyCS!

Survey links:      Final Surveys! (student-teacher-team reflections)      

Handouts:      Thu full set       Wed full set       Tue full set       Mon full set       Arduino challenges       Arduino code+libraries       Python handouts   

Advanced track   This summer, too, we have a parallel workshop track for experienced teachers. They will have a chance to explore curriculum and projects using (i) Python, (ii) AppInventor, and (iii) Arduino.

Location and Parking   We meet in the Shanahan building of Harvey Mudd's Compus, room B460. For Googling, its official address is 320 E Foothill Blvd, Claremont, CA 91711. We will also have signs and people helping direct everyone the first morning. Parking is available along Foothill north of the campus and along Platt Blvd./12th St. and Dartmouth Ave. south of the campus.

This link shows the Shanahan building and parking options.

Schedule   Each morning will be a hands-on introduction to a part of the curriculum. The afternoons are dedicated to computing projects. We'll ask everyone to present their work on Thursday afternoon -- and you'll have it to present to your students this upcoming year, as well!
Here is an estimate of each day's schedule

• 8:30 am: (optional)   Coffee and continental breakfast
• 9 am: Official start and welcome
• 9:30 am: Morning curriculum, part 1
  • small-group activities
  • thoughts/tailoring of lessons
• 10:45 am: Coffee, refilled...
• til noon: Morning curriculum, part 2
• noon - 1 pm: Lunch
• 1 - 1:30 pm: CS context
• 1:30 - 3:30: Afternoon projects
  • computing challenges
  • reflections on the curriculum @ 3pm
• The workshop will conclude by 4pm.

MyCS Curriculum    MyCS is now online at    www.muddx.com

• login:    muddxguest@gmail.com
• passwd:   welcometomuddx

MyCS Offline    The MyCS handout materials are in a single zip file:    MyCS_all_handouts.zip

Workshops' Overview

Week-long professional development workshops with the MyCS curriculum occur each summer in Claremont, CA and selected other locations. Each workshop, open to groups of 10-30 teachers, provides an overview of the curriculum along with in-depth practice with lesson plans from all of MyCS's units. Time is divided between discussions, hands-on activities, and opportunities to practice coding with Scratch, the programming language used most prominently in our curriculum.

These workshops have, at their heart, the same goals as the curriculum itself:

• To increase the CS content and skills available to middle-years (middle-school and early high-school) students and teachers
• To provide content that make both the student and teacher experience of CS as empowering as possible.
• To complement whatever pedagogical approach and personal-interaction style a teacher chooses to use.
• To deepen students' and teachers' identification with CS and sophistication with the discipline.
• To contribute as wide a variety of hands-on projects as possible, in order to "hook" as diverse a group of students and teachers as possible.
• To build context not only from current technologies, e.g., programming languages and consumer software, but from the fundamentals of the discipline, i.e., organizing data, algorithmic reasoning, and procedural composition.

The workshop is updated yearly to include curriculum revisions, as well as additional activities and topics to explore for our returning teachers.

All of the materials for previous versions of the workshop are available online for you to explore below.

2013's MyCS professional development workshop ~ Pomona    2012 version