BJC is a College Board-endorsed AP Computer Science Principles curriculum and professional development based on the themes of creativity and social impacts. Since 2012, we have provided professional development to more than 600 teachers throughout the U.S., reaching more than 5,000 students.
A list of suggested programming languages is provided in the Instructional Approaches section of the AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description (.pdf/2.05 MB). Though this is not a comprehensive list, it is a point of reference to determine what will work best for a student.
There is no need to go into your exam unprepared. Freely download the BJC Language Arts past papers below. Once the papers are downloaded, you can answer each question directly on the paper without printing. Click the links below to get the exact year you want.
BJC, The Beauty and Joy of Computing, is an AP Computer Science Principles curriculum that emphasizes the joy and complexity of creating visual computer programs and apps, balanced with critical reflection on both the potential benefits and harms of new computing technologies.
Comparing the Two AP Computer Science CoursesComputer ScienceCurricular FocusProblem solving and object-oriented programmingProgramming LanguageJavaEnd-of-Course Exam ExperienceMultiple-choice (single-select) Free-response questions
The Hello World AP CSP curriculum is a one-of-a-kind, where students explore computing topics and programming through Virtual Reality and Python!
Like all AP classes, AP Computer Science Principles can help build your resume for college and potentially earn you college credit. In the class, you can also learn useful knowledge. If you find the topic interesting and are ready to work hard, AP Computer Science Principles is worth it.
The average score for the exam is a 2.99, or just barely under passing. So, how hard is the AP Computer Science Principles exam? Out of 43 AP exams offered, 17 had a higher 5 rate than Computer Science Principles and 26 had a lower 5 rate. In terms of pass rate, 24 had a higher pass rate, and 19 had a lower pass rate.
The AP Computer Science A curriculum emphasizes the fundamental concepts and problem solving skills that Computer Science requires, using the Java programming language.
The CS Principles course does not have a fixed programming language; students are expected to understand programming concepts and algorithms using pseudocode and flowcharts.
Will colleges and universities accept AP Computer Science Principles scores for credit and placement? Over 950 colleges and universities offer credit and placement for AP CSP. The College Board is actively working with institutions to develop and publish their credit and placement policies for AP CSP.
The two exams differed majorly as AP Computer Science Principles was less stressful with 2/3 parts of the exam completed in class while AP Computer Science A was a classic AP exam with multiple choice sections and free response questions.
However, we can still look at the overall pass rates for all the students that take the AP® exams, see which ones do well across the board, and make choices to suit our interests....*Based on the pass rate of the respective AP® exam.Exam NameCalculus ABPassing Rate (3+)59.40%5 Rate24.40%4 Rate17.40%36 more columns•Mar 1, 2022
The Three Hardest AP ClassesAP Physics 1. Despite a reputation as one of the most difficult AP classes, Physics 1 is also one of the most popular—137,229 students took it in 2021. ... AP U.S. History. AP U.S. history is one of the hardest AP classes in the humanities and in general. ... AP Chemistry.
For most AP exams, the cutoff is 75% for a 5 and 75% for a 4.
Self-studying for this exam is logistically very difficult, though not entirely impossible. Due to the exam format, which relies on prolonged in-class, collaborative work to produce 40% of its score, you will need a teacher to facilitate the submission of your work.
Thanks to the generosity of Infosys Foundation USA, BJC is offering FREE BJC Computer Science Professional Development for 80 teachers at the Pathf...
BJC, The Beauty and Joy of Computing, is an AP Computer Science Principles curriculum that emphasizes the joy and complexity of creating visual com...
If you are a BJC teacher, and would like to prepare to lead BJC workshops, email [email protected], or complete our Train the Trainer workshop ap...
An AP CS Principles Curriculum. The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) is an introductory computer science curriculum developed at the University of California, Berkeley, intended for non-CS majors at the high school junior through undergraduate freshman level.
