Tynker for Schools from Tynker on Vimeo.
I am going to use Tynker with my sixth grade students as part of the Hour of Code next week, just to see how they do and if any of my sixth graders get the coding bug (good bug — interest). I’ve been playing around with the site a bit, and I like it builds off the Logos Programming tool and Tynker might be a way into Scratch later on. The lesson plans built into Tynker seem have an easy entry point, too.
Here is a screenshot from a level I was playing, pretending to be a student.
You can see the Lego-style programming and the hints/tutorials were in kid-friendly language. Plus, they have baked a story into the programming activity. I haven’t gotten too far but I like what I see so far. And there is a whole section where kids can make their own stories, too, with a lot of different options for characters, scenes, sound and more. It’s nicely done. We won’t get to the “create your own animation” elements next week but I suspect I might have some intrepid students who will be intrigued by the possibilities. I am thinking I might have to put some voluntary challenge out there (connected to our game design unit underway right now).
Peace (in the tinkering),
Kevin