Goals of the Microsoft MakeCode curriculum
The College Board certified the Microsoft MakeCode curriculum for AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) as an endorsed curriculum. To be certified, the curriculum must align with the curriculum framework standards created by the College Board.
The Microsoft MakeCode curriculum is:
- Designed for teachers with little or no prior computer science experience.
- Centered on project-based learning.
- Highly collaborative.
- Designed with a focus on formative assessment.
- Created by an AP CSP teacher and tested in an AP CSP classroom.
- Web-based for flexibility and accessibility.
- Free and open source.
The programming units use Microsoft MakeCode Arcade. The course uses MakeCode Arcade for several reasons.
- It's free and accessible.
- Hardware or game licenses are not needed.
- It uses games to engage a diversity of students in computing education and makes learning about computer science fun and exciting for kids.
- It's a creative outlet for students to express themselves; they can create the artwork and music for their games.
- Game development lends itself to the process of iterative development, where students build multiple versions of their program, continually improving and adding new features.
- The artifacts students create are easy to share.
The MakeCode curriculum centers around the five big ideas and incorporates the six computational thinking practices. Play the video to learn about the content covered in each unit.
The curriculum covers a full academic year for high school students with 45-to-50-minute classes. Teachers can change the lessons for other schedules. Review the MakeCode syllabus and the course’s pacing guide options to learn more about the curriculum. Educators don't have to teach AP CSP to use the materials. Because it's open source, they can change the materials to fit any computer science course they teach. Teachers who plan to teach the AP course, can use the pre-approved syllabus for their course audit.