Weaving computing into all middle school disciplines

Abstract

In order to get students interested in computing, we teach middle school teachers of different disciplines programming with Alice and work with them on integrating computing into their discipline. Alice provides an interface for novices to create animations easily and quickly, which is attractive to and fun for students. We have been developing Alice curriculum materials for integrating computing into middle school disciplines for six years. Although our target audience is middle school, our materials are used by teachers from elementary school to introductory college level. This paper describes our newest curriculum materials for several disciplines developed by both us and our teachers. Our newest curriculum materials include tutorials, sample projects, and challenges, which are projects with missing pieces. We also discuss our recent outreach efforts with middle school students.