Hour of Code December 5th - December 11th 2016

What is all this about coding?  In 2013 Google sponsored a coding class at one of the local universities using Scratch.  It was a day and a half intense course but I enjoyed it.  Fast forward a couple years and Hour of Code for every student is being advertised everywhere.  I was lucky to teach a coding class last summer and was amazed at how quickly my 2nd grade students caught on and my 4th and 5th grade students really excelled and loved it.  Online sites teach it through games like Angry Birds and Minecraft. They love Minecraft because they get to make Minecraft Skins. Pretty much how it sounds, you get to design the skin of a Minecraft character.  Even students who did not want to do coding really wanted to design a skin.  They worked very hard to complete more difficult coding lessons and then the student was rewarded by getting to do a skin design.  I can't reference where I got this information because I teach a Life Skills class and read it somewhere this past summer, but currently there are over 350,000 coding jobs available, although I think that number probably has risen since I last researched it.  Many of these jobs you can do from home (guess who is trying to learn some coding languages).  Coding is good for all students as it teaches thinking skills, but students that really like it I encourage to keep learning it.  I stopped learning computer languages in college because by the time that I was half-way through a semester course, that language was already considered on it's way to becoming obsolete.  I can't even remember most of them.  Basic, Pascal, Fortran, C+, Java, and lots of others I seem to hear different ones every year.  I think one of my life lesson that I learned and hopefully taught my son who majored in CIS and now works in the field is don't give up, computers are constantly changing.  He would get frustrated with me when he was in college that I was not keeping up.  Now being in the field for several years he realizes that working in the computer industry means constantly keeping up on your skills and trouble shooting.  I hope I passed on that even the smartest people in the industry struggle to problem solve and keep up.  And hey, keep on growing those dendrites!

Steve Jobs has a quote that I have seen several places, "Everyone should know how to program a computer, it teaches you how to think."  One of my favorite people to discuss and quote is Michael Jordan, famous for not being allowed to play basketball his first year of high school because he was not good enough (okay maybe he is a bit more famous for being a fantastic basketball player and playing professional baseball even though he was discouraged from that too!).  From what I remember reading years ago, he went home and shot baskets all day long everyday until his next year of high school.  I have a poster of his quote in my classroom, "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." I also read somewhere Fred Astaire (of course kids don't know who he is today) was told he could not dance.

Screen Shot from Hour of Code

First I will talk about what I like about CODE.ORG. This is a nonprofit site that has lots of fun ways for students young, old, experienced, novice or anything in between to learn about coding.  The thinking process, so creative and critical, along with being a challenging website yet student are able to conquer the challenge by using their problem solving skills.  So many other skills go into play.  Here was my favorite.  One activity you have to make Elsa, from the movie Froze, ice skate.  Since I normally teach math and was teaching a summer school class I realized that students needed to know angles.  I usually taught that in the higher grades.  90 degrees is pretty easy, the corner of a piece of paper.  Straight lines (half a circle) or full circle the students looked at me a bit funny.  Well after I explained how a full circle has 360 degrees and each move had to be 1 degree, so she would have to be programed to do it 360 times.  One kids exclaimed, oh I do 360's on my skateboard.  Oh my goodness, why hadn't I thought of that!!!  My two older boys skateboarded for several years.  I was like yes, a 360 is a full circle, and a 180 is a half circle on your skateboard, same concept!  There are so many practical and life skills that can be brought together and the students love seeing what other students create.  They also like the fact that they are familiar with the games on this website and can control angry bird, how fast he flaps his wings, what type of sounds he makes when he flies into something and what determines when the game is over.  If you have not gone to CODE.ORG, check it out.  Also if you go to this page, hourofcode , it has over hour of coding available in 45 different languages.  Hour of code is this week, Dec. 5th though Dec. 11th this year.  You can click here if you want more information.

Screen Shot from Scratch MIT

Okay, I love Scratch.  Here is their official website, Scratch Offical Website. Scratch was created by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and it is free. They call their little characters Sprites, and the default Sprite is an orange cat.  They have something called MAP Projects, where more than one person works on the project.  The person who creates the MAP assigns projects.  Sometimes they will break a song into pieces, and each person creates their part of the song. MAP stands for Multi Animator Project. The thing I love about students working on MAP projects is they have to commit to a deadline and work with other people, people that may live in other states or countries and they do not know. I see this as a 21st Century Learning Skill.  Training students for jobs that have not even been created yet.  Scratch has improved over the years and it makes it easier for students to give credit where credit is due.  Sometimes it will give credit to the originally creator if a student remix.  A remix is where you can copy someone else's code but then make changes in it. Scratch has lots of student made codes to give you ideas.