The New A.P.: Coding Lite

My boy has been taking the new AP course this year. It is project based and they use SNAP! [0]. I believe the choice of language is at the discretion of the instructor. SNAP! certainly has a better pedigree as a pedagogical tool than Java and is far more accessible than Netbeans/Eclipse/Jetbrains or Notepad. [1]

The curriculum it replaces uses Java and is a conversion of lesson plans that were originally in Pascal. The old curriculum is structured as a set of facts about Java and OOP (instead of Pascal and structured programming).

The difference I see is the computer science is taught as a creative domain rather than elevating a programming language/paradigm to a critical set of facts such as one might see in a chemistry course. Anyway, I think the experts are right on this one.

[0]: http://snap.berkeley.edu/

[1]: Probably better suited for high school pedagogy than Racket, even though I hate to admit it.