Minnesota's leader in K-12 computer science education
Creating opportunities for students to widen their perspectives on the world using technology and see themselves as technologists with future careers in the broad scope of creative and technical fields.
Our vision:
Provide high quality computer science opportunities & instruction to all students. BPS aims to empower students with the skills and knowledge necessary to joyfully and creatively solve real-world challenges through computer science.
Our mission:
Eliminate barriers to computer science education and provide all Bloomington Public School students with opportunities to learn and thrive in computer science.
Developing Thinkers
Students learn computational thinking skills through computer science experiences that help in all subject areas. Every day our students are learning about problem solving, logic, patterns, breaking things into smaller parts, writing steps and rules, and more. These thinking skills help students now with reading, writing, and math and prepare them to be the thinkers, problem solvers, and computer scientists of tomorrow
Empowering Students
Here, students learn the skills, knowledge, and mindsets necessary to leverage the power of computers to solve problems and express themselves. Our Next Technologies for Learning plan identifies computer science as a critical component to building creative problem solvers and providing pathways to career and college. In the 21st century, we need citizens who are not only digitally literate, but able to solve problems and innovate through computer science.
Engaging Experiences
We create opportunities for students to experience computer science through physical movement, robotics, on screen coding programs, real world design challenges, and creating solutions and expressions of themselves. Our students make “computers” out of paper, make their friends into “robots”, and tell stories by coding on screen.
Foundational concepts include:
- Creative Computing: Storytelling using block coding, multimedia production, and unplugged lessons that help students with the problem solving skills used in computer science.
- Physical Computing: Robotics.
- Problem Solving and Impacts on Society: Applying learned skills to solve a problem or challenge facing a community.
BPS’s K-12+ computer science pathway is created in collaboration with the University of Minnesota’s Learning & Technologies Collaborative. The program is designed to maximize learning through the use of best practices in computer science education. The University of Minnesota evaluates student outcomes of the program to ensure positive impact.
Many career fields depend on solutions created by computer science such as robotics, applications, websites, data analysis tools, records, or artificial intelligence. To ensure that all students are equipped with the knowledge and skills to thrive in a connected computational world, Bloomington Public Schools continues to expand its K-12+ pathway for computer science education. At the core of the computer science work is a commitment to equity and representation within computer science education.
Goals
Elementary School
- Provide instruction to all students.
- Generate excitement about computing.
- Develop problem solving and critical thinking skills.
- Foster creativity and collaboration.
Middle School
- Provide instruction to all students.
- Make instruction engaging, relevant, creative, and collaborative.
- Develop strong foundational knowledge and skills.
- Explore issues raised by societal impacts of computing.
High School
- Offer introductory and AP courses at all schools.
- Broaden participation, to represent the student population as a whole.
- Strengthen and apply knowledge and skills, in order to engineer solutions to real-world problems.