Starting during the coming school year, Mr. Justin Tsai and Ms. Aimee Staats, mathematics teachers on campus, will be teaching brand new flex period courses at Jesuit High School teaching technology skills for the 21st century.

Mr. Tsai will be teaching classes regarding Arduino, a robotics programming platform, and the importance of cyber security, while Ms. Staats will be teaching a course about web design.

“We are both interested in technology, and the school wants to offer more courses in technology,”  said Ms. Staats regarding the inception of the courses.

During web design with Ms. Staats, students will have the opportunity to design their own dynamic websites.  HTML, CSS, Javascript, Perl, and MySQL are all possible coding languages that students might learn and utilize to create web pages.  To ensure that students’ command of coding is ready for the professional world, web pages built by students will work to enforce fundamentals and concepts of coding and design.

At the end of the course, Ms. Staats said that students might be able to witness their work published for all to see.

Unfortunately, cyber criminals force that all websites, even student work, be placed under heavy protection.  For that reason, Mr. Tsai’s cyber security course will teach students the importance and various types of digital protection.

After nailing the fundamentals, eager students will get an opportunity to test their knowledge of cyber security in the CyberPatriot competition, a national event where teams race to complete operational antivirus software.  The competition begins in March each year.

Arduino takes center stage in Mr. Tsai’s robotics Arduino course.  This open source platform allows for convenient editing and programming, so students will be able to craft and modify their own robotic creations.

“We will also research and present IoT (Internet of Things) products to help us imagine new tech gadgets,” said Mr. Tsai.

The Internet of Things is a program that tags electronics ranging from airplanes to toasters with circuitry that allows devices to send information back to their manufacturers or operators to increase functionality.  The programming of Arduino can closely tie in with IoT.

As exciting as creating robots and designing websites can be, the purpose of the courses ultimately focuses on benefiting the students taking them.

“We want to build students’ confidence and interest in technology. We want them to consider IT careers so they can compete in the 21st century,” said Ms. Staats, speaking on behalf of herself and Mr. Tsai.

As you schedule your coming adventures at Jesuit High School, be sure to be on the lookout for the unique technological instruction offered by Mr. Tsai and Ms. Staats.