A friend was asking me about my experiences teaching computers here the other day, so I thought I’d put up a blog post and share this on Facebook since I’m sure they aren’t the only ones interested in an easy computer class curriculum.

In the second semester of the last school year, I had a chance to teach a computer class to all of the high school students at our small private school. I designed and developed the entire curriculum from the ground up and it was truly an educational experience for both me and my students. I thought going in that the students would be the only ones learning but boy was I wrong when I started realizing how much they already knew and how hungry they were for interesting projects.

I started them out by introducing them to Social Media and making sure they were grounded in at least one social networking site. Next I moved on to Squidoo Lenses. Every student had to make a Squidoo Lens on something that interested them. I wanted to get them writing and sharing about something they were passionate about.

After Squidoo lenses, I introduced them to the world of blogging by sharing some of the more famous blogging sites. I showed them how you could share your views and opinions and also how you could use a blog to make money. John Chow’s blog really struck a cord with some of the boys. For the blogging unit, they had to create a blog, adjust the blog’s theme and then publish several posts on the blog.

Our next project unit was about video. Basically, I divided the class into several groups and they had to produce a 2 minute video of their own creation. I was surprised out how great the quality turned out. I saw a lot of potential in my students from this project.

I added in a unit about Powerpoint just because a couple of the students expressed interest in it, but generally most of the students were a bit bored with it. I allowed them to use to Powerpoint to create a project showing what they had learned over the school year as a final project.

All in all, I’d say it was a great class and while the curriculum wasn’t perfect, it gives a general idea of what to offer in a high school elective computer class.