Intro CS

Course Description

This page contains more information about Westhill's Intro to Computer Science course. No previous programming experience is required to take this course. Students must receive a passing grade in Algebra 1 before taking this course. To see Westhill's on-line materials for Intro to Computer Science, click on the image to the left. The following video describes the programming languages taught in this course.

Intro CS Overview

Tools Used in Intro to Computer Science

Code.org: The course starts by using some puzzles in the form of Angry Bird games to teach basic programming skills during the first two days of school.

Lightbot.com: Lightbot puzzles follow after Angry Birds and are used to teach students the concepts of sequencing, procedures, and loops during the first week of school.

Scratch: MIT's Scratch language allow students to use a simple, block-based language to build games and other projects for two weeks. The level of difficulty of these projects are around 8th-9th grade level.

Jeroo: This language features a subset of Java to introduce students to text-based programming with methods and pre-defined classes in a graphical programming environment. Use of variables is limited thus keeping programming tasks simple. The course features Jeroo for one month.

Greenfoot: This tool allows students to learn full java using a graphical interface. Projects center around animals and their movements. The course features Greenfoot and BlueJ for two months.

BlueJ: The course concludes with students doing projects in java using the BlueJ Integrated Development Environment. The course features Greenfoot and BlueJ for two months.