Eyebeam's educational focus is to promote artist-led, STEAM based education. This template is intended for our teaching artists to document their lessons with a larger goal for their curriculum to be referenced or used more easily in classrooms, libraries, after school programs or anywhere STEAM programming can be offered.
This template is based off of NYC Department of Education's CS4All Blueprint to teach creative computing. For more information on the core components they advise teachers and classes focus on, and to give the students the competency to be better prepared to engage with more difficult STEM lessons, I highly encourage you to read about their approach here.
Your name (please include collaborators or funding institutions that have supported this work) and links to your site or Github.
Questions that lead to meaningful exploration of CS concepts and practices. Examples:
- How can programming represent your ideas and beliefs?
- How might we use math to express ourselves creatively?
- How might we use computing to impact our community?
- What information is my computer sharing about me or my online activity?
Please provide a narrative of what the unit is about, and why we should learn it that is simple enough that a student could read and understand. Example: "In this workship we will be using ... to explore ... so that you have a better understanding of how ..."
What age range is this exercise designed for and what do students and teachers need to know or be able to do to be successful in the workshop? Any coding languages they should already be comfortable with, any frameworks or tools they should have installed before class.
This can be easily answered by completing these example sentences:
- In this workshop we will be… (soldering, setting up a RPi home network, making a wearable that communicates with….)
- Students will walk away with a deeper understanding of…
Number of total hours the unit will take in a typical workshop session(s). Please try to take into account transition time between instruction and hands on exercises if any prep is necessary.
- Break down of the class schedule example:
- :15 Overview, context, examples and vocabulary
- :20 Instruction & hands on exercise
- :15 Wrap-up discussion & sharing, reflection or journal and next steps
What hardware, software, or other materials will students or teachers need for lessons.
What materials (readings, tasks, exercises) should students complete before class to be prepared for the lesson.
- Program: A procedure, or set of instructions, that performs a specific task when executed by a computer.
- Programming Language: The human-readable commands and syntax (or grammar rules) used to write programs.
Descriptions of each exercise or phase of class. Similar to pacing but with more description of steps.
Additional materials for the students to leave with that can help them dig deeper into the subject or additional exercises and challenges to help students progress their knowledge to the next level and gain mastery of the subject through independent study.
- Multiple Project Exit Points: an idea of high-medium-low projects so students are locked into one end product.
- First Steps - a simple exercise
- Next Steps - medium exercise
- Big Steps - a challenge or open ended study
- Presentation: how might students share their work? With peers, outside world? What media or platforms could/should be referenced to students to encourage sharing (Instagram, Tumblr...)?
- Reflection: reflection questions that ask students to think about CS concepts and practices. How can students express what they’ve learned in some creative way?
Include any sources cited, but not directly linked in the unit.
e.g. Please provide some guidance based on experience delivering the unit and potential modifications might you are considering making for future iterations of this unit. This is an opportunity for you as the unit author to give teachers practical guidance.
With thanks and acknowledgement, we were inspired by the curriculum templates shared by NYCDOE and NYC Open Data