THIS COURSE IS A PREREQUISITE FOR MOBILE MAKERS 1

STUDENTS WILL LEARN THE 5 BIG IDEAS BY DEVELOPING iOS MOBILE APPS IN SWIFTUI

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COURSE CALENDAR

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LEARNING JOURNAL TEMPLATE

COURSE SYLLABUS

COLLEGE BOARD COURSE SYLLABUS

About the course

The AP® Computer Science Principles course is designed to be the equivalent of a first-semester introduction to computer science course at the college level. It focuses on five Big Ideas that encompass foundational concepts of computer science.

This course is taught in a Mac computer lab and uses the approved Apple Curriculum for the AP Computer Science Principles course.  

A note from Apple  Education:

 As a College Board Endorsed Provider for the 2023-2024 school year, Apple’s Develop in Swift AP® CS Principles course helps students learn key computing concepts, building a solid foundation in programming with Swift while preparing for the AP® Computer Science Principles exam. They’ll learn about the impact of computing and apps on society, economies, and culture while exploring iOS app development. Lessons take students through the app design process: brainstorming, planning, prototyping, and evaluating an app of their own. Students are presented with new illustrated, fictional stories that follow a group of students and their use of technology helping them to explore the technology behind their activities — encryption, compression, parallel computing — as well as the possible impact of sharing personal information, targeted advertising, authentication and more. 

1.  Creative Development

2.  Data

3.  Algorithms and Programming

4.  Computing Systems and Networks

5.  Impact on Computing

Each Big Idea is divided into a series of Enduring Understandings that students should understand about that Big Idea. These are broken up into specific Learning Objectives, which are linked to one or more Essential Knowledge statements.

Students will learn the Essential Knowledge statements to demonstrate an understanding of a particular Learning Objective. In general, each Learning Objective covers about one class period worth of material.

In addition, the AP® Computer Science Principles course contains six Computational Thinking Practices that describe how students will explore the different Learning Objectives. Students can think of the Learning Objectives as the what and the Computational Thinking Practices as the how.

• P1: Computational Solution Design. Students will engage in this practice as they define and develop their own solutions to exercises in the Xcode playgrounds that accompany the lessons. Choice and collaboration with others guide students' creation and evaluation of computational solutions.
• P2: Algorithms and Program Development. Students will use language and pseudocode to represent algorithms in various unplugged activities. They’ll implement and apply algorithms in Swift throughout the course, particularly in the Create Task portion in which they use Xcode to create an original app or playground.
• P3: Abstraction in Program Development. Students will engage in abstraction throughout the course. Unit 2: QuestionBot App particularly focuses on the development of functions as a strategy to manage the complexity of code.
• P4: Code Analysis. Students will troubleshoot and debug sections of their code that don’t work. They’ll also use Xcode playgrounds to see the effects of their changes in real time, which will help them analyze and fix problems.
• P5: Computing Innovations. A number of Design activities ask students to discuss the impacts of computing innovations with partners. Students will also explore collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data in Unit 3: BouncyBall App.
• P6: Responsible Computing. Students explore safe and ethical uses of computing devices, particularly in the episodes between each lesson. The episodes follow the story of a student film club and the various ways they use apps, networks, and social media to plan an event.