The Effectiveness of Creating Localized Content for Middle School Computing Curriculum

The need for computing education in K-12 is growing all over the world. Several countries have created national curriculum standards to meet this growing need. In most cases, the actual implementation of the curriculum, including the technical content, is left to individual schools or teachers. In this paper, we outline our work in implementing a computing curriculum based on Alice software in the State of Qatar. We present our experience in creating the content and evaluating its effectiveness. The curriculum was developed in cooperation with schoolteachers, education professionals, and the Qatari Ministry of Education. Materials developed included lesson plans, academic calendar, assessment tools, and student textbooks. We address the issues encountered in creating this computing curriculum content.