Tools

We believe learning to utilize computer science tools is an important way that students connected with and contribute to the world of practicing computer scientists. By learning to use tools that are commonplace in industry, academia, and open-source computer science practice, students are both more conneccted to the culture of computer science and more prepared to take one roles as computer scientists.

Technology Used Across Both Courses

Python
Atom Text Editor
Terminal, including Xcode Command Line Tools
git and Github

Technology Used in Grade 9

Jupyter Notebooks

Technology Used in Grade 10

Raspberry Pi

TODO: expand this into a full section on asynchronous collaboration as a teaching strategy (this is MWC's answer to nycsdf 9-12.DL.2 -- "communicate and work collaboratively... in real-time and asynchronously" -- which isn't taught in one lab but woven through the whole course this way instead). Lab text used to reference Discord by name for this ("ask on Discord"); those references have been genericized, since Discord isn't an option for every classroom. Sketch:

Whatever async channel a class uses (Discord, Slack, Teams, a class forum, etc.), the important thing is that students have somewhere to ask each other for help outside of class time, and a norm that doing so is expected, not a last resort.
This is the same underlying practice as the debugging-strategies note in Help Queue -- getting help (synchronously, in class, or asynchronously, outside it) is a skill worth teaching explicitly, not just a logistics detail.