Foundations of Technology or AP Computer Science Principles? Which would you recommend?

[Anonymous]

My rising 9th grader signed up for AP CS without any experience. Hope it’s not a disaster...

[Anonymous]

GE magnet mom again. FWIW- My DD has found the workload in 10th to be a tremendous step up from 9th. If you are on the fence go lower. You won’t regret it. Worst case your DD has a slightly easier year and can participate in more activities and then DC ramps up a little more in 11th. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Dd took AP comp sci principles and it was a joke. However, I spoke with parents in the other tech options and they didn't seem to learn much, either.

I'd check with parents from your actual school. At our school, the teacher seemed to be learning the material alongside kids, and most of the classes seemed to be open sessions where the kids log into a website and do independent work. But that the first year it was offered at our school (so could have changed) and may have been unique to our school.

I think motivated kids learned a lot and less motivated kids got As without much work. (My kid is the latter, yet still got a 4 on the AP test.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My rising 9th grader signed up for AP CS without any experience. Hope it’s not a disaster...

My dd had no experience at all and found it easy.