CodeHS

I have used the AP CSP curriculum with my students and I can confidently say that this is the worst program if you're trying to get kids interested in the field. There is an overwhelming amount of repetitive, dull exercises that treat the students like babies even thought this is intended to be used in a high-school-level AP class. It's incredibly boring for the students, since all of the lessons for the first 2 units are a flat png of a generic dog moving around a grid placing and picking up yellow circles. It also doesn't help the fact that the students know that what they're learning cannot be used outside of these extremely specific and boring examples. The extremely simple and bland setup detriments itself by making concepts like "if/else" statements harder to explain to students as it fails to provide them a scenario where it would be necessary. Unlike most compsci programs like Scratch and Code.org, everything in CodeHS is predetermined; No user input, no interaction with the visuals, and nothing that could change the original outcome of the program. How can you teach kids the use of "if" and "else" conditionals if you always know the outcome and setup of every situation before you ever hit run. Also unlike these websites, CodeHS isn't free, yet it runs terribly and tends to freeze very often. It also gives kids a direct way to get to Youtube via the otherwise pointless "Watch video on Youtube" button, which is the reason for a lot of complaints of inappropriate content. Overall this program is tedious, repetitive, boring, glitchy, and unable to properly teach basic concepts in code.

My son is interested in going into cybersecurity after high school and we home educate. I know nothing about the field and thought I had found a great tool in CodeHS. We purchased 2 classes that he could use as high school electives and that would help him see if this is the right field for him. But when he ran into problems and we asked for help and support, we found very little. He's so frustrated and discouraged now that he's considering looking into a whole different career path, we're back at square one. I really think he'd be great at this but that CodeHS was just a bad experience and not helpful. I hope we can find help elsewhere.