For 2024, the Moisés Itzkowich Foundation has provided funding for a range of very important, but less glamorous needs of running a school: managing curriculum and promoting classes. One of the major results of this funding is that we have managed to improve our curriculum in really important ways.
Our old curriculum requires students to edit their code in Eclipse, a professional development environment. We are proud to start students off with pro tools, but installing this software is difficult when we teach in schools, and impossible when students have Chromebooks. For online students, we have to run internet-based remote desktops for students who can’t install software, which is expense.
With the help of the Itzkowich Foundation, we cared a new system for managing curriculum. For beginner’s Python lessons, we are implementing the lessons in Trinket, a web based editor that runs Python in the browser, letting us deploy lessons entirely on the Web. And for lessons in Java, we converted the lessons to use GitHub CodeSpaces, a remote computer system that has a web-based editor.
Using this new curriculum, we can deploy our lessons very quickly, allowing us to run one hour Tech Club events at schools, libraries and rec-centers, giving us a much better way to reach even more students. Thank you to the Itzkowich Foundation for supporting this important part of our infrastructure.
