Overview
A major part of this course is designing your own curriculum document, but good curriculum designers also know what already exists. Being aware of published CS curricula — and thinking critically about what you can adapt or adopt — means you don't reinvent the wheel when something useful is already out there.
For this activity, find a published CS curriculum that connects to the course you have been designing. I intentionally avoid giving examples: in past offerings, example curricula tend to become the only things students look at. Many of you are already working with a specific curriculum in your classroom — it is perfectly fine to use that as your subject here. That said, you may find it worthwhile to look beyond the one you already know.
Deliverable
Write a summary report on the curriculum you selected. Your report should give enough detail that a classmate could read it and understand why the curriculum might (or might not) be worth their attention. Organize your report using the MANIC framework:
- Most important — What do you think is the single most important aspect of this curriculum?
- Agree — What do you agree with or like about it?
- Not agree — What do you disagree with or not like about it?
- Interesting — What did you find interesting or surprising?
- Confusing — What did you find unclear or hard to evaluate?
In addition to submitting your written report, please fill out this Google Form with some basic information about the curriculum you chose. This helps build a shared reference of curricula across the class.
Evaluation
- Submit your written MANIC report as a single document.
- Deadline: no later than Sunday, July 19.
- This is evaluated as a competency demo.
- Each section of the MANIC report will be evaluated on a scale of 0–4. The entire report will be assigned a combined grade that is not necessarily the mathematical average of those scores.