Hour of Code

Our class has begun learning the basics of coding and we are planning to participate in the national hour of code the second week in December! Programming/coding is becoming such an important skill for people growing up and entering the work force now and the people behind code.org have created a wonderful way for students of all ages to learn about it.

I am using the iPad apps Kodable, Beebot, Daisy the Dinosaur, and Lightbot to introduce the basics of programming this week and the first week of December. You can download these apps onto your apple device and let kids work with them at home too. They are lots of fun and develop problem solving skills that transfer into learning to code.

The second week of December is when the national Hour of Code runs. I plan to be run an actual hour of code in class where the kids will pair up and work together on coding one of the games from the website on devices in class. If you would like to come in to help us out please send me an email or comment on this post. You do not have to be very tech savvy or feel overly confident with tech in order to help us! Mainly we just need adults who can read the directions and help the kids problem solve while we are underway! Please, please let me know if you can come help out. This is the first year I am trying the full hour of code but it should be great. I am in the planning phase now.

You can check out code.org ahead of time and have your child try out some of the fantastic coding games available. The website has angry birds, flappy bird, minecraft, Star Wars, Frozen, and all kinds of other familiar characters put into games that the kids can learn to code. I have been playing them at home to test it out and they are great!

Ok, enough for now. Below is a slideshow of kids working on our first (most basic) coding app called Kodable. We will move on to slightly trickier coding apps starting tomorrow!

http://www.photosnack.com/HeidiKelly/coding.html