This topic has fascinated me for a long time. We use apps and coding is in my wheelhouse, but app building... so intriguing. After 2 years of straight block coding with my students, I feel like they are ready for something more! Something I have been looking into for the end of school with my fifth graders. recently saw a new subscription box for kids that was all coding. After investigating more I see that they have special things for teachers as well as their own Hour of Code site where kids can actually make apps. They also have great lesson plans connecting to standards at multiple grade levels. Simple though it may be for some, the students will be getting exposure to java script which will come in handy. This is probably one of my best bets for school use.
Through app investigation I came across appinventer through MIT which shows students at varying levels how to make an app. Includes tutorial, learning spot as well as lessons for teachers. There is software to download and I do not have the authority to download and run at school.
There is also a great website:
https://www.codeschool.com/blog/2015/05/13/how-to-get-started-writing-code/ which explains some of the differences and similarities between the languages. Then they have a lace to try things out too: https://www.codeschool.com/learn. Some of which are free courses. I started with the Python course. Lots of good math happening there too. I would need to start a little simpler for my students, but this would be a great site for them to try different things on their own.
I also was able to search the app store to see if there was an "app building app"... well there was, but it was more for business than education. Pretty easy to use and choose formats and edit their one template. But not really what I was looking for.
https://developers.google.com/edu/ Also has on their page lots of good online classes to teach coding and app building. Plus the Google Computer Science page has free resources and lesson plans for teaching code as well.
later... found today that Tynker also has some good places to start.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Final thing reflection
It is really hard to believe that this workshop has come to an end.... my first blog post for this series of classes was from 2010... m...
Great topic!! Maybe this will be a new topic for next year's Cool Tools. I'll be using your post to get started! :)
ReplyDelete