Beauty and Joy of Computing

This page is designed to help keep teachers informed of the developers' current progress revising this curriculum.

Last site update on 09/25/24: Accessibility improvements, equity improvements, and minor image fixes.
Update on 06/21/24: Adjusting the first two pages of Unit 1 to start with game creation right away and to allow teachers flexibility in how their students save Snap! projects.
Update on 12/22/23: Adding project based assessments for Units 6–8, adding Spanish translation of Unit 8.
Update on 11/17/23: Adding Spanish translation of Unit 7.
Update on 11/10/23: Adding Spanish translation of Unit 6 and AP Create Task pages (additional units forthcoming), and other minor revisions and improvements.
Update on 10/06/23: Adding Spanish translation of Unit 5 (additional units forthcoming), updates to AP Create Task pages, improvements to Spanish translations of Unit 1, and other minor revisions and improvements.
Update on 8/19/23: Adding Spanish translation of Units 2-4, fixing links to video playlists on Teacher Resources page, improving page loading, improving layout on mobile devices, and other minor revisions and improvements.
Update on 6/23/23: Adding section about "Computer Scientists @ Work" boxes to Introduction to Teacher Guide.
Update on 6/16/23: Adding Spanish translation of Unit 1, adding additional "Computer Scientists @ Work" boxes (see 1.2.3, 1.4.2, 1.4.4, 2.2.2, 3.2.4, 3.4.2, 4.1.3, 4.2.6, 4.3.4, and 5.5.3), moving solutions and summative assessments in Teacher Guide behind individual teacher accounts (for access, please sign up here), updating images, fixing and removing broken links, other minor revisions and improvements.

