Cool Tools 2014 -2015
Thing 11: Coding
I really want to work on new things, so I was waiting for Track 3. In the meantime, so that I can be sure I am registered according to my local BOCES, I am going to talk about Coding.
Last year I went through the lesson on coding (there is a previous blog post on it), but I hadn't used it with students. Recently I had the opportunity to us it with a group of 8 students in an afterschool computer discovery session. It really was the perfect opportunity to use Hour of Code. Since it was not anticipated, I did not create accounts for the kids, which was unfortunate. Without it, they had difficulty saving where they were in the lessons, but some students learned that they could move themselves forward in the lessons by clicking on the dots at the top. This proved to be a problem because they skipped ahead without doing all of the lessons and missed how some of the blocks worked.
Another difficulty we ran into was with the videos. I don't know why, but the help videos did not work on our computers. Although I tried to show them all the slide tutorials that you could read through, many of the students did not have the patience to read their way through all of the slides. That meant that they again were unprepared for how some of the blocks worked.
Still, several of the students earned their certificate and all of the students had a good time and learned a little about programming. Several expressed interest in doing more coding in the future.
Unfortunately, probably due to our district's filter, some of the other links to continue learning about coding did not work in our school. I did send all of the students off with information on how to get on the site from home and I am sure that some of them will. I feel bad for our students who do not have internet access at home. (Broadband access is sketchy and expensive at best in these rural areas.)
If I had it to do over again, I would stress how to do the tutorial appropriately. I would try to keep a sharper eye out for students that were trying to skip ahead and make them start again. I would also try to check with our IT person to investigate why the videos did not work for us.
