Ask Slashdot: Good Homeschool Curriculum For CS??

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?"

CS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Word Processing? Spreadsheets?

Are you sure its CS that she wants to teach?

Give them a system they can hack

[betterunixthanunix]

Give your kids a system they can hack -- give them the ability to touch any part of the system they want, and your ability to teach them about programming and CS will be greatly enhanced. The last thing you should want is to teach your children that there are some parts of their computer or computer science that are off limits to them, or that they can only touch if they work for some large corporation.

They should ask you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know, with a masters degree, something about what goes into the field?

Your mother is already qualified to and is teaching computer science, directly by not directly teaching it. Have her teach them about logic and calculus, i guess. What a strange question, really.

Re:Troll?

[uofitorn]

In the submitter's defense, a CS degree from one university to the next can differ wildly (although to hold a M.S.. well.. maybe it was from Devry). My friend and I both entered the CS curriculum at different state schools. Mine was in the top tier, his wasn't. He learned how to program C++ his first year. I was told that we were expected to know the language in whatever course we were taking, and if not, to be able to learn it quickly enough to take the course. We weren't to be taught programming. We started with the CLR algorithms book our second semester along with linear algebra and all the other associated mathematics courses.

Later on I returned to school to finish my M.S. while I was employed with another, less prestigious, university because the tuition was free and the courses were within walking distance during work hours. The curriculum was incredibly easy. A favorite anecdote of mine is from my first graduate course I took there. Since I was used to the level of work required from my undergraduate education, I put in an incredible amount of time on my first project. Thinking it was still subpar and prepared to receive a failing grade, I was shocked when the professor handed back my graded assignment and whispered to me "nice job".

Re:Homeschool?

[Wyatt Earp]

I had to be home schooled for a few years because of Cancer. Basically I'd miss so much school because of chemo and sickness I couldn't qualify as a full time student.

Then I went back, same friends as before but much more advanced math, science and reading levels. I was doing math, science and reading at high school graduation levels from 4th grade on.

And now I work in public education, no douchebag parents, no being out of touch with reality, no religion.

Home schooling is not a joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used these successfully when home schooling my children for any of the Microsoft Office products.

http://www.technokids.com

Re:You don't understand what CS is

[AngryNick]

Come on Slashdot, be reasonable. Maybe these topics don't represent what would be found in a traditional CS curriculum for college, but they sound like the very subjects that a pre-CS course at the high school level would be wise to teach.

Exactly. Many computer classes in middle and high school are mostly fluff...at best review for kids who have been using a computer since birth.

I've taught my partially homeschooled kids (10 and 13) how to use the common OSs and basic tools (OSX, Ubuntu, Google Apps, Open Office), how to create and manage content (docs, spreadsheets, graphs, simple web pages, blogs, wiki), navigating and managing their drives (so I don't have to help them find their crap after they've created it), and how to be pretty much self-sufficient on their machines (installing apps, patching, upgrading distros, connecting to printers, etc.). When they get to be 14 or 15, I'll start them on databases, writing queries, and maybe writing a few scripts. At that point they'll be on their own to decide what they want to do with computers. My goal is not to make them CS majors, but to give them enough information to decide if they want to be a CS major...and the skills necessary to use a computer as a tool.