SHS Computer Science Upgrades

Funded Dec 18, 2022

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to outfit my classroom with a wide variety of resources to grow student interest in Computer Science at Salem High School! This school year, I was able to use the robots and physical computing kits to allow students in my programming classes to create code that works with physical devices. This was a real "ah-ha" moment for some of my students given the fact that previously we have really only been able to work with programming in a context that focuses on abstract data.

What I'm even more excited about is the changes I'll be able to make for the next school year given some of the changes to curriculum I'm going to be able to make as a result of these new resources. With the monitors that were purchased I'm going to be able to allow students to work with a dual screen setup. This will allow students to start to experience how your work space can promote higher levels of efficiency. I'm also excited to be able to have students test out mobile applications they develop on native devices using the iPad and Samsung tables.

With the new resources I have available, I was able to convince my school to pay for some additional furniture to reorganize my room, which will allow for students view demonstrations and see visual aspects from the lesson more easily regardless of where they are in the classroom – while simultaneously keeping the teamwork learning environment that is so important to good CS instruction.

Overall, this project has allowed me to restructure the learning environment by improving the physical classroom, available technology, curriculum options, and potential instructional approaches. I can't emphasize how much this meant to my students this year – even though they only had a fraction of the year to benefit from these resources – and how much I know it will mean to students in the following years.

Thank you so much for your efforts to make CS education at Salem High School that much better!”

With gratitude,

Dr. Lupton