The Hour of Code!

Today my students completed the hour of code! More information can be found if you click that link, but the gist is that students learn a little bit about javascript and the codes that program a computer and tell it what to do to bring some of their favorite games to life.

This is done in an entertaining fashion so students are also having fun. They progress through a series of levels in different games that teach the students different commands (move, turn, walk, run, repeat, etc). As they continue to progress through the games, eventually they are allowed to use many of the different coding blocks they've encountered throughout the levels to create their own game.

As someone who has logged in tens of thousands of hours on video games, I was very happy to see students and especially adults that shun games, realize that there is a lot of problem solving and critical thinking that takes place behind what they see on the screen. In other words, games are more than just "games". The students were VERY eager to try out the hour of code when they saw the "code stars" video:

After watching this video, the students were very excited to dive in. Unfortunately, the site was down all morning, and even throughout some of the afternoon because there were so many students doing the hour of code as per code.org's tweet:

 

This was unfortunately extremely frustrating as many of the better games (or at least the ones students were interested in) are found on their site. We used scratch.mit.edu and tynker.com as a backup, which turned out working very well because scratch allowed the students to play with all of the coding blocks at once. I really prompted the students to play around with the blocks on their own. Many of them were diving in and messing around with the coding blocks to alter the game. 

 

I will now be doing coding afterschool with the students starting today. I only have two signups, but that's fine as it's not everyone's thing. More people will come next week. It was only day one, and here two clips of what the students made:

 

 

Afterward we all were frustrated about the code.org site not working and the games loading at a turtle's pace, I decided to download the "Lightbot One Hour Coding" app, which works just like the games on code.org's site but has more challenging puzzles (they needed to work together to clear one of the more challenging ones). I can't wait to see what lies ahead!