Tag: Coding-Programming

As a tech teacher, I see a lot of student websites. I’m always impressed with the effort, the tenacity, and often the skill, but most require ‘some additional work’ to be published.

And then I got an email from Stephen Byrne. In his quest to better learn history, he blended it with his love of of programming and built a website. It’s called History for Kids. It is exceptional, not only for its clean, intuitive presentation, but it’s age-appropriate language. If your students struggle finding research websites that use words at their grade level, suggest they build their own site like Stephen did:

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Here are ideas of apps and websites that teachers in my PLN used successfully in the past during Hour of Code:

Kindergarten

Start kindergartners with problem solving. If they love Legos, they’ll love coding

1. BotLogic–great for Kindergarten and youngers
2. Code–learn to code, for students
3. Daisy the Dinosaur—intro to programming via iPad
4. How to train your robot–a lesson plan from Dr. Techniko
5. Kodable--great for youngers–learn to code before you can read
6. Move the Turtle–programming via iPad for middle school
7. Primo–a wooden game, for ages 4-7
8. Program a human robot (unplugged)
9. Scratch Jr.

1st Grade

1. Code–learn to code, for students
2. Hopscotch–programming on the iPad
3. Primo–a wooden game, for ages 4-7
4. Scratch Jr.
5. Tynker

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December 9-15, Computer Science Education will host the Hour Of Code–a one hour introduction to students on coding, programming, and why they should love it. It’s a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify “code” and show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, an innovator. They’ll include a variety of self-guided tutorials that anybody can do, on a browser, tablet, or smartphone. No experience needed. Watch this “how to” video for more information.

http://youtu.be/hfZrX5YDltU

http://youtu.be/nKIu9yen5nc

In honor of the upcoming Hour of Code, here are a list of websites to practice everything from basics to advanced:

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I love the Windows snipping tool, but it takes too long to get to. Is there a shortkey for it?

A: Oddly, there isn’t, which is why I’ve never used it. I want a screen capture that’s instantaneous. Jing is even too slow for me (though I tolerate it because of all its very cool annotations.

Then I discovered how to create a shortkey for it:

• Go to Start–accessories
• Right click on ‘snipping tool’
• Select ‘properties’
• Click in ‘shortcut’ (I never knew that field was there. Maybe they added it with Win 7)
• Push the key combination you want to use to invoke the snipping tool. In my case, I used Ctrl+Alt+S
• Save

Now all I have to do is remember the shortkey!

BTW, this works for any tool.

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