Rob MacDonald scrawled an equation on a whiteboard, graphed it, then asked the students in his advanced calculus class to write a formula to calculate slope at any point on the curve.
It was just the third day of school, and the seniors at Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill furiously went to work, with most punching numbers into calculators and scribbling in notebooks. But one student, Lucas Cassels, turned to his laptop and a programming language called Python, which he has used to write a basic software application that can complete the assignment for him. All he had to do was input MacDonald’s equation, pick a point, and the app spit out the slope.
“Everyone should learn coding so they can take shortcuts in math class,” Cassels said with a grin.
The school agrees. Beaver Country Day has launched a program this year to teach computer coding to every student, beginning with upperclassmen and eventually expanding down to sixth-graders. With leading technology companies pressing Massachusetts to make computer science classes available in every school system, Beaver Country Day is taking an unorthodox approach: Rather than teach it as a distinct course, Beaver is integrating coding into all of its subjects, experimenting with uses not only in math and science classes, but even in English and art.
via Coding blended in school lessons – Business – The Boston Globe.