Hour of Code

Last week all over the country, students were challenged to participate in an 'hour of code'.  According to the code.org website, hour of code is a global movement encouraging students to learn about computer programming.  Currently the website lists 180 countries and seventy thousand coding events taking place this year!  In a well publicized video about the event, our U.S. president challenges students to not just play video games on their phone, but instead to create them! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC5FbmsH4fw )

As we discussed coding with students in enrichment and enrichment/library class several analogies were discussed. One popular one was the idea of a baseball catcher and pitcher talking to each other in 'code'.  We used that idea to think about how we could learn to 'talk to' our computer via code! I was thrilled to have the chance to participate in Hour of Code with all of the fourth grade classes, and some second and third grade students.

Students impressed me with their willingness to try something new, and to persevere when it was challenging.  Every student in class was able to write multiple lines of code!

As an educator this sample of coding with students is encouraging me to think about how we can bring coding into the classroom to provide other means of sharing our learning! The creativity and student engagement demands that we consider this as a learning tool!  I am sure you will be as impressed as me as you watch these students proudly share the number of lines of code they created in just one hour in the below video!  You can also learn more about our fourth grade lesson and see some of the code in action at:  http://reslibrarynews.blogspot.com/2014/12/spotlight-on-grade-4-enrichment-library_19.html