Introducing the Amazon Future Engineer Program

It’s Amazon’s comprehensive childhood to career program to inspire, educate, and train children and young adults from underserved and low-income communities to pursue careers in computers science. Congrats! Amazon Future Engineer brought your school this course though Edhesive.

 

About the Course

Course Description

CS Python Fundamentals is an introductory-level course for students brand new to programming and computer science. In this course, you will learn problem-solving strategies, software design, and the foundations of computer science. There are no course prerequisites for this course, although you should have basic familiarity with computers and software applications. The course is an on line course that will consist of video lessons, daily programming exercises, longer coding assignments, regular quizzes, and tests. I will serve as facilitator and provide addition information and lessons. This course is taught using Python. Python is a general-purpose programming language great for beginners.

 

There are no course prerequisites for this course, although you should have basic familiarity with computers and software applications.

 

Programming Language

This course is taught using Python. Python is a general-purpose programming language great for beginners. It is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, and it's quite powerful. Python is used by many large organizations (Google and NASA for example) to do just about everything from building apps, analyzing data, system administration, and the list goes on.

 

Course Materials

The course will consist of video lessons, daily programming exercises, longer coding assignments, regular quizzes, and tests. You will also participate in an online discussion forum with your peers.

You will need regular access to a computer with Internet access.

There is no course textbook, software or other materials you will need to purchase.

 

Learning Goals

Upon successful completion of this course, you should:

• Have the basic technical vocabulary of computer science.
• Understand basic principles of thinking and solving problems with computers and computation.
• Recognize and use fundamental elements of computer programs, such as commands, variables, conditionals, and loops.
• Understand the representation of data in computer memory.
• Design, plan, implement and test programming projects.
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Time Commitment

Expect to spend 3-5 hours per week on this course. This includes watching all of the video lessons, completing the lesson and code practices, and completing the unit quizzes, tests, and coding assignments.

 

Course Topics

A summary of the units of study and topics for the course is listed below. A weekly schedule can be found in the course schedule (Links to an external site.).

Unit	Topics	Duration
Beginning in Computer Science	Hardware and Software Basics Input and Output Binary	4 weeks
Number Calculations and Data	Variables Functions Modular Division Random Numbers Working with Big Data	3 weeks
Making Decisions	Booleans Conditional Statements Algorithms	3 weeks
Repetition with Loops	While Loop Iteration Making a Game	3 weeks
Graphics	Color Shapes Coordinates	3 weeks

 

Course Structure

There are 5 units in the course. Each unit has 9-10 lessons.

A typical instructional week will include:

• Video Lessons - Mrs. Dovi is the primary instructor featured on the lesson videos. These videos are "code along" and you are asked to follow along with Mrs. Dovi as she codes. When she tells you to pause the video and try a problem yourself, pause the video and give it a try! Remember, the best way to learn coding is to actually code.
• Lesson Practice - After most lessons, there will be a series of multiple choice and fill in the blank questions. These are graded practice questions.
• Code Practice - After most lessons, there will also be a series of code questions. These are also graded practice questions.

After every video lesson, there is a summary of the lesson and supplemental reading and video material. You must complete each lesson before you have access to the lesson's practice questions, and you must complete the practice questions before you have access to the next lesson.

In addition to the video lessons, lesson practices, and code practices, each unit has a quiz, test and coding assignment.

 

Grading

Your course grade will be based on the following components:

• Practice Activities (20%)
• Assignments and Quizzes (40%)
• Tests (40%)