Informatik für Maturitätsschulen

The textbook "Computer Science for Swiss Maturity Schools" has been newly developed to meet the requirements of the new mandatory subject of Computer Science. The authors are experienced Swiss teachers. In implementing the framework curriculum in the form of cantonal and school curricula, the cantons and schools have considerable freedom. They can add additional content or set specific focuses. Not all content included in this book needs to be taught. The teacher can select a suitable range of topics according to the current curriculum. Nevertheless, many topics are interconnected. These connections are made clear through references. Thus, the book covers the content of the mandatory subject of Computer Science and partially the supplementary subject of Computer Science. For the first five chapters of the book, a combination of theoretical and practical content is offered. Students engage with computer science at various levels. In the following five chapters, this combination is partially broken up by presenting content in larger contexts. Each chapter concludes with a subsection on an aspect of Computational Thinking. These subsections directly relate to the content and skills covered in the chapter, allowing for reflection on fundamental approaches to computer science. Each subsection begins with a few tasks that introduce the topic. These tasks can be solved without prior knowledge from the subsection. This is followed by definitions and explanations. At the end of each subsection, there are tasks that both practice and deepen understanding. Programming elements are explained using the Python programming language. However, emphasis is placed on general competencies, making it easy to transfer knowledge to other programming languages. Specific features of Python are highlighted.