This is so timely as we’ve been having these exact conversations in my district. I was talking with a couple of our tech trainers about an online “coding for teachers” class, what it would look like and what it would cover. I’m working on a course proposal that we’ll try to offer in the fall.

Just today a teacher was asking me if he could write code to do a roller coaster simulation for his physics class. I started to think about the problem and brainstorm with him, and then the more I thought about it, the question isn’t really about a roller coaster or any specific application. The questions he needs to ask are:

What are my variables and how do they behave? Some variables will be fixed at the beginning. Some will change with each iteration.
What’s your mathematical model for that change? What’s the algorithm?
How do you want the output displayed and organized?
How are you going to validate that your model is a good one? Does it match your real world situation? What are your testing conditions (domain and range)?

Also questions like can you simplify this model down to its bare bones for your simulation? What does that look like?

So I wondered, can you teach general CS topics like variables, conditionals, loops, and functions – consider situations that you can model really simply and turn them into lessons you can do with your students. Build your repertoire from there.

I think that’s the approach we’re going to take with this class. It’s hard, isn’t it? You need a reason to learn it.
Dawn