Admiral Grace Hopper Hour of Code is back and I am super pumped to have all 428 kids at my school participate! In case you aren't familiar, HoC is an initiative that aims to give every student the opportunity to try computer science for one hour. We did the Hour of Code with all students K-5 last year and it was an fabulous learning experience for all involved. It was incredible to see some of our kids that struggle with traditional reading & writing skills - take off with coding! The best part is that Code.org does such an incredible job preparing the tutorials that little preparation is required by the teachers. We just shared this year's plan for implementation at our last faculty meeting - actually my partner in crime and I couldn't be at the meeting, so we had them show this video in our place. The video highlights WHY HoC is important and what teachers need to know. We also featured a few students from our Coding Crew sharing their thoughts on coding. Their perspective is amazing. We shared this presentation with our staff too, so that on their own time they could read through the important stuff.
Implementing HoC School-wide
As our school's Instructional Technology Facilitator, I am the coordinator. I partner with our Gifted Education Specialist (and the other members of our STEAM team). I set up a Google Spreadsheet for teacher to sign up on. Here's a sample of ours. Very basic, but functional. Teachers sign up and during their hour time slot, 1-2 members of our STEAM team (the facilitators) come to their classroom with the iPad cart. Last year, in each classroom, we did a brief presentation about computer science, why it's important and some of the key women figures in the field (GO Admiral Hopper & Ada Lovelace!!). This was the presentation we used last year. We also shared a video from a former student of ours that is now a game designer. This year we plan to feature others in our community that are good role models for future careers in this field. Following our intro, students either used one of the code.org tutorials or an app. Check out our chart HERE, for the tools we used last year - broken down by grade level.
This Year's HoC Tutorials
I'm excited to try out this year's tutorials. I'm currently playing with the Beta version of Code.org's tutorial (featuring Disney’s “Frozen” heroines Anna and Elsa). The kids are gonna love this one! Try it now, HERE. HoC is just 3 weeks away! Hopefully your planning for HoC is going well. If not, it isn't too late to start planning a school-wide initiative now. Give this opportunity to ALL of your students...they deserve it.
Implementing HoC School-wide
As our school's Instructional Technology Facilitator, I am the coordinator. I partner with our Gifted Education Specialist (and the other members of our STEAM team). I set up a Google Spreadsheet for teacher to sign up on. Here's a sample of ours. Very basic, but functional. Teachers sign up and during their hour time slot, 1-2 members of our STEAM team (the facilitators) come to their classroom with the iPad cart. Last year, in each classroom, we did a brief presentation about computer science, why it's important and some of the key women figures in the field (GO Admiral Hopper & Ada Lovelace!!). This was the presentation we used last year. We also shared a video from a former student of ours that is now a game designer. This year we plan to feature others in our community that are good role models for future careers in this field. Following our intro, students either used one of the code.org tutorials or an app. Check out our chart HERE, for the tools we used last year - broken down by grade level.
This Year's HoC Tutorials
I'm excited to try out this year's tutorials. I'm currently playing with the Beta version of Code.org's tutorial (featuring Disney’s “Frozen” heroines Anna and Elsa). The kids are gonna love this one! Try it now, HERE. HoC is just 3 weeks away! Hopefully your planning for HoC is going well. If not, it isn't too late to start planning a school-wide initiative now. Give this opportunity to ALL of your students...they deserve it.
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