Online Courses-an overview

Online Courses 2013/14

Rationale

In its commitment to offering positive and sustained destinations for school leavers, Perth and Kinross is offering a number of online courses which offer senior phase students the opportunity to develop key skills that are valued in the current jobs marketplace. They are about achievement, not attainment

Courses- 5 general achievement courses

Pathway to law- OU Paid with OU assessment
Pathway to medicine- Free choice from thousands of courses plus learning log and peer collaboration. No formal assessment
Beginners’ Spanish– Edmodo/Scholar from web content with final task, assessed by PKC teacher
Beginners Mandarin-Edmodo/Scholar from web content with final task, assessed by PKC teacher
Starting and building a business- MOOC content from Udacity plus optional Alison courses and real world business setup. No formal assessment but opportunity to develop enterprise.

The Perth and Kinross Digital Literacy Award

App Developer
Web Developer
Games Developer
Digital Creativity
Blogging +Social Media

Perth and Kinross is offering an award upon successful completion of one of these online courses.

The award will be called ‘The Perth and Kinross Digital Literacy Award’ and consists of core units plus options. All of the specialist options will culminate in a final ‘real world’ project. This is decided by the student but guidance will be provided.

Mentoring and Assessment

Online mentoring and support will be provided by Codecademy and SDK support forums but VLE Coordinator will have overview and provide PKC mentoring/issue tracking

Final assessment will be by VLE coordinator and assembled team from Computing CIN and PCC PROGRAMME BOARD

There will be a presentation event in June 2014 where students will be expected to showcase their project work to the assessment panel and representatives from the business world.

Core Units

HTML
CSS

Options and additional course content

Games Developer: Javascript, J Query, MOOC course that involves practical games dev work https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255
Web Developer: Javascript, J Query, Python, Ruby on Rails. Final project to hand code a web application or website for a real world context. https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253
App Developer: Javascript, Phonegap/Android/XCode/Google SDK for app development. Final project to develop an app for a real-world situation of student’s choosing.
Digital Creativity: digital film production, editing and web upload. Final project to produce a commercial-quality digital movie for a real-world context
Blogging and Social Media: WordPress CMS will be blog platform; focus upon social media channel integration and how blog posting is central to this. Final project will be to develop a blog/website and social media integration for a real-world context.

The real world contexts

Marketing website/application for: business, social enterprise, band, extra curricular activity
School focus: whole school or department website/ application
Environmental: e.g. Work with RSPB to develop web presence to support protection of Black Grouse

Check out this TED talk video from Mitch Resnick about why kids need to learn to code

http://www.ted.com/talks/mitch_resnick_let_s_teach_kids_to_code.html