ASU gives Scottsdale teens college-level lessons

When Coronado High School students directed robots made of Legos through mazes Friday, they celebrated a new technology that allows the students to program them. Twelve students and two teachers were part of the Scottsdale school’s first Service-Oriented Computing class, a new type of computer programming that develops programs with pieces of existing code instead of writing it from scratch.

The concept is taught in graduate schools, but Arizona State University computer science and engineering professor Wei-Tek Tsai said he believes this is the first time it’s ever been offered at the high school level.

It came to Coronado through a partnership with the Scottsdale Unified School District, ASU and SkySong, a high-tech research center.

“We’re teaching something new. It’s up and coming,” Tsai said. “It’s not popular yet, but it’s the latest thinking.”

The class has projects high school students can grasp, such as programing robots to move through a maze and software that figures out someone’s zodiac sign based on their birth date, said Tsai.

But the projects still give the students a good foundation of skills they can build on in college and then use in the business world, he added.

Anthony Hallas, a junior, said he took the class because he’s interested in computer programming.

While some of the concepts required advanced math and programing knowledge, most of the programing was easy to learn, Hallas said.

“(The class) gives us a chance to get ahead,” he said. “Instead of going to college schools to learn this, it gives us a chance to see if we really want to do it or not.”

This isn’t the only Service-Oriented Computing class ASU professors are working on.

An online course for high school teachers and students to learn the concept as well as a training program for teachers is in the works, said education professor Gary Bitter, who helped write the grant for the program.

An undergraduate version of the course was also available to ASU students this spring.