Our newest course: CS Discoveries

What is CS Discoveries?

CS Discoveries is an introductory Computer Science course that empowers students to create authentic artifacts and engage with CS as a medium for creativity, communication, problem solving, and fun. The course will be piloted in Spring 2017, with full rollout Summer 2017.

A CS course for everyone, designed with equity in mind

CS Discoveries is designed from the ground up to be an accessible and engaging course for all students, regardless of background or prior experience. By providing students opportunities to engage with culturally and personally relevant topics in a wide variety of CS related fields we hope to show all students that CS can be for them.

Made for Makers

We know that students engage differently with real world physical objects than with virtual software, and that the process of making physical artifacts is a powerful tool for fun, engaging, and lasting learning experiences. CS Discoveries has the Maker ethos embedded throughout, providing students the opportunity to see and participate in the physical act of creation alongside the more abstract elements of computer science.

Completing a K-12 pathway

Our new course, CS Discoveries, is being designed to fit naturally between our CS Fundamentals course for K-5 and our CS Principles course for AP/Honors high school students. This allows us to offer districts, teachers and students a complete pathway of courses that build on each other and flow naturally together.

Powerful tools with a high ceiling

CS Discoveries aims to introduce students to tools and programming languages that are accessible for beginners, but which offer plenty of room to grow and create sophisticated projects. Using our App Lab programming environment, students will be able to transition from blocks to typed code at their own pace while learning JavaScript. New improvements to this tool will enable students to build simple animations, stories, or games as well as apps. Students will also develop Maker skills through the study of physical computing on the Arduino platform at a very accessible cost.

Designed for flexible implementation options

CS Discoveries will be designed primarily for students in grades 7-9, so it can be used in middle school or high school. The two semesters spiral upon each other, allowing the course to be taught as a single semester, two sequential semesters, a full-year course, or even integrated into existing technology classes.

Daily lesson plans come with detailed instructions, activity guides, and assessments

Students explore programming concepts through the development of animations and games in Game Lab

Students create prototypes of internet-connected physical computing devices using Adafruit's Circuit Playground board and App Lab

Course Overview

Computer Science encompasses far more than just coding, and CS Discoveries will provide students with opportunities to explore the many facets of CS, both in terms of how they are personally relevant as well as how they impact society.

Semester 1: CS Discoveries: Exploration and Expression

The first semester of CS Discoveries introduces students to computer science as a vehicle for problem solving, communication, and personal expression. As a whole this semester focuses on the visible aspects of computing and computer science, encouraging students to see where computer science exists around them and how they can engage with it as a tool for exploration and expression.

Unit 1 - Problem Solving: Computers and Logic

Computers are all around us, and for students much of their everyday action is impacted by computing. In the unit students will explore what it means for something to be a computer - what core functionality brings together all these items we think of as computers. Students should know how to use computers effectively - this means being able to navigate a computer and accomplish tasks. Students look at the many things computers allow people to do.

Unit 2 - The Internet: Web Development

Students will find empowerment through the realization that they too can take part in this creation and dissemination of information online by developing their own web pages from scratch using just HTML and CSS. By critically examining the web pages they visit every day, students will start to explore what makes a strong website and then use their new design process to implement parts of those designs.

Unit 3 - Programming: Interactive Games and Animations

Starting off with simple primitive shapes and building up to more sophisticated sprite-based games, students will become familiar with the basic concepts that form the foundation of computer programming. The development of a personalized final project will engage students in design, testing, and iteration as they come to see that failure and debugging are an expected (and valuable) part of the programming process that make your end product better.

Semester 2: CS Discoveries: Innovation and Impact

Where the first semester centers on the immediately observable and personally applicable elements of computer science, the second semester asks students to look outward and explore the impact of computer science on society. Students will see how a thorough user-centered design process produces a better application, how their personal data is collected and used on the web, and they will work with bare circuit boards to see how computers collect input and return output in a variety of ways. Through the entirety of this semester student groups will continue to iterate on and refine a mobile app that integrates everything they’ve learned throughout the course into one capstone project.

Unit 4 - Problem Solving: The Design Process

By following the design process and working with structured group roles, student groups will identify an audience, investigate their needs, and develop a concept and paper wireframe for an app to serve that audience. With concept and wireframe in hand, students will then develop and interactive prototype of their apps that they can use to test with actual users, taking feedback to drive further development.

Unit 5 - The Internet: Data and Society

Students will learn what information they leave behind online, and ways to control who has access to their information. In addition students will learn simple ways to collect data and use it to create apps the display the data to the user in visual ways so that they can gain insight into how data that is uninteresting at the individual level can reveal useful information when compiled. Finally, students will return to the app they began in unit 4 to integrate simple data collection.

