Ninth grade students enroll in the full-year Life Skills course that includes physical education, technology, sustainability, and Self and Community. In the technology unit, taught during the fall semester, students gain exposure to various digital tools and platforms used at DA, including cloud technology, collaborative tools, multimedia presentation software, and student information systems (currently Veracross).
Students also explore emerging ethical and social issues, such as information privacy, big data, and artificial intelligence. The technology seminar portion of Life Skills provides students with the skills to stay engaged and competitive in a digital classroom environment. The class is structured as a portfolio exercise and concludes with a test. Successful completion exempts students from the required graduation course credit and allows them to earn administrative privileges on their DA-issued laptop.
Note: Students new to DA in grades 10, 11 or 12 who do not have a computer science credit must demonstrate technology proficiency equivalent to that of ninth graders who complete the Grade 9 Life Skills technology seminar. Students unable to demonstrate proficiency must complete a computer science course to fulfill the 0.5-credit graduation requirement.
Foster an inclusive computing culture.
Collaborate around computing.
Recognize and define computational problems.
Develop and use abstractions.
Create computational artifacts.
Test and refine computational artifacts.
Communicate about computing.
Introduction to Programming is perfectly suited both for students who are curious about computer programming and for students who are confident in their plan to pursue additional computer science classes at DA or in college.
In Robotics 1, students explore theoretical and practical engineering and programming skills while preparing for interscholastic competition. Students study computer programming and principles of mechanical engineering, design artificial intelligence behaviors, and build basic robots.
In Robotics 2, students build on concepts covered in Robotics 1 and apply knowledge about electrical materials, electric circuits, electromagnetism, computer science and mechanics.
In Game Design, students design and code games using Python and the Pygame library, exploring 2D design, object-oriented programming, sprite animation, user interactivity and game interfaces.
This full-year course is a broadly focused exploration of Java programming that mirrors a 100-level college computer science course. The first third covers procedural programming, emphasizing Java’s foundations derived from C and C++.
This course is a semester-long, focused exploration of advanced data structures in C++, spanning array lists, vectors, linked lists, stacks, queues, binary trees, heaps, dictionaries and lookup tables.
This semester-long course delves into machine learning, automation algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and predictive analytics using Python’s data analysis and visualization libraries.