[Edu-sig] AP Computer Science
A. Jorge Garcia
calcpage at aol.com
Sun Nov 7 00:47:10 CET 2010
Unfortunately, many High School teachers act like a bunch of lemmings
worried about results and all do the same thing every year in lock step
- one of these time honored traditions being prepping for or teaching
to the test. This will continue regardless of the delivery language.
I've been teaching AP Computer Science since it started in 1984 using
Pascal. The same thing went on with Pascal, C++ and Java.
The focus of the AP Computer Science course right now is Object
Oriented Programming (OOP). We teach these students about classes,
methods and objects; constructors, accessors, mutators and instance
fields. We emphasize the 4 pillars of OOP: encapsulation, abstraction,
inheritance and polymorphism.
I don't teach to the test, never have and never will. However, I do
give them samples of MCQs and FRQs they are expected to master through
out the year. I do this in AP Computer Science A/AB, AP Calculus AB/BC
and AP Physics C Mech/E&M.
I have heard rumors about a move from Java to Python, but I don't think
its more than a rumor at this point!
HTH,
A. Jorge Garcia
http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009
Teacher & Professor
Applied Mathematics, Physics & Computer Science
Baldwin Senior High School & Nassau Community College
-----Original Message-----
From: Zac Miller <zmiller at gsc.edu>
To: edu-sig at python.org <edu-sig at python.org>
Sent: Sat, Nov 6, 2010 7:25 pm
Subject: [Edu-sig] AP Computer Science
Today I attended a meeting of the Georgia chapter of the Computer
Science Teachers Association. Most of the focus was on how to better
teach the AP Computer Science exam and Java but I did learn a few
things at the meeting. Are any of the K12 educators here that are
using Python also teaching AP Computer Science?
>From speaking with the people at the meeting I got the idea that the
AP Computer Science test would eventually transition to Python. Does
anyone know more about this?
Also, from their descriptions of teaching the AP class it seemed like
the is focus is mainly on preparing for the test...do you think that
the AP course using Python would be a good thing or a bad thing for
educators using Python? I think I prefer keeping my focus on producing
great Python programmers instead of on an exam.
Interested in any opinions out there.
-Zac Miller
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