Previous Updates

Update on 6/16/22: Adding additional teacher supports to Units 6-8 Teacher Guide overview pages, adding and revising "Computer Scientists @ Work" boxes (see 1.5.1, 2.1.3, 2.4.1, 3.1.6, 3.5.1, 4.1.2, and 4.2.4), revising Unit 7 solutions, updating video links, other minor revisions and improvements.
Update on 12/16/21: Adding additional teacher supports to Units 4 and 5 Teacher Guide overview pages, minor vocab box edits throughout curriculum, changing "higher order function" to "higher-order function," adding project based assessments for Unit 2, making Google Drive files automatically open as copies, other minor revisions and improvements.
Update on 9/10/21: Adding additional teacher supports to Units 2 and 3 Teacher Guide overview pages, other minor revisions and improvements.
Update on 8/22/21: Adding additional teacher supports to Units 1 and 2 Teacher Guide overview pages, adding a "Keeping a Programming Journal" page to Unit 1 Lab 3, various smaller revisions and improvements.
Update on 6/27/21: additional Teacher Guide resources (guided notes worksheets, formative assessment questions, and unit student programming journals for Unit 2—more units forthcoming before fall), Mapping from AP CSP Standards to BJC, improvements to BJC Vocabulary Index, revisions to Unit 5 Lab 2 Disease Spread Project, improvements to lab solutions.
Update on 1/31/21: Solutions for optional projects, end-of-unit review pages to recap specific types of content from each unit (Vocabulary, On the AP Exam, and Self-Check Questions), a BJC Vocabulary Index to recap vocabulary from across the year, bringing back "Making a Kaleidoscope" as Unit 2 optional project, animations to support instructions (particularly in Unit 1), adding a Hybrid and Remote Teaching Tips page to the Teacher Resources page, adding a "File Not Found" page, fixing broken links, and many smaller revisions and improvements.
Update on 7/5/20: Updates for the 2020 College Board Framework and to address teacher feedback
Update on 3/22/19: adding Unit 5 Assessment.
Update on 3/11/19: adding Unit 4 Assessment.
Update on 9/9/18: refinements to Units 4-6 labs pages and Teaching Guides (to better cover standards, improve clarity, and respond to teacher feedback), refining/extending cross-unit Tic-Tac-Toe project, revisions to optional projects, edits to improve ADA supports, improvements to supports for Performance Tasks, additions to Teacher Resources page including two pacing guides (one for first-year BJC teachers and one for experienced BJC teachers).
Update on 2/4/18: adding "what you will learn" boxes to student pages in Unit 5, improvements to student pages in 5.4 based on teacher feedback, improvements to Unit 5 Teacher Guide.
Update on 12/27/17: finalizing Teaching Guide for Unit 6: How Computers Work, updating Teacher Resources page.
Update on 12/8/17: adding new unit, Unit 6: How Computers Work student pages and Teacher Guide, corresponding updates to NYC pacing guide.
Update on 10/11/17: removing problematic page from Unit 3 Lab 1, various minor updates to Units 1-5, Unit 2 assessment solution file added, Unit 3 edits to Tic-Tac-Toe project, accessibility supports, Performance Task links updated.
Update on 9/7/17: fixing issues with the clickable hints, file naming issues, and outdated references.
Update on 9/1/17: various refinements and corrections to student and Teacher Guide pages, further development of Unit 6 (still in progress).
Update on 8/4/17: further revisions to Unit 3 including removal of Sorting Data lab, refining pacing recommendations in Teacher's Guide including flagging with asterisks lab pages that a first-time BJC teacher might want to skip, adding 2017-2018 NYC Pacing Guide to Teacher Resources page, various smaller refinements to student pages.
Update on 7/25/17: making under-revision versions of U4 and U5 Teacher Guides accessible for teacher trainings, minimal updates to 5.5 for visual clarity.
Update on 7/12/17: making usable content in Unit 6 accessible.
Update on 7/7/17: major revisions to Units 1 and 2, in-progress revisions to Unit 3, revisions to Units 4 and 5, making room for a forthcoming new Unit 6, moving last year's Units 6 and 7 to this year's Units 7 and 8.
Update on 2/10/17: adding solutions to Unit 5, securing solutions in example projects, fixing minor glitches.
Update on 2/6/17: updates to Unit 5, including significant changes to Models and Simulation, cuts to Copyrights, smaller changes to Timing Experiments, Unsolvable and Undecidable Problems, and Data Processing.
Update on 1/8/17: major changes to Unit 4, Internet, based on teacher feedback: rewrote lab pages to improve readability, split long lab pages into multiple pages, added two optional (Teacher's Choice) Snap! projects, removed GPS Data lab based on reported difficulties, removed Weather App lab and the "Reading the Web with Snap!" and "Scraping Data from Web Pages" pages due to problems with the proxied HTTP block, and removed Innovating for Social Change because it included prep for the already completed Explore Task. This is an advance release of one unit of the 2017-2018 version of the curriculum. (You can continue to use the prior version of Unit 4 at the Jan 2017 link at the bottom of this page.)
Update on 1/3/17: made Unit 3 Lab 4, Combining List Operations, an optional "Teacher's Choice" lab.
Update on 11/17/16: changes/additions to Performance Task materials: added a Student Performance Tasks Page and simplified the existing Teacher Performance Tasks Page.
Update on 11/5/16: additions to Teacher Guide for Unit 2 Lab 6 and Unit 3 including the Lab Goals, assessment ideas, mathematical notes, and solutions; added alternate links for edX BJC Videos; fixed buggy proxied HTTP block in Unit 4 Lab 1.
Update on 10/24/16: moved Unit 3 Lab 6: Encryption to Unit 2 as it includes content designed to prepare students for the AP Explore Task.
Update on 10/8/16: addition of BJCx videos to Teacher Guide Lab pages and complete list on Teacher Resources page, changes to Unit 2 Lab 2 Page 2 problems 1 and 2 (to make them more doable), other more minor changes to Unit 2 student pages, and significant changes to the Unit 2 Teacher Guide including the addition of Lab Goals, assessment ideas, mathematical notes, and solutions.
Update on 9/19/16: very few changes to the student materials (mostly typos), but significant changes to the Unit 1 Teacher Guide, namely: the addition of "Goals for the Lab" designed to help teachers target the essential skills learned on each student page, ideas for assessment, mathematical notes where we thought they would be helpful, and official solutions.

Development Updates