Robot Turtles

For today’s Gifts for the Gifted post, I wanted to keep with the Hour of Code theme for this week.  Unfortunately, this particular product may or not be available for purchase in the near future.  If you are interested in obtaining it, I recommend visiting the website to let the company know. Because I have … Read more

Kids Can Code With Kodable

Have you done your Hour of Code, yet?  So far, I’ve done 8.5 hours of coding this week with my students in various grade levels – with more hours to add today and tomorrow!  We’ve used Scratch, Hopscotch, and a board game called Robot Turtles (which I will be describing in detail in tomorrow’s post).  For more ideas for Programming for … Read more

Scratch

Well, I finally did it.  With the help of: an Hour of Code Tutorial, a 3rd grader who knows what he’s doing, and what I learned from auditing a class that my daughter took, I finally felt somewhat ready to try Scratch, the free M.I.T. programming language available on the web, with my 3rd grade … Read more

Kids Can Code – and Change the World

It’s here!  This week is Computer Science Education Week.  (Check out the Google Doodle to honor Grace Hopper’s birthday, which starts CSEd Week this year!)  To celebrate, you are invited to participate in an Hour of Code – a global event during which schools are committing to teach students how to program for at least … Read more

It’s About the Process, Not the Product

The Hour of Code is scheduled for next week, and I can’t wait to participate.  Vicki Davis just posted an excellent resource on Edutopia for those who want to join in the fun.  Yesterday, I posted about a new iPad app that you might want to try.  And in November, I gave some awesome resources … Read more

SparkFun

This weekend I had the great opportunity to attend an event hosted by SparkFun at a local venue called Geekdom.  The event was a class for young students to learn how to use the free programming language, Scratch, developed by M.I.T.  The students also learned how to use Scratch with a PicoBoard, which connects to … Read more