Hour of Code 2015

I feel that this post is probably superfluous.  Code.org has done a wonderful job already of promoting this year’s Hour of Code, scheduled for 12/7-12/13.    However, it doesn’t hurt to give this great event more publicity (with the hope that Code.org’s servers can handle all of the extra traffic). The concept is simple – make sure every … Read more

Shopping and Coding – Practically the Same Thing

Since I have different grade levels each day, I have been doing Hour of Code all week.  With my students I’ve done Hopscotch, Kodable, Robot Turtles, and several of the lessons on Code Studio.  It has been an absolute blast!  Yesterday, I asked my 4th graders to describe their feelings about their programming experience using … Read more

Getting Schooled by Hopscotch

Yesterday was the beginning of Hour of Code week.  Despite the fact that all of my students will be doing an activity with their classroom teachers this week, I wanted to incorporate it into GT as well.  Feeling a bit adventurous, I decided to see how my 2nd graders would do on a Hopscotch tutorial that I … Read more

Bitsbox

With this week’s Hour of Code very much in my mind,  an article in my Flipboard technology magazine this weekend immediately caught my attention.  TechCrunch described a new site called, “Bitsbox” that helps children to learn how to write code. The site is one of the featured lessons in this year’s Hour of Code list of … Read more

Creative Ways to Survive the Weeks Before Winter Break

Full disclosure: this first week of December is going to be my busiest week this year. Therefore, I decided to cheat a bit for a few days and recycle some posts from last year.  I’ve done a bit of editing to make sure they remain current but otherwise they are the same.  Hopefully you still find … Read more

Hour of Python from Trinket

I can’t even remember what circuitous route I followed on the internet the other day that landed me on the Trinket site. Two things piqued my interest about it: that it offers some Hour of Code tutorials, and that it works on any browser with no downloads required. You can sign up for Trinket for … Read more