During Florence 3 summer school’s Tech Boot Camp for Kids we have been using lots of technology tools. This year we added a NEW national feature. The Charleston, SC area was piloting Computer Science First Clubs. This is a Google project and we were included. Scratch has been a favorite of mine for years and we had included it in the curriculum last summer.
This curriculum is complete for 8 weeks of after-school clubs. Two subjects were ready in the summer: Music & Sound and Game Design. There are now 3 additional modules: Art, Fashion & Design, and Story Telling.
We used the Music & Sound module and did 2 modules a day on 4 days of Boot Camp.
For those who don’t know Scratch it is a product of MIT which allows very young people to put together computer code snippets and program Sprites to perform.
There is training available from the website for all interested in having their own CS First Club. These are designed for outside volunteers to be the 2 Gurus with one teacher/staff person to over-see the tech use during club time, but they are very flexible...and did I mention all needed supplies are FREE including headsets on loan. All is shipped to you. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label Scratch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scratch. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
TCC 4-4 Computational Learning with Coding
There is a push for Computer Programming to be taught in our schools. MIT and Carnegie-Melon have developed tools which are simple enough for a digital immigrant to use or a kid. Mitchel Resnick of MIT and Scratch has written about the benefits of coding to computational thinking at EdSurgeNews. (A white paper link is also on the Scoop.It version @ scoop.it/t/tiontera
This December Joe’s TAG class was invited to an Hour of Code event on Edmodo's LearnStreet app. The event is designed to introduce students to computer programming using a dozen activities by several partners. The video link is from Code.org. Their goal is to interest students in computer science as a career; ours is math skills.
Day of Code began in 2011 during the same week (Computer Science Ed Week) with a goal of 20 cities. These 2 sites can give an overview. The links that follow are sites which provide tools which can be used to add coding to your students’ lives all through the year.
Tynker and Code.org both offer a course on coding simple enough for elementary students. Tynker and Scratch look alike in that they allow students to move bits around to create the “code” for animations.
Alice uses a drag and drop system of words to create animations. All are very visual you can see the immediate result of what you have done.
Creative problem solving in all these tools is a fit for computational thinking.
This December Joe’s TAG class was invited to an Hour of Code event on Edmodo's LearnStreet app. The event is designed to introduce students to computer programming using a dozen activities by several partners. The video link is from Code.org. Their goal is to interest students in computer science as a career; ours is math skills.
Day of Code began in 2011 during the same week (Computer Science Ed Week) with a goal of 20 cities. These 2 sites can give an overview. The links that follow are sites which provide tools which can be used to add coding to your students’ lives all through the year.
Tynker and Code.org both offer a course on coding simple enough for elementary students. Tynker and Scratch look alike in that they allow students to move bits around to create the “code” for animations.
Alice uses a drag and drop system of words to create animations. All are very visual you can see the immediate result of what you have done.
Creative problem solving in all these tools is a fit for computational thinking.
Since this article was written earlier this year I have also found a Google site CS First which has a ready to use 8 week after school club which teaches coding with Scratch.
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