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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 ways technology is impacting society. 
 

• How is Generative AI changing education?  The workplace?

• What is algorithmic bias and how is it impacting us?

• How are we digitally surveilled?  Who is more likely to be surveilled?  What can you do about it? 

• How does social media suck us in? 

• How can you spot misinformation/disinformation?

• How can technology save the planet and how is it contributing to climate change?

• What do you (and everyone) need to know about cybersecurity?

• How are robotics and augmented reality changing our world?

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.