Home | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Handouts | LOs-EKs
Red = key understandings & official course documents |
Green = important for 1st year AP teachers |
Blue = activities for workshop participants |
Orange = personal perspectives by workshop leader |
Morning Session : Filling in the Gaps
"Top 10" for Teachers
Top 10 for New AP Teachers [first 3 years]
-
Read the Official Curriculum Framework [YES...all 200+ pages!]
-
Read (& handout to students) the Official Assessment Overview & Performance Task Directions for students [YES...all 20+ pages!]. Scoring Rubric is a 1-page summary.
-
Attend at least 1 AP Summer Institute and familiarize yourself with:
-
logging into your Professional Online Account
-
AP Audit & Secure Documents
-
AP CSP Digital Portfolio: teacher access, class setup, student progress monitor, student access & class enrollment
-
AP CSP Community
-
Dates - deadlines are "score killers." Teach students to plan by creating a pacing guide with graduated consequences...especially for 9th and 12th graders!
-
-
Choose & complete a "Course-in-a-Can" program [i.e. Code.org, CodeHS.org, etc.]. It will save you a great deal of time the first year.
-
Pass the Course Audit....much easier with an Endorsed Provider (i.e. "Course-in-a-Can.")
-
Generate your own projects, assignments, questions, etc. as time allows.
-
Plan on becoming an AP Reader...most AP courses require minimum 3 years experience but AP CSP is so newer...opportunites are NOW!
-
Review your Online AP Report at beginning of each year to identify strengths and weaknesses.
-
Give yourself and your students a break!
-
After developing 19 different STEM courses along with 6 AP courses, I am confident that it takes a minimum of 3 years to become "comfortable" with an AP course and being evaluated by Assessments that you have no control over!
-
You are taking your students along a journey/adventure TOGETHER. students can be "mini-teachers"...offer (bonus) points for pointing out little things that you may have missed.
-
-
Use non-copyrighted online material freely! Just make sure you "cite" your sources and remember the Golden Rule. A simple "thank you for ..." makes a fellow teacher's day!
Top 10 for Experienced AP Teachers [4-10 years]
-
Become an AP Reader. The week spent scoring PT's with colleagues from around the world cannot be understated as a professional development! Plus you get rich ;)
-
Understand all of the Official Curriculum Framework [yes...all 134 pages!].
-
Re-Create the Official Assessment & Performance Tasks for your students.
-
Stay up-to-date as most AP courses are constantly-shifting targets. Attend at least 1 AP Summer Institute every 3 years.
-
Generate your own test questions from the EK's...develop your own curriculum.
-
Recruit non-typical students...become familiar with your own strengths & limitations but reach out to groups that wouldn't normally take computer science or programming.
-
This is the part of your career when confidence can appear as arrogance. How do you challenge yourself when you are "the best" in a small pond?
-
Camper's Rule : make the world a little better. Challenge yourself to "improve" your community by giving away something of yourself for free. Despite the amount of work you did the first few years, remember that a great deal of material was given to you.
How about the AP CSP Community?
-
It is about the questions! Answers are over-rated unless they lead to "deeper" questions.
-
Be aware of changing personal motivations. Can we still relate to our students' struggles? Why are we in education? When do we get rich?
Top 5 for "Career" AP Teachers
-
Re-Create the Curriculum Framework for your students.
-
Re-Design the Official Assessment & Performance Tasks for your students.
-
Become an AP Table Leader or Question Leader as a mentor for other teachers.
-
Share your knowledge and be a constant advocate for Academic Excellence!
-
Be aware of opportunities to participate in College Board events.
Insights into the Assessments
-
Performance Tasks
- Uploading is less lenient...students should be careful of:
- file size & file name.
- # of words
- time constraints
- Per CB : "Please send any issues with the digital portfolio to apcsp@collegeboard.org. Include screen shots, browser that you are using, version and operating system to help us diagnose the issue."
- Monitor for plagiarism:
- Have evidence for plagiarism!
- One of my better students submitted a slight variation on code that I gave early in the year but the student had forgotten that they had received the code from me...they thought that they written it on their own 8 months later...under time pressure to complete the task.
- Another very good student changed variables names but copied the algorithm from a lecture...unfortunately I had no evidence of my ex-temporaneous lecture on random shuffling.
- Cannot view "Draft" submissions but must review "Final" submissions for:
- Corrupt files ... need to check "round-trip" of files
- Wrong submission..Code for IWR and vice-versa.
- AP Student ID's can be entered after 30April [per Crystal on Community Forum!]
- Create Task (30%)
- Uploading is less lenient...students should be careful of:
- Written Exam (70%)
- ANY Essential Knowledge statement is "fair game" but target is "Learning Objectives"
- Do NOT post the Practice Exams...don't even let them out of the classroom!
-
Two free questions -- look these up in the EK's...how are these different than "official" MC questions?
- LO 2.1.2 Explain how binary sequences are used to represent digital data. [P5]
- Select all of the following options that accurately explain
how binary sequences are used to represent digital data:
- A) Eight binary digits (8 bits) can be used to represent up to 256 different values.
- B) Computers with many gigabytes of storage space can represent any floating point number.
- C) The RGB color encoding is the only binary sequence to represent colors.
- D) Sequences of bits can represent instructions as well as data.
- E) The binary sequence 0110 could represent a decimal number but could also represent a character.
-
AnswerAnswers are A, D, and E
- LO 6.2.1 Explain characteristics of the Internet and the systems built on it. [P5]
- Which of the following is/are hierarchical ?
- A) BNS B) IP addresses C) colors D) bandwidth E) latency
-
AnswerAnswer is B
Recommendations:
Take your time...this will be at least a 3-year project.
Participant Activity
Remember: Equity and Access
It is a teacher habit!
-
Share concerns, questions, ideas with a partner/group regarding:
-
Syllabus Development : Unit Plans, Lesson Plans
-
Exam Prep
-
Textbook & Resources
-
Pedogogy
-
Afternoon Session : Feedback, Evaluations, & Closure
Participant Activity : Surveys and "official" Resources
Online Survey requested by the College Board & APSI Hosts
AP Central AP CSP webpage lists numerous classroom Instructional Resources
- Additional Curriculum Modules
- Teaching Units / Projects
- Ideas, Strategies, Nifty Assignments, etc. from Colleagues
- Advanced and Special Focus Topics
- Textbook, website, and software reviews
Explore Scaffolded Resources (some are for "advanced students" who already know more programming):
CS Organizations for High Schools |
Online Student Programming Practice & Learning Tools |
Online Coding Project & Lectures (for advanced students) |
Larger Coding Projects (some with API's) |
---|---|---|---|
Computer Science Teachers Association (www.csta.org) |
practice coding problems in Java or Python (codingbat.com) Free |
Stanford Nifty CS Projects | Made-with-Code |
National Center for Women in Information Technology competitions & awards for girls (NCWIT.org) |
higher order practice coding problems in Java. (practiceit.cs.washington.edu) Requires subscription. |
Princeton's Interdisciplinary CS Lectures | Google Computer Science for High School (cs4hs.com) |
organization dedicated to offering computer science for all students. Not specifically for AP CSP |
Editor & IDE to help visualize Object Instances Free |
progressively more difficult math problems that can be solved using CS. |
Google Educational Programs for Students & Teachers |
online game-style quizzes quality of quizzes varies |
|
downloadable Python-based project to learn computer science and music technology side by side |
|
one-stop-shop for AP CSP resources originally by CS4All
|
Participant Activity
-
Questions?
-
Feedback on Workshop
-
Official Evaluations of Workshop & Presenter