Last year was the first year of the international "Hour of Code" event. It's nice to get into a project from its inception and make it an annual lesson and point of interest for your students. I planned ahead this year to prepare for the Hour of Code. Some things I did change in my approach:
Next year, we will do an "Hour of Code" again. I provided some Thinglink tips for those of you who missed this year.
- Each of my middle school grades were exposed to a different coding genre. I based my selections on areas of interest and connections to ongoing classes.
- Eighth grade was assigned the Kahn HTML and CSS activity to connect students with an ongoing website project.
- All of my students had their own accounts. Code.org provides an easy method to create accounts and I chose to use student name and secret word accounts for the sixth grade. I printed the cards generated by code.org, cut them out, and passed them out the day of coding. From my teacher dashboard, I could view their progress.
- Seventh grade simply used their school Google accounts to sign on to Tynker. That was easy! I had a nice view of completed work on my teacher dashboard in Tynker.
- Eighth grade had the option of using their Google accounts to save their work and view their progress on Kahn. I could have gone a step further as a Kahn "Coach" but decided to use observation in the classroom.
- I printed Hour of Code certificates for all my students and handed them out at the end of class. Code.org had a nice system for generating certificates personalized with each student's name. I had a sheet of stickers and handed them out at the end of class. Of course, they were worn on noses, foreheads, and some where they were supposed to be.
Next year, we will do an "Hour of Code" again. I provided some Thinglink tips for those of you who missed this year.