Ask Slashdot: Good Homeschool Curriculum For CS?? 364
dingo_kinznerhook writes "I grew up in a homeschooling family, and was homeschooled through high school. ( I went on to get a B.S. and M.S. in computer science; my mom has programming experience and holds bachelor's degrees in physics and math — she's pretty qualified to teach.) Mom is still homeschooling my younger brother and sister and is looking for a good computer science curriculum that covers word processing, spreadsheets, databases, intro to programming, intro to operating systems, etc. Does the Slashdot readership know of a high school computer science curriculum suitable for homeschooling that covers these topics?"
You don't understand what CS is (Score:5, Informative)
Dietel & Dietel (Score:5, Informative)
As far as intro to programming goes, when I took High School Computer Science, our textbook was the Dietel & Dietel C++ How to Program. It was definitely aimed at the beginner to intermediate level programmers and did a pretty good job at explaining fundamentals of programming to a bunch of high school sophomores and making it understandable. As I recall, you can probably go through several chapters per class because it's not so dense and impenetrable that you need bash your way through.
Here's a link to the 7th edition: http://www.amazon.com/How-Program-7th-Paul-Deitel/dp/0136117260 [amazon.com]
However, there are plenty of copies of 6th editions floating around for pretty cheap. If I recall correctly, copies of the 5th edition are even available for download for free, which makes the curriculum that much more cost-effective.
Anyway, best of luck, hope that helps.
programming practice (Score:5, Informative)
For little live code practice problems in python and java there's http://codingbat.com/ [codingbat.com]
There's Google's complete free python class at http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/ [google.com]
For a huge library of cs assignments, try the nifty assignments archive at http://nifty.stanford.edu/ [stanford.edu]
Re:programming practice (Score:5, Informative)
Don't Forget MIT's OpenCourseWare Intro to Computer Science lectures. It might move at a faster pace than for a high school student, but it should give your mother some idea as to how to structure the lessons and concepts.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/video-lectures/ [mit.edu]
Re:Dietel & Dietel (Score:5, Informative)
Good advice.
My thought: It doesn't matter where you learn or how you learn, the fundamentals are universal.
AQA [aqa.org.uk] offers a suggested schooling curriculum and past papers for the exams they set. Sure it's UK not US, but C is C, HTML is HTML, MS Office is MS Office and small furry creatures from alpha centauri make great soup if you put them in the blender for long enough.
Re:Homeschool? (Score:5, Informative)
Those kids will grow up to be out of touch with reality, thinking they're the center of their tiny universe while being hopeless at everything other than their field of speciality.
You have no idea what you are talking about. I homeschooled my kids and they have a larger and more diverse circle of friends than you can possibly imagine. Unlike school kids, their friends are also from a wider variety of ages because my children didn't experience the age-range apartheid that you would consider 'normal' where the majority of the children you would interact with each day were within 12 months of your own age. My daughter's 16th birthday party had more than 70 kids and 30 adults on the guest list - and these really are close friends who she has spent more quality time with growing up than anything you get out in the school yard between classes.
I'm a software engineer, but for university the kids have gone into fields as widely different as biotech, justice/law, arts/language and design. One of them went and lived in Beijing for a year to immerse herself in the culture/language when she turned 18. Another has travelled to Japan, China and the USA regularly since they were 17 years old. At 13 years old, one of the kids went and stayed with a friend's family in the USA for three months - even saved up the airfare on her own by doing babysitting around the neighborhood.
I guess that I wouldn't agree with the same homeschooling that you don't agree with - but unfortunately for you the reality of what the vast majority of homeschoolers are doing has nothing to do with your narrow prejudiced ideas. For every homeschooling parent who is keeping their kids in the basement, I'll show you 10 school kids who are wasting their lives and potential without any help from their parents at all.
It's your call.
--D
Computer Science Unplugged (Score:4, Informative)
For the younger crowd, I can highly recommend Computer Science Unplugged [csunplugged.org]. It is a great introduction to the fundamentals of computer science - algorithmic basics, information coding and entropy, finite state automata, and a bunch of other good stuff. Interestingly, the entire course is done without a computer. It has exposition, exercises, and games that reinforce those fundamentals.
It's about 10 hours of coursework, it's free, and it's geared toward the 8-12 year old crowd. My 7-year old didn't have any troubles with it, and was always hungry for more. The novelty of teaching computer science without touching a computer is also compelling.
Now, if anyone can recommend some good coursework on introduction to programming and basic algorithms for the 8-10 set, I'd appreciate it. I haven't found any good educational materials for Scratch (it's all pretty ad-hoc and amateurish), and I think Alice is a bit much for sit-you-down-and-start-programming. Any personal experiences?
Re:Homeschool? (Score:4, Informative)
Growing up, I played on the same soccer team for years. One of the kids I became friends with was home schooled. His parents were both friendly, sociable, well educated (and from the looks of their house, doing quite well financially).
The kid was as normal as anyone else on the team. He had plenty of friends and did pretty good with the girls too. Honestly, looking back, he seemed to be a few years ahead of the curve; and was one of the most genuinely nice kids I knew. I don't know where the stereotype of home-schooled kids being freaks came from; but in my limited experience, not true.