In anticipation of the Hour of Code next week, my colleague Gail Poulin and I gathered her kindergarteners and my sixth graders together for our own Morning of Coding yesterday. We teamed up our classes, and each group worked on a coding activity at Code.org based on the movie, Frozen, where the task is to create visual fractals with Blockly code. Think of it like Legos as programming. (By the way, the activities at Hour of Code work great on interactive boards for whole-class activities and there are no-tech coding games available, too).
To be frank, we were not sure how it would go, but it soon become clear that the kids are alright … they figured it out (for the most part) and spent the time fully engaged as partners in code. Most groups got through about seven or eight levels of the game, but one group – two boys – almost made it all the way to level 20.
Gail and I will be on Classroom 2.0 Live later today (noon on the East Coast of United States), chatting up the PD webinar about coding and literacy and technology and learning. Come on over, if you have time, to participate in the conversation. We’d love to see you there.
Link to join the session:
http://tinyurl.com/cr20liveFull link: https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid n=2008350&password=M.438D554F4A450D77B901E14104C303
NOTE: When you click on the link to log in, enter your OWN full name in the box so we will know who you are (not the topic of the webinar).Show Times:
9:00am Pacific/10:00am Mountain
11:00am Central/12:00pm Eastern
Time Zone Converter
Check for correct time in your area using the Time Zone Converter link.
Twitter hashtag:#liveclass20
Peace (under the hood),
Kevin
Here is an annotated link if you want Gail to view: https://diigo.com/074lfa
You can see my comments in the Diigo CCourses group.