Hour of Code
This year our school has registered to participate in Hour of Code. I have loved diving into all the materials code.org has provided to teachers and schools. It's truly an unbelievable resource. The materials are student friendly (Minecraft, Angry Birds, and Dance Parties just to name a few). But even more important the lessons are created so that ANYONE can teach kids an hour of code. The beginner lessons walk students through with video directions and then give plenty of opportunity for practice. They also show hints and solutions in case you get totally stuck. The videos and coding activities are also engaging and well done. Lots of tech people, athletes, musicians, and other celebrities make appearances to talk about coding in the "real world."
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| Image from Google image search |
Our kindergarten lessons today started with a Brainpop video that gave us information on giving directions to a computer. Then we did some real world practice in the classroom by walking across our tiled floor and rug area. Finally we plugged in to the Lightbot app and programmed our robots to follow the path and light up the tiles.
I want to thank all our teachers who embraced Hour of Code and invited me into their classrooms teach kids coding. Thank you!
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| Kindergarten students worked with partners to program using Lightbot. photo credit: Mrs. Bednarek |
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| Kindergarten students worked with partners to program using Lightbot. photo credit: Mrs. Bednarek |
Why Teach Computer Science?
This year my interest in Hour of Code was aided by a graduate school class I'm taking on Coding for Teachers. I had dabbled in a few websites related to computers and programming before, but I hadn't seriously looked into any of them or really thought about teaching them in a class. I offered some after school enrichment opportunities including an old pixel animator, GoAnimate, and even Codecademy (without a ton of success...animation is much more popular). But I had never really looked at Scratch. This class was great because after I spent a few weeks learning the program myself, I created a lesson plan that I could use with students in the classroom. I've already put that plan into use, although not in the class it was originally intended for, but that's okay. I spent three days working with students on some of the basic introductory lessons that Scratch provides, and then turned them loose with video explanation and some sample code. It's been amazing to watch these 6th, 7th, and 8th graders embrace the challenge and figure out how to program.
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Scratch and Scratch Jr. are great websites and programs to get students
started thinking about some of the concepts of computer science. They
allow students to creatively show knowledge while learning problem
solving and other creative thinking skills.
image source
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So why should teachers take three days of class time to teach Scratch and computer science? Well, those three days have resulted in increased student engagement. These students are working in class, talking with partners to problem solve, brainstorm, and help each other, and they are continuing to work at home on their own time. They are following other people's work, investigating and playing with their code, and learning from it. These lessons and this time has taught students how to teach themselves which is one of the primary goals of education--teach students how to continue learning on their own. In addition, they are learning problem-solving skills, how to collaborate with others, how to research and find information, and how to apply solutions to new problems.
This grad school class really showed me that I really can introduce a simple coding opportunities into the general classroom without giving up hugely significant amounts of time, and that they are relatively easy ways to tie a program like Scratch to our existing curriculum so that it complements it and grows it in a 21st century way. This class also reinforced for me how much I want to offer these opportunities to students in my school. I think I might have been a decent CS student in college if I hadn't felt so overwhelmed and freaked out early on. During my first course in college, I was sitting next to students who had been studying CS since middle school. I had no idea what was going on and felt years behind. I didn't know how to catch up or how to cope and faced with the very real possibility of failing the class, I quit and never went back. I'd like to make sure that our students don't see their first CS opportunity in college, and don't feel totally overwhelmed and out of their depth.
Where We're Going Next
We have some exciting news for our students! The school PTA has donated some funds from our school Book Fair to purchase some robotics elements for our library space. Mrs. Bednarek and I will be working with students to use a block-style program to control a Sphero SPRK+ robot in library this spring. Check back for more details after the first of the year.
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| Sphero SPRK+ programmable robot. |
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