Fine Arts Survey
This course is designed to further your understanding of the Fine Arts. Fine Art refers to music, dance, visual art, and drama (including theatre and film). Students will learn the essential role the Arts have played in word societies and cultures. The Fine Arts are important because they are expressive. They allow us to feel things that are only possible through the exposure to the arts. My goal is to expose you to a variety of art examples from different cultures and times. We will discuss the social used of art as well as how the arts function as a maker of time and culture.
Introduction to Computational Thinking
This year-long course introduces students to the basic ideas of computational thinking and its applications to problem solving in STEM fields. Students will use an open source, Web-based programming environment to create code for simple drawings, animations and simulations, through which they learn how to use abstraction, decomposition and pattern recognition to model problems and arrive at an algorithmic solution. Students taking Algebra 1 concurrently with this course will benefit the most, because many examples are drawn from Algebra 1, so that students can visualize and manipulate the mathematical concepts in a more concrete form.