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Join us for a hands-on overview of the 2020 Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) curriculum updates in alignment with the revised Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) framework and according to teacher feedback. Snap! was created specifically to support the BJC curriculum, which was originally developed at UC, Berkeley and later adapted by Education Development Center, Inc. into a high school AP CSP course. BJC covers the AP framework but also teaches additional programming topics including recursion, higher order functions, and abstract data types. We invite both experienced BJC teachers and those new to the curriculum to explore the latest student-facing activities in this collaborative workshop.

This session will include an introduction to the AP CSP course and 2020 curriculum framework updates, the BJC pedagogical approach, and an overview of recent changes to BJC. Participants will then choose the hands-on activities they wish to explore from among several new projects in the BJC curriculum: a quiz app that introduces abstract data types (ADTs) and list traversal by pairing questions with their answers and traversing the list of pairs; an introduction to binary search that teaches efficiency by comparing the run time of binary and linear searches given sets of various sizes; and a data processing project in which students choose a dataset of interest to them and use ADTs and higher order functions to ask and answer questions about their data set. Participants will focus on core ideas by using modified versions of the BJC projects that are designed for the conference format and may explore more than one if they have time. The session will close with a group sharing and discussion (so participants receive some insights about each of the activities) followed by information about the free resources and training available to BJC teachers and suggestions for implementing some or all of the BJC curriculum.

BJC is an NSF-funded, College Board-endorsed, AP CSP course designed to help students develop computational habits of mind and appreciate the social issues of computing with the additional goal of broadening participation for female and underrepresented minority students. Like Snap!, BJC and the BJC Teacher Guide are available online free of charge at bjc.edc.org and bjc.edc.org/teachers.

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