Unit 6 - Programming: The Internet of Things

By exploring innovative computing devices from a variety of fields, students will explore the essential elements of computer hardware. Using a bare microcontroller board with several integrated sensors and output devices students will learn how software interacts with hardware and they will develop prototypes of physical computing devices. In the final stage of the course student groups will once again return to their capstone apps, this time connecting them with their physical computing boards as a means of input, output, or both.

Get Involved

Get on the interest list for professional learning

Are you interested in teaching CS Discoveries and want to take part in our professional learning program for the course? While applications for our CS Discoveries professional learning program are not open yet, you can learn more about the program commitments and get on the interest list.

Stay up to date on our progress

Want to know when we've posted lesson drafts and have tools that are ready to experiment with? Sign up for our monthly emails, which contain the latest news and links to beta lesson plans, tools, and videos for CS Discoveries. Even if you're not an official pilot teacher, we'd love to hear your feedback as an early adopter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the relationship between CS Discoveries and Exploring Computer Science?

This course is deeply inspired by the philosophy of Exploring CS, based on our years of experience teaching ECS, scaling it to hundreds of classrooms nationwide, and evaluation of feedback from the teachers. This course teaches the same core concepts as ECS, along with the same inquiry-based philosophy and the same teacher-learner-observer PD model. It also shares the same emphasis on equity which has pervaded Code.org's curriculum in other grade levels. Because of a shared philosophy and similar learning sequence, we believe and expect that CS Discoveries can be a natural successor to ECS for schools or teachers who love the ECS philosophy while looking to gain some of the benefits mentioned below.

Why is Code.org transitioning to a new course from ECS?

ECS is a great, well-established introductory computing course. We've helped hundreds of teachers introduce it in their classrooms, and we continue to support it and the hundreds of teachers currently teaching the course in our partner districts. We've also collected feedback from teachers and evaluation of our programs. Below are our reasons to make a new course:

  • We're making a curriculum pathway from K through 12. To date, we’ve offered districts, teachers and students various entry points into computer science that weren’t specifically designed as a pathway for students from Kindergarten through graduation. This new course will complete our K-12 pathway, building on experiences from our elementary CS Fundamentals course and preparing students for CS Principles, while providing appropriate support for students without prior CS experience.
  • The cost of the LEGO Mindstorms platform inhibits many teachers and schools from teaching the ECS robotics unit. We want to offer a physical computing unit that is affordable to all schools, to advance our goals of equity and access.
  • With millions of students learning drag-and-drop block based programming in grades K-5, many are entering middle and high school ready to transition into a full text-based language. We want to support these students while simultaneously keeping the benefits of drag-and-drop. This is uniquely possible within our App Lab programming environment, which allows students to switch back and forth seamlessly between blocks and text, allowing a classroom to work in different modalities while using the same tool and the same curriculum.
  • Our middle schools are requesting introductory computer science curriculum similar in scope to ECS, but designed for grades 7 - 8. ECS is designed as a high school course, and although some groups have adapted it to use in middle school, we want to create a course that is designed intentionally with this grade band in mind.

What is the timeline for CS Discoveries?

For the 2016-17 school year we'll continue the professional development support we do for ECS across all of our partner districts. We will pilot the new course materials during the spring of 2016-17 with schools that are eager to try new materials.

For 2017-18 and beyond, we'll continue supporting ECS in our existing schools while rolling out the new CS Discoveries course to new schools.

Can I keep teaching ECS?

Of course! If schools prefer to continue using the ECS v5 curriculum, we will continue distributing it to them. If they want to use the latest version of ECS, they may also choose to ask the ECS team for it.

I was trained on ECS, can I transition to CS Discoveries?

For existing ECS teachers who want to try the new curriculum, we’ll also offer a short transitional PD to help familiarize them to the new content. The core pedagogy surrounding equity and inquiry as well as the high level conceptual material should be very familiar to ECS teachers. You will also be welcome to integrate parts of CS Discoveries into your current ECS course at your own pace and as you see fit.

Why the name CS Discoveries?

This course is independently authored, yet deeply inspired by the underlying philosophy, core concepts, and exploratory nature of ECS. This course should feel familiar to those who have taught ECS, but better aligned to our cohesive K-12 pathway integrating the pedagogy, teacher supports, and tools for which Code.org has become known. We initially chose the name “CS Explorations” to pay homage to ECS, because it was important to us to be clear where our inspiration has come from.

Due to feedback that "CS Explorations" would create confusion among educators, we are using the name "CS Discoveries", which suggests the exploratory nature of a survey course, and fits between our CS Fundamentals and CS Principles courses as part of a full K-12 pathway, while avoiding any confusion with ECS. We will still clarify upfront in the curriculum that this work is inspired by ECS, without reflecting that inspiration in the title.