Snap! (formerly BYOB) is a visual, drag-and-drop programming language. It is an extended reimplementation of Scratch (a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab) that allows you to Build Your Own Blocks. It also features first class lists, first class procedures, and continuations. These added capabilities make it suitable for a serious introduction to computer science for high school or college students.
BJC uses Blown to Bits to teach the social implications of computing. This is a free book (downloadable PDF files) under the Creative Commons license.
These videos are topic based (less than 10 mins each) were used in our edX and SPOC courses.
Forum for all BJC teachers to ask each other for help, share best practices and knowledge, and to lean on each other. For access, fill out the linked form.
The BJC Curriculum. The authors of the BJC curriculum think that computer programming is one of the most satisfying of all human activities —it's generally fun (when it's not frustrating because of a bug you can't find), but it's what Seymour Papert called "hard fun," mind-stretching and, because the authority is the computer rather than ...
It's not easy to preserve beauty and joy when translating a course taught by its authors into a curriculum for widespread use. Too much scaffolding in a project and the joy is gone; too little scaffolding and the student feels helpless and incompetent.
Just as the idea of abstraction is central to, and inseparable from, the idea of programming, the practice of abstraction is central to programming. We constantly encourage students to use layers of abstraction to structure a programming project.
BJC has a strong design and programming focus, using the visual programming language Snap! and a collaborative, exploratory approach where students work in teams to bring their own unique creations to life.
BJC teaches strong fundamental concepts of programming. In BJC students use Snap!, an accessible but full-featured block-based programming language, to explore concepts ranging from loops and variables up through recursion and higher-order functions. BJC focuses on collaboration.
BJC emphasizes that computing is for everyone, and is a matter of equity. Computing is a vital skill in the 21st century; everyone needs to have input into new computing innovations. BJC emphasizes equity and engages students and teachers in discussing how we can promote it. BJC is well-supported.
BJC PD workshops are led by BJC Lead Teachers who have attended a BJC Summer PD workshop, taught the BJC course in high school, and participated in our ongoing “Train the Trainer” professional development program. The workshop content is based on the BJC curriculum, but is designed to also prepare teachers for facilitating hands-on programming ...
BJC is a College Board-endorsed AP Computer Science Principles curriculum and professional development based on the themes of creativity and social impacts. Since 2012, we have provided professional development to more than 600 teachers throughout the U.S., reaching more than 5,000 students.
The creators of BJC are developing a new course for middle school and early high school that teaches a functional approach to programming, emphasizing the flow of information through functions — rather than emphasizing iteration and commands — and including exciting projects in graphics, data, and media.
The Beauty and Joy of Computing is taught across the country, with over 600 teachers from 41 states applying to attend our teacher preparation workshops. Teachers are also using our curriculum in Canada, Ireland, Guam, Hong Kong, South Korea, Indonesia, Senegal, Cape Verde, Nepal, Austria, Italy, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Germany.
beginning of content: Students can develop any program they choose (e.g., an app, a game, art design, etc.) with their choice of programming language to meet all the criteria in the Create performance task.
Note: While teacher may choose to do some programming instruction using HTML, it should be noted that HTML is not an acceptable programming language to use when completing the Create performance task.
Aspect-oriented programming is designed to perform cross-cutting tasks, which can be any code that may be repeated many times by different methods, which cannot be completely structured into a separate module. Accordingly, AOP lets us keep this outside of the main code and declare it vertically.
To move further in this topic, let's first get to know the main concepts of AOP. Advice — Additional logic or code called from a join point. Advice can be performed before, after, or instead of a join point (more about them below). Possible types of advice:
Next, for a better understanding of AOP, we will look at small "Hello World"-style examples. Right of the bat, I'll note that our examples will use compile-time weaving. First, we need to add the following dependency in our pom.xml file:
Do I have to complete the AP Course Audit process before I start teaching this course?
Are students required to use the AP Digital Portfolio to take the AP Exam and receive an AP score?