Roseville High School will offer AP Computer Science Principles next year.

The course is already available at other schools in the district and will serve as the stepping stone between Exploring computer science and AP Computer Science A.

TigerTech adviser Bradlee Crockett and social studies teacher Kevin Fagan are both currently in training to teach the class.

“I’m definitely really looking forward to the opportunity to teach AP Computer Science Principles next school year,” Fagan said.

AP Computer Science Principles is designed to allow students to grasp computer science concepts before diving into specific coding languages in depth. Junior Anuya Kamath is considering enrolling in Placer County’s CTE WORKS AP Computer Science A course, but said APCSP may enrich her learning and that of other students.

“Schools should be trying to expose students to computer science as early as possible given its prevalence in an increasingly technological society,” Kamath said.  “It’s definitely worth looking into, because it might provide a stronger foundation for me.”

“Students will learn how to program in both Snap and in Python or processing and basically learn the fundamentals of computer science,” Crockett said.

Granite Bay High School rolled out AP Computer Science Principles this school year. GBHS senior Rami Mostafa said APCSP and Snap effectively lay a foundation for later computer science study.

“It would be good to go through the more basic or simpler programming languages like Snap, since Snap is just a block-by-block sort of thing,” Mostafa said. “It gets rid of the syntax and it’s pretty easy to see what each little block is supposed to do.”

The class will focus on material like how the internet works, web pages are developed and the importance of data.

“There are a lot of concepts that I think will be helpful for anybody out there who is planning on going to college and taking AP courses, not just potential computer science or engineering majors,” Fagan said. “It looks like it’s going to be a lot of interesting projects that the students will be working on together, it’s going to give students on opportunity to collaborate in a computing environment. I think it’s going to be a real exciting course.”