I’m sorry to hear that was your experience, @pmadson. I would recommend asking the Regional Partner if you can “audit” the fall PD workshops next year, now that you have taught the content, so that you might get something different out of it. I can’t promise that they’ll have a seat for you, but they will hopefully be able to give you additional support where you need it.
—Michael K.
Thank you for the thought. I have no idea who the “regional partner” would be. I actually found someone who cut the course down to the minimum content that touches on all of the standards. We have decided to move forward with that version next year to see how things go.
For my background, I’ve taught 24 years, 14 of them as a CS teacher, and 14 of them I’ve used Code.org curriculum.
Now that I’ve spent nearly two semesters teaching the class, I have more thoughts.
I’ve had a teacher from another district reach out and ask me for guidance teaching the new Indiana Foundations class. I have a hard time recommending her to use Code.org for a lot of different reasons.
Pacing unrealistic for a semester class. There’s no way for everything to be covered in a semester. While it’s great to have more than you actually need, it is absolutely necessary to map the standards to lessons to see what is actually needed and what isn’t so you can what is able to be cut out.
Next, some lessons are filled with “fluff” for a lack of a better word. Some of the activities aren’t meaningful or a pain to setup or facilitate. Using string, cutting out cards, etc is a lot, at least to me. While people may disagree with me, I don’t have a ton of time to be doing all that, nor does it fit my teaching style. Wish I had some alternative stuff for many of these lessons.
Teaching the programming unit a second time, I really enjoyed it this time around. I was much better teaching it and I think my students genuinely enjoyed it though they complained a lot. But I don’t an inexperienced teacher could effectively deliver the unit. Just my opinion. I really believe code.org needs to provide some sort of background info, maybe in the form of videos, to teachers to help them teach the material. An inexperienced teacher will never be able to teach students to create a function, pass an object as a parameter as well as a string, import that function, and call it on the main. Again, maybe I’m wrong, but it just seems to be too much.
Another issue I have is having students navigate from an Activity Guide, to a Unit Guide, to the website is cumbersome. Some of the diagrams in the activity guide aren’t easily edited in Docs format and some of us don’t have the ability to print 120 pages every day.
As I build the course in our LMS, I find myself modifying the curriculum to better fit the needs of myself, my students, and anticipating the needs of any teacher that teaches the course in the future. The lessons that I deemed as “fluff”, I’m finding new resources to utilize, I’m adding in differentiation in some units and lessons, and support materials where I believe teachers will need them.
I don’t hate the course, but I’m far from happy. Maybe some of my concerns seem petty, and maybe they are, but these are just my experiences. Having a student navigate between 3 or 4 different tabs isn’t easy for many students nor is having a teacher make hundreds of copies every week.
Overall, I need to do some serious reflecting as to what I recommend to this teacher who reached out about curriculum.
I welcome counterpoints, suggestions and opinions, please.
@bjennings1 thank you for the thoughtful feedback. I’ve passed it along to the Code.org team to make sure they see it.
—Michael K.
@pmadson that sounds great! For future reference, the Regional Partners are local partners of Code.org that carry out trainings and provide support to school districts. There’s more info here.
Thank you!
—Michael K.
I agree that this course was less than ideal. I am teaching this ti 8th graders and have had to modify many of the lessons (which is not easy since I don’t have a CS background). The program is not user friendly for the students so when students were absent or we had virtual learning, students struggled to do the work on their own. Clearly Unit 5 (Cybersecurity) was just pulled from the AP course which would be fine except for the fact that this is supposed to be an introductory course.
I saw that there is a new version for 2026/27. Does anyone know what has changed for the new version?
I am confused about the 2nd part of this curriculum. I went to training on the first half and the second half " Semester 2 (Coming Soon!) builds on these foundations with a deeper focus on Python programming, problem-solving, and AI-powered applications. Students will have opportunities to create AI-enhanced programs, integrating computational thinking with emerging technologies."
Where does this fit in? “AI Foundations: Designing and Building with AI equips students to become intentional designers who work alongside AI to build meaningful, interactive web apps. Students learn JavaScript while using AI to generate, adapt, and refine code across HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, developing computational thinking, human-centered design, and systems thinking skills. Across a progression of projects, they design and build interactive applications that are both technically functional and ethically informed, leaving the course with the confidence to program, collaborate thoughtfully with AI, and create systems that reflect their values and vision.”
I also think AI Foundations (Semester 1) has too many over lapping units with AP CSP. Any thoughts?