Programming Is Heading Back To School

the agent man writes "Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder are exploring what it takes to systematically get programming back to public schools. They have created a game-design-based curriculum, called Scalable Game Design, using the AgentSheets computational thinking tool. Annual summer institutes train middle school teachers from around the USA to teach their students computational thinking through game design and computational science simulations. What's truly unique about this is that it is not an after-school program; it takes place during regular school courses. Entire school districts are participating with measurable impacts, increasing the participation of women in high school CS courses from 2% six years ago to 38-59% now. Educators would like to be able to ask students, 'Now that you can make Space Invaders, can you also make a science simulation?' To explore this difficult question of transfer, the researchers devised new mechanisms to compute computational thinking. They analyze every game submitted by students to extract computational thinking patterns and to see if students can transfer these skills to creating science simulations."