Code School Finland AI Curriculum

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CertifiedEducation quality
05/2020
Code School Finland AI Curriculum

Code School Finland AI Curriculum

Code School Finland
Programming, Robotics and AI
Code school Finland provides lesson plans and materials for teaching programming

Code School Finland provides training and teaching materials. The AI Curriculum is a learning path that starts from the basics of programming and technology, and aims for deeper understanding on programming, robotics and artificial intelligence.

Age groups 
Preschool
Elementary
Middle school
High School
Languages 
English
Finnish
Platform 
Browser-based
Desktop Windows
Non-digital product
Registration 
Not required
Offline play 
Internet required
Pictures
Videos
Pedagogy
Educational Quality
Learning Goals

The pedagogical analysis covers how the product supports learning of the identified skills. The student’s role is assessed by four contrary pair parameters, which are selected to cover the most essential aspects on the use of the product.

Passive
Active
The solution supports a strong student's agency in learning and requires the user to choose what and how to learn. The solution provides pre-curated material and demonstrations to help students to understand what type of final outcomes they're expected to achieve in the different coding tasks. The user is required to acquire and use new information in order to progress in the pen & paper activities and programming activities.
Rehearse
Construct
The solution enforces learning by doing. Since all assignments require students to create and use imagination the solution supports learning new things through creative tasks. Well designed assessment sections in the students' materials give a solid structure for formative assessment practices.Open-ended problem solving is continuously supported through the solutions' project-based & phenomenon-based learning approach.
Linear
Non-linear/Creative
The solution follows linear user progression, since the curriculum makes the learning journey systematic and structured. This is a valid approach, since in programming many things need to be learned in chronological order and it also allows teachers to schedule the progress accurately. However, inside the coding assignments students have a lot of freedom to explore and choose what to do and how to do things. Teachers are very well guided to support explorative approach.
Individual
Collaborative
Promoting peer-learning systematically and continuously is one of the main pedagogical principles of the Curriculum and this is made very clear in the teacher's guidebook. Collaboration is facilitated in a way that is truly meaningful and beneficial in helping students to achieve learning goals. There are lots of pen & paper and programming activities where students are guided to collaborate with classmates and the solution provides guidance for constructive collaboration.

The following are the high educational quality aspects in this product.

The curriculum is extremely thorough with a vast variety of demonstrations, assignments, and tools for formative assessment.
The pedagogical design of the curriculum is as good as it gets and the pedagogical principles and guidelines on how teachers' are expected to support students' learning are explained extremely well.
Combining the Scratch coding environment with the high-quality Curriculum provides a turnkey solution for educators to teach programming, robotics, and basics of artificial intelligence.

The supported learning goals are identified by matching the product with several relevant curricula descriptions on this subject area. The soft skills are definitions of learning goals most relevant for the 21st century. They are formed by taking a reference from different definitions of 21st century skills and Finnish curriculum.

Subject based learning goals

Create and debug simple programs.
Use logical reasoning to predict the behaviour of simple programs.
Use technology purposefully to create, organise, store, manipulate and retrieve digital content.
Recognise common uses of information technology beyond school.
Understand what algorithms are; how they are implemented as programs on digital devices; and that programs execute by following precise and unambiguous instructions.
Design, write and debug programs that accomplish specific goals, including controlling or simulating physical systems; solve problems by decomposing them into smaller parts.
Use sequence, selection, and repetition in programs; work with variables and various forms of input and output.
Use logical reasoning to explain how some simple algorithms work and to detect and correct errors in algorithms and programs.
Use search technologies effectively, appreciate how results are selected and ranked, and be discerning in evaluating digital content.
Select, use and combine a variety of software (including internet services) on a range of digital devices to design and create a range of programs, systems and content that accomplish given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information.
Learn to analyse problems in computational terms
Make appropriate use of data structures.
Achieve challenging goals, including collecting and analysing data and meeting the needs of known users.
Be responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.
Design and develop modular programs that use procedures or functions.
Understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation.
Understand how data of various types can be represented and manipulated digitally, in the form of binary digits.
Understand how numbers can be represented in binary, and be able to carry out simple operations on binary numbers.
Understand several key algorithms that reflect computational thinking.
Understand simple Boolean logic and some of its uses in circuits and programming.
Understand the hardware and software components that make up computer systems.
Undertake creative projects that involve selecting, using, and combining multiple applications, preferably across a range of devices.
Use logical reasoning to compare the utility of alternative algorithms for the same problem.
Use two or more programming languages, at least one of which is textual, to solve a variety of computational problems.

Soft skills learning goals

Practicing strategic thinking
Practicing logical reasoning, algorithms and programming through making
Using technology for interaction and collaboration
Using technology to express one’s emotions and experiences
Practicing persistent working
Practicing to take responsibility of one's own learning
Practicing to set one's own learning goals
Practicing to evaluate one's own learning
Creating requirements for creative thinking
Practicing creative thinking
Encouraging students to be innovative and express new ideas
Practicing to use arts as a way to express
Developing problem solving skills
Practicing to notice causal connections
Practicing to create questions and make justifiable arguments based on observations
Practicing to look things from different perspectives
Learning to build information on top of previously learned
Encouraging to build new information and visions
Learning to combine information to find new innovations
Practicing to notice links between subjects learned
Practicing to work with others
Learning to listen other people’s opinions
Practicing to give, get and reflect feedback
Encouraging positive attitude towards working life
Learning to plan and organize work processes
Practicing versatile ways of working
Connecting subjects learned at school to skills needed at working life
Practicing logical reasoning to understand and interpret information in different forms
Experiencing and exploring sounds and music from different sources
Using technology as a part of explorative and creative process
Learning to acquire, modify and produce information in different forms
Practising to understand visual concepts and shapes and observe their qualities
Building common knowledge of technological solutions and their meaning in everyday life
Using technology resources for problem solving
Understanding technological system operations through making
Using technological resources for finding and applying information

The Finnish Educational Quality Certificate

Our Quality Evaluation Method is an academically sound approach to evaluating a product’s pedagogical design from the viewpoint of educational psychology.

The method has been developed with university researchers and all evaluators are carefully selected Finnish teachers with a master's degree in education.

More about the evaluation