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What will I get out of this class?

This class is designed to provide you both the content (technical) AND pedagogy (teaching) knowledge all educators should have to help students learn about how technology, computers, and computation are impacting their daily lives, society, economy, and culture. It also supports those planning to get a single- or multiple- subject teaching credential in California to get a supplementary authorization to teach Computer Science in K-12.

How will I learn these things?

Using a problem-based approach we will study 4 different "digital worlds" that we all live in and explore various technology solutions that have benefited us in these areas:

• Your digital Personal Data world: How does Amazon know what products to recommend to you? How do devices and apps that track fitness or health work?
• Your Relationship world: How does Facebook change how you interact with others and how has smartphone technology enabled that? How do Snapchat filters work? Can we use software or technology to reduce cyberbullying?
• Your Career or Work world: How are things stored "in the cloud" and what security issues come with that? What new careers or ways of earning of living has technology enabled?
• Your Global world: How can the internet give people greater access to educational opportunities? Are there groups of people who technology doesn't serve well? How does social media change communication and journalism in dictatorial societies?

Additionally, you will apply learning theory and explore and evaluate resources for teaching these topics.

But EXACTLY how will this work as an online class?

For most traditional courses, you probably look at the weekly syllabus and check for homework/programming assignments, midterms, weekly quizzes, and big projects that you need to plan extra time for.

This class is different. There’s no midterm. There’s no big project due week <whatever>. Each week you have a list of learning experiences to work through (some graded, some not) totaling between 8-10 hours. You can repeat graded assessments each week (until the 11:59pm Sunday deadline) if you want to improve your learning/score.

How might that work? As an online course, you have a lot of flexibility in when you do your work. However we recommend you save 10 hours a week on your schedule so you don’t “ignore it” in favor of your in-person classes.

Here’s a sample of the kinds of work you might do in a week. While we recommend you start before the weekend in case you need to ask questions of the tutors or professor, once you get to know the course a bit, you could plan your 8-10 hours whenever fits your schedule each week. Many of these items are short and self-contained -- great for a wait between classes, on the shuttle, or any time you have a few minutes to spare.