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Block 1

Design Thinking approaches to STEM courses – Computer Science and Technology

Design Thinking is an approach to solving difficult problems, widely adopted in industry and healthcare. This interactive presentation will introduce the topic and discuss how it can be integrated into the high school curriculum, particularly in ICD2O and TAS1O. DT is used in many technology areas, and we welcome input from teachers in all areas of technology, but our examples will mostly be related to software—our area of expertise.

  • What is Design Thinking, and why is DT used from startups to IBM and Apple?
  • History of Design Science and Design Thinking.
  • Role of empathy.
  • Failure modes we have observed and how to avoid them.
  • Characteristics of a good design problem and one which has worked for us: “This is your grandfather’s gaming app.” 
  • What do professionals use for DT, and should you introduce students to them? 
  • Design Journey Dashboard: Our research project addressing bottlenecks to scaling up teaching of design.
  • Reading list for delving deeper.

TAS 1O1: A Roadmap for Teachers

TAS presents a challenge at schools where you don’t have an established tech program with shops and tech qualified teachers. This year at Riverdale we faced running the largest course by section with almost no qualified teachers. We will share our model and resources for our four unit program touching on robotics, circuits, graphic and tech design. And how we embedded learning skills and safety routines throughout the course.

Advanced Microcontroller Interfacing and Introduction to Circuit Design

Are you ready to go beyond breadboard circuits and simple plug-in modules? Did you know that you can easily design and build advanced interfacing circuits with your students for less than many commercial offerings, while providing students with valuable hardware and circuit design skills? We’ll look at common circuits and components you’ll need to know about when creating your own circuit designs, and provide a quick intro to the KiCad schematic capture and PCB layout tools that will enable you to get professionally manufactured PCBs.

Diving into the revised AP CS A in Grade 12 CS with Java

The AP Computer Science A curriculum was updated for 2026 and in this session we will examine these updates. We will explore a course plan that is aligned with the ICS4U curriculum and AP CS A. Our focus will include: instructional strategies, assessment and evaluation methods, and project management tools that may want to consider for your classroom. 


Note that in this session we will use an online tool (pickcode.io) and also a full IDE Eclipse.
We will explore opportunities to go beyond the curriculum with JavaFX as well.