A Presentation at ISTE 2019:
It is vital that students get the opportunity to learn and practice tech literacy as part of their school experience. However this can be difficult to integrate into the current academic infrastructure; the need for class sections, equipment, and trained teachers make it nontrivial to just start a Computer Science program at a site or within a district.
At my site we have addressed this problem by adapting CompSci and other Tech content to the Career Technical Education (CTE) pathway framework. This framework was designed for what would be traditionally considered vocational or regional occupation programs, and is typically built around some sort of skill certification. A practice-focused take on CompSci can make it a natural fit for this structure. Adopting this already established system ameliorates the approval process and it opens up access to significant grants.
It is important to note that Computer Science contains a diverse range of topics – it is just as broad as English, Science, or Art. Most people will imagine a CompSci course as a coding class but a student could be studying IT, hardware, graphic design, or game development and it would still fall under the Computer Science umbrella. This is a point that must be explicitly shared with all the stakeholders involved in the creation of a CompSci pathway as this range of study can easily get lost in communication.
The CTE structure is built around a 3-course pathway: an introductory course, a concentrator, and a final capstone. In most cases, the intro is designed an both an overview and a hook. It is a way to engage students and build interest in the program. The concentrator is where the focus then begins its transition to rigor which allows the students to start to understand what it could mean to have a career in this sector. Finally the capstone is where the student gets to dive deep into the subject. There is an assumption that at this stage the student has an intrinsic passion for this material and will be able to independently explore the material with some mentorship. These are not rigid laws that shape the pathway, but it is a logical sequence so any deviations from it should have a clear purpose. For example in our CS/AI pathway, we have dropped the introductory course due to issues in student demand and the gaps in fundamental academic material the students would have in lower grades.
An ideal pathway also needs to have opportunities for students to receive industry certifications. In CompSci there are a significant number of certifications available, though it can be difficult to find ones that are accessible to students in a secondary setting. The best certifications to work towards are flexible and easily recognized; Google, Cisco, Adobe, and Amazon Web Services are all highly regarded, though mostly aimed at professionals. There are also much more narrow certifications for specific industries like Unity in Game Development or MakerBot and AutoDesk for Engineering. Partnerships with community colleges for credits could also be a solid alternative to specific certificates.
One hope that I have is that adopting this structure will help make Computer Science more accessible to all students. A significant number of students still see working with technology as something outside of their capabilities, but this could not be further from the truth. Not only can all students learn Computer Science – all students need to learn Computer Science. They deserve to be given the opportunity to be successful in the tech-inundated world built around them.