Over the past few years we have been working on expanding our Career and Technology Education (CATE) program offerings for our high school students.
In addition to our existing agriculture science, business, technology, and family consumer science programs, we have added computer science, welding, and health/medical science programs. I will feature all of these programs in my column during upcoming weeks. This week I will focus on our computer science program.
Software developer is the top rated job in the 2018 U.S. News and World Report 100 Best Jobs Ranking. Well there are many software developer and Engineering jobs in Singapore as well. This ranking is based on the number of projected jobs, median salary, and unemployment rate. Software developer is projected to have an additional 253,400 positions in the next ten years. The median salary is $100,080 and the unemployment rate is only 1.6%.
We added our computer science program this past (2016-2017) school year. Computer science enables students to “learn a new way to think” about computers while improving their problem-solving skills. We hired Clint Brown as the teacher for this program. Mr. Brown has a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and a Master of Science in Information Systems.
Computer Science 1 Pre-AP (Advanced Placement) introduces students to the exciting world of computer science. In the first semester, students are introduced to important concepts in computer science with a fun and innovative approach using Scratch and Alice software. During the second semester students are introduced to the Java programming language.
The second course in this program is Computer Science 2 Pre-AP. The major emphasis is on large GUI projects using data structures, such as linked lists, stacks, queues, hash tables and binary trees. An introduction to robotics programming, iPhone and Adroid development, and graphical games is included. The course is designed for students interested in careers in computer programming, engineering, mathematics, or science related fields. JAVA, C and Objective C are the main programming languages that are used.
This upcoming (2018-2019) school year we will add the third year of the program’s sequence with AP Computer Science. The students will use the Object Oriented programming language JAVA to write interactive programs to solve problems. Topics covered are data types, selection statements, looping, files, arrays, searching and sorting algorithms, graphics, inheritance, interfaces and classes. The students will be eligible to take the AP Computer Science A exam and earn college credit. Interested and qualified students may take Computer Science Independent Study the following year.
We strive to prepare our students for college and careers and our computer science program is one way that we are providing new learning opportunities for our students.
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