Curriculum Overview
The SCC curriculum is comprised of four units that span the course as one year-long project. The first semester includes two units covering media literacy and web design, and the second semester consists of two units that introduce students to programming and application building.
The SCC curriculum was designed to meet both the curriculum standards developed by the Georgia Department of Education for the Introduction to Software Technology (IST) course and the standards developed by the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) for K-12 education.
Unit 1: Interpersonal Design Challenge
Students are introduced to the course and asked to think about a problem that is meaningful to them personally, socially, or culturally. Students then work in pairs to research this problem, and to develop a narrated PowerPoint presentation intended to inform an audience about this issue. Creation of this digital artifact relies heavily on students’ background research on their problem, as well as their utilization of Microsoft PowerPoint software, including the recording and narration feature. Skills and content covered: Media analysis, word processing, slideshow presentations, problem decomposition, search and information retrieval, data gathering and synthesis.
Unit 2: Website Design Challenge
Students merge into groups of four or five and develop a website to raise awareness about their focal issue, and to motivate website users to engage and work to address this problem in some way. Skills and content covered: Learning design process, empathy and perspective-taking, developing problems as stories and using media as narrative, web design, HTML and CSS, video integration, basic networking, data security, privacy, digital footprints, and cybercrime.
Unit 3: Programming Challenge
Students explore algorithms and other computer programming concepts within the digital music creation platform EarSketch16. EarSketch is a free, web-based platform that allows users to create new musical compositions by mixing musical stems using Python or JavaScript programming languages. Students use this program to create two pieces of music to accompany, and increase engagement with, their previously created PowerPoint presentation and website. Skills and content covered: Understanding data types, variables, function parameters, flowcharts, looping, debugging, copyright, music composition and storytelling, adding music to a website.
Unit 4: Mobile Application Challenge
Students explore game design, as well as additional computer programming content, culminating their project by using an app design platform to design an app-based game. The game is intended to further increase awareness about their focal problem by modeling a potential solution. Skills and content covered: Collaborative software development, game design, booleans and conditionals, design for code reuse, representing real-life issues in gaming, and event-centered programming.