Showing posts with label hour of code. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hour of code. Show all posts

Monday, December 12, 2016

Hour of Code 2016

It's that time of year again!  Shelby County just experienced another week of #HourOfCode (Dec. 5 - 9).  Our previous years had memorable milestones, but one thing I could see differently this year was how many of our librarians took a lead in getting students excited about coding.   (For this, I have to give props to Sarah Price at Wright Elementary for setting a high bar last year.)

I asked for Shelby County librarians to share their 2016 coding stories via email.  Here are some of their responses (slightly edited):

Penny Bland, Heritage Elementary:


Renae Orange, East Middle: "I have a personalized learning class I teach.  We spent our time yesterday coding at code.org.  Some of my students are exploring how to take what they learned to build a robot and program it."

Vicki Stoltz, Clear Creek Elementary: "I am introducing a few unplugged lessons for my K-1 classes with 4 little Bee Bots and some floor mats [see the video below].  Dash has also been a big hit with the older kids.  Second through Fifth Grade students have been exploring bookmarked coding sites as well."



Jennifer Tinsley, Painted Stone Elementary:  "The prior week, we discussed coding vocabulary and did a little intro with Angry Birds from the Code.org website.   On Hour of Code week, we used mainly Angry Birds and Star Wars.  So far so good!  I've even heard from several students 'I want to do this at home'!"

Sarah Price, Wright Elementary: "Everybody is coding in the library all week long on activities found on Code.org (Star Wars, Minecraft, Angry Birds) as well as iPad apps such as Kodable with our kindergarteners.  I set up folders inside a Schoology Course with grade-appropriate choices to help them narrow down which program to click.  I have been using a few fifth grade volunteers to help with the K-1 classes, and that has been working very well.  Having the high school volunteers was nice last year, but I think it is even nicer to be using our own student leaders."

Of course, our teachers independently did their share of coding as well.  Tina Eden (East Middle) tweeted out:

What better way to end than to share a tweet from Matthew Watts from Collins High School:

That is our hope for Riley and others: that the coding we start at school becomes a passion they want to do at home and beyond.

Thanks to all who encourage their students and children to code, last week and every week!

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Hour of Code 2015

This week (Dec. 7-11), Shelby County again celebrated the #HourOfCode!  In my entry last year,  I went into detail what the Hour of Code is.   In short, students are encouraged to try programming and coding for at least one hour.

Teachers and librarians across the district have been facilitating student coding all this week.  Here are some highlights!

Beth Jones (LMS at Collins High School) was ready to receive Mrs. Terhune's students:


Vicki Stoltz (LMS at Clear Creek Elementary, who made a Symbaloo last year listing some great coding resources) captured some fifth grade students Minecrafting via the Code.org website.  She particularly praised how these students, like many, worked collaboratively side by side to problem solve their way through the modules:



When I emailed out to the district to talk up the Hour of Code, several other teachers replied with their own pledge to give students this learning opportunity: Tina Eden (East Middle), Teresa Walther (Talented and Gifted), Tyler Harris (SCHS), Julie Webb (LMS at SCHS), Sarah Smith and Meredith Morrison (both from Southside Elementary).

One particular partnership, between Wright Elementary's LMS Sarah Price and our Area Technology Center (ATC) teacher Valerie Ricchio, really caught my attention.  Every day this week, Ms. Price took on a huge challenge of making sure that all of Wright's K-5 students got an hour of code -- as far as I know, the first time in Shelby County that one of our schools got 100% student participation in coding.  In addition, Ms. Ricchio arranged for students in her technical computer program (from Collins and Shelby County High School) to come over to Wright as mentor-helpers.  Using iPads, the Wright students interacted with both Code.org (besides Minecraft, the Star Wars modules were particularly popular!) and the app Lightbot.


And others in our state noticed!

It was wonderful to see our younger and older students have such meaningful interaction (as well as such valuable teamwork between a librarian and a teacher from two different schools).  But cross-collaboration and compassion are not limited to technical assistance in Shelby County.  It's part of our mission statement to "embrace social responsibility."  It's part of our Strategic Leadership strands: globally effective, healthy and responsible students.   So whether it is intermediate elementary students being readers for primary students....or high school students purchasing holiday gifts for elementary students who are less fortunate, or helping them code....or our plans for student-run help desks as our 1:1 initiative simply becomes another part of our daily learning culture....helping is just another day in the district.

What have you done for Hour of Code this year?  Please tell us in the Comments below.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Friday, December 12, 2014

The Hour of Code in Shelby County

As many of you know, we are at the end of Computer Science Education Week, when students worldwide have been challenged to complete an #HourOfCode.   Programming is not only for future computer science majors.  As the Steve Jobs quote at the beginning of this video reminds us, "Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer...because it teaches you how to think."



President Obama made history by being the first President to participate:

Of course, coding is a gender-neutral endeavor, not just "for the boys."  As a father of two daughters, I am heartened to see the efforts of others (and websites like this) that give young female programmers a starting nudge.  After all, as this tweet reminds us:

 Computer programming may seem daunting at first, but from small beginnings big things come.  Websites  like Code.org offer fantastic resources -- for free! -- that teach coding in modular small steps that even our youngest students can learn from.

While at East Middle, I knew that Amber Hall taught a technology class to 6th and 7th graders, so I asked if I could slide on by.  Sure enough, she was having her students use Code.org to independently practice code.  The website allows the teacher to create accounts for the students and monitor their progress as they complete modules.  The students were incredibly engaged and dedicated to making their programs work.  For many of the lessons, it involves moving your game-like avatar around the screen in a prescribed way.  The code algorithms are "drag and drop" elements that can easily be rearranged, although the actual code can be seen with a click, much in the same way that the "compose" in Blogger shows "what you see is what you get," but you can click on the HTML button to see the underlying code.

An example from a student's Code.org screen. (from Heather McCall's class, SCHS)


Here is a tweet from Amber showing her students in action:

Amber is enthusiastic to receive some new Windows laptops in January so that she can have students assemble and program robots, using the same basic code algorithms they are practicing now.  Awesome stuff.

Earlier in the week, I emailed and tweeted out to Shelby County teachers to share their Hour of Code stories and pictures.  Here are some of their responses!

Valerie Ricchio at the Shelby County Area Technical Center had her students do an Hour of Code.

Laura Smith at West Middle is having her 6th and 7th graders in Robotics program their robots to move around.

Lest you think programming is only for middle and high school students, here's a Clear Creek Elementary student programming with the Smartboard, shared by LMS Vicki Stoltz:


Vicki also created a Symbaloo webmix of coding sites.

Heather McCall, an Engineering teacher at Shelby County High School, has her freshmen through senior students do programming all year long.  "We use ROBOTC to program motors and use input sensors to create robots and machines to accomplish different tasks. In Computer Integrated Manufacturing we program a CNC machine to mill parts out of wood or polycarbonate materials using G&M codes and AutoCAD for 3D modeling."   Here are some of Heather's tweets:


Let us come full circle back to East Middle. Using a class set of iPads, the students of Tina Eden (7th Grade Science) and Terry Walther have written over 6000 lines of code this week in an "Flappy Bird" coding program:





As a final tribute, here's' a Magisto video to Shelby County Hour of Code 2014!

The week may be ending, but that's no reason to stop teaching computer science and programming.  The free curriculum is out there, so keep using it!  Don't stress out if students know more than you do; learn beside them and let them teach you.  Take a breath and remember:

From http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-and-carry-on-coding-100.png
A very special #ShelbyTUITshoutout to all of the above educators, and thank you for sharing your stories!






Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)