About

A formal program in computer science began in Hackley School’s math department in the 1980’s. Designed to teach problem solving methodology, the first courses introduced problem solving of non-computer based problems and built up to problems that computers solve well. Using teaching languages such as BASIC and Pascal to tell the machine what to do, students learned computer science concepts through the practice of writing code. In the early 90’s, Hackley School established Computer Department, bringing the computer science classes out of the Mathematics Department and expanding the course base into other areas of computing always keeping an eye to problem solving approaches.

While the languages we use to tell the computer what to do has changed over the years and the focus has moved from structured to object oriented programming the problem solving methodology stays the same. Also as students now come to school more fluent in computer application skills, we have refocused our instruction in lower grades towards problem solving and computer science. Recent restructuring of upper level classes to fit better into students’ schedules has spurred enrollment and courses now include web programming and robotics.

While there is little original content on this site, it is used to aggregate resources we are finding about computer science education and to make it easy to stay informed on the tools and trends in the field. The pages focus on the tools used at Hackley and the school’s computer science educators maintain the site.

We hope you enjoy the content gathered here and find it useful. Please help us promote the importance of teaching computer science and spread the word about the resources on this blog.

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