Tag Archives: kodable

Hour of Code – Days 4 & 5

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Wow, the last two days of the Hour of Code were a whirlwind with students trying out lots of different coding options!

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Kindergarten & 1st Grade

Kindergarten and 1st Grade continued their adventures with the Kodable app and WOW did they do an awesome job. Almost all students finished the If Fuzz Then Roll (If/Then) section of Smeeborg and some students even finished some levels of the Loopy Lesson section. We even had a few older students ask about being able to use iPads and use Kodable.

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1st Grade Kodable

2nd Grade

2nd Grade spent the day programming a robot on BotLogic.us. Some of the levels get quite tricky and just when you think you have it the robot ends up one square short of getting home! It was great fun to watch the students try to figure out how to fix the problems they had and those who got it were always eager to help others to get it, too! Have your 2nd Grader show you how it works and try to solve level 8 or level 11. Can you get it on your 1st try?

3rd & 4th Grades

3rd and 4th grade students continued solving the mazes in the Code.org drag & drop programming option for Hour of Code learning about IF/THEN and repeat loops. As levels got harder, there were some frustrations trying to understand what to do to make it work. After reviewing the videos provided and sometimes with a little hint, students got at least most of the way through all 20 mazes.

5th Grade

5th Grade continued to work on their Interactive Holiday Cards using Scratch. It was fun to watch as sprites began to move and “talk” and spin and make sounds. I’ll be sharing these just as soon as they are complete (next week) so that you can see the results!

7th Grade

7th Grade students continued to work with MIT App Inventor making progress on their Android apps. There were still some issues getting the emulator started which provided some frustrations and a few “bugs” in some apps but progress was made by all. One of the 7th graders even completed all 4 of the apps for Hour of Code! The 7th Grade students will be sharing what they did and their actual apps on their Google Sites next week.

8th Grade

App development was also going strong in 8th Grade using TouchDevelop but this time all but one student was using their computer rather than a device. As 8th Graders finished their first app, most went on to create at least one more app and sometimes 2 or 3 more. When they had enough of app development, some of the 8th graders also tackled the mazes in the Code.org drag & drop programming option. 8th Grade will be sharing what they did with the Hour of Code on their Google Sites next week.

So that’s it for the Hour of Code this year … or is it? Some grades will be continuing some coding next week and some grades will be doing more with coding later this school year so stay tuned!

 

Hour of Code – Day 3

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Day 3 of The Hour of Code brought Kindergarten, 4th Grade and 6th Grade (back for round 2) into the lab.

Hour of Code - Day 3: Kindergarten

Kindergarten

Since Kindergarten has also been using Bee-Bot this year, the day started out talking about programming with the Bee-Bot and having the Bee-Bot move in a square. After this, Kindergarten learned a little bit about the fuzzFamily and how they came to be on Smeeborg and then they saw a demo of the first level of the Kodable app. Then it was time to get into pairs (or a trio for the boys) and try out the app! There was a little confusion with the conditionals but everyone figured it out and had a great time. I can’t wait to see how far they get tomorrow.

6th Grade

6th Grade was up next in the lab for their second day of The Hour of Code. The boys in the class continued with MIT App Inventor and the girls decided to check out some Javascript with Code Avengers. Unfortunately, we had a very difficult time getting the emulator to load in MIT App Inventor which means it wasn’t possible to test the Talk To Me apps that were completed. I did show a couple of them on the demo computer which leads me to believe that it might be a memory problem on the student computers since they have less memory than the demo computer. I plan to have 6th Grade do some more coding next week since they didn’t make the progress they (or I) would have liked this week.

4th Grade

4th Grade was the final class for the day. After watching the The Hour of Code introduction video, 4th Grade started to work their way through the Code.org drag & drop programming option for the 20 minutes they had left of class. They made really good progress and I can’t wait to see how many of them make it through the rest of the levels tomorrow.

Tomorrow, it’s the second day of The Hour of Code for Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 4th Grade, and 5th Grade and day 4 for the week of The Hour of Code!

Deal on Kodable Pro: The Kodable app that we are using for The Hour of Code is a free app but there is also a Kodable Pro app (with even more levels) that is normally $6.99. For Computer Science Education Week, you can now get this app for $0.99!

 

 

Hour of Code – Day 2

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1st Grade, 7th Grade and 8th Grade got their first chance to participate in The Hour of Code today and we were trying lots of things in the lab that we’ve never done before!

1st Grade

Once I decided to have all grades participate in The Hour of Code, I knew that I wanted to use an iPad app with Kindergarten and 1st Grade. The problem was, we don’t have iPads at school – well other than some of the teachers’ personal ones. So, I set out to borrow enough that we could have an iPad available for each pair of students and YAY! we got enough for this to happen. Thank you so much to our school secretary, Mrs. Wright, Ian’s mom, and Diya’s mom for loaning their iPads for The Hour of Code.

1st Grade (and Kindergarten and 2nd, too) have been doing some pre-coding activities with Bee-Bot since the beginning of the year so the day started out talking about what programmers do and how they have been programming Bee-Bot. After this introduction, I told 1st Grade the story of the fuzzFamily and how they came to be on the planet Smeeborg and explained what they were going to do to help them explore the planet. Then it was time to try out Kodable! Oh what fun and great excitement when everyone got past the “pink” level as they called it. I am excited to see how far they will get in the app when they return for more on Thursday.

Hour of Code - 1st Grade - Kodable

7th Grade

7th Grade watched The Hour of Code introduction video and discussed what coding is. They were then introduced to  MIT App Inventor and got to work programming their very first Android app! Everyone completed their app (even though bringing up the emulator is extremely slow) and will continue with the second version of the app on Friday when we should have at least one Android device to test them on. Fingers crossed that we can get this working (since it will have to be using a USB connection I think) – this should be great fun if it works!

Hour of Code - 7th & 8th Grade

8th Grade

8th Grade’s class started with watching The Hour of Code introduction video and discussing what coding is. After this, the students were introduced to TouchDevelop. Our school has a no personal devices policy for students but the 8th graders were allowed to bring in their devices to use during their Hour of Code development. Half of them did bring in their devices though a couple of the students ended up using the computer instead of their device when they actually started to create their apps. It will be interesting to see who continues to use devices and who else may bring their device on Friday when they’re back in the lab for more. By the end of the class, we had a few completed apps and others who were almost done. Friday’s class will start off with a demo of some of the apps and they’ll be shared on this blog and the student’s Google sites once the week is over.

Now it’s on to Day 3 with Kindergarten, 4th Grade and more MIT App Inventor with 6th Grade.