It’s been a smorgasbord of creativity, innovation, and learning throughout the district during the Hour of Code week. Students from kindergarten through 8th grade embarked on coding adventures through challenge opportunities on Web sites such as Code.org and Code Combat. Student across grade levels at all the schools are completing courses and independent exploration on Code.org with activities themed in Angry Birds, Star Wars, and Minecraft. In CodeCombat, students completed tasks in a gaming environment. In the Moana module, students moved characters, Moana and Maui, safely through the ocean and dodge the tricky kakamora. In the Minecraft design module, students created a game level for another player, set with certain conditions, tricks and traps. In the Course 1 learning module, students use Blockly to save birds, make honey, and solve puzzles.
Students as young as Kindergarten and first grade at Carpenter, Field, Franklin, and Washington have been going through the activities from Kodable and The Foos. At Washington, students in second grade are coding with Scratch. Fifth grade students at Field School are doing extended coding activities in Python.
Lincoln students have been invited to participate in the Hour of Code week at their MakerSpace club meetings after school. They have been sending and getting great feedback from Coding Challenges provided by Made with Google. They have loved creating their own Emojis and accessorizing their images.
Beyond online activities, with Carpenter’s MakerSpace resources, teachers in partnership with their Instructional Technology Coach, Kevin Michael, have set up learning experiences with a variety of technologies:
- Osmo Coding kits (Mrs. Zajak/2nd grade and EL students)
- Ozobot programmable robots (4th graders)
- Spheros (across grade levels)
According to British journalist Anthony Culbertson, “Code powers our digital world. Every website, smartphone app, computer program, calculator and even microwave relies on code in order to operate. This makes coders the architects and builders of the digital age. Over the next 10 years it is estimated that there will be 1.4 million jobs in computer sciences and only around 400,000 graduates qualified to do them. Jobs not directly linked to computer sciences – such as banking, medicine and journalism – will also be affected by the need for at least an understanding of programming and coding.” (Aug 2014)
Our D64 students have encountered many enriching opportunities to code this past week and are moving forward in being Future-Ready.