June 2020: High school kids learn Computer Science during pandemic from Chor and Rubinstein
Many schoolchildren from all over Israel took the final exam in June 2020 at TAU, to gain academic credit.
Prof. Benny Chor, Edmond J. Safra member, and Dr. Amir Rubinstein, Edmond J. Safra affiliate, developed in 2018 a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that aims at exposing people to the beauty and diversity of Computer Science (CS).
In their course "First steps in CS and programming in Python" they teach some programming, and at the same time refute the misconception that CS is mostly about programming. They teach, at a basic level, topics such as error correction, encryption, algorithms, image processing, complexity and computability.
The MOOC targets mostly high school pupils, girls and boys, in the geographical and socio-economical periphery of Israel. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chor and Rubinstein witnessed a surge in enrollment, and they currently have over 15,000 registrants.
Many schoolchildren from all over Israel took the final exam in June 2020 at TAU, to gain academic credit.