Work in progress — Computing for middle-school students: The experience of teaching computers for 7th grade students

Number of college students in computing has declined since 2000 by more than 70%. Women and minorities are highly underrepresented. Students are exposed to computing education late in high-school or in college. At that point, the population sampling is already geared towards students already interested in computers. This approach results in the small number of students and more importantly in the low demographics diversity. Exposure to computing principles needs to start at a much younger age in order to spark interest in a larger and more diverse student body. This work in progress paper describes the experience of a new computing course for 7^th grade students. The novel component of the course consists in the robotics projects inspired by biological or artificial characters that seem to motivate students independent of gender.