What an amazing week it’s been! 23 hours of coding instruction. Every single student and staff member at E. K. Powe
http://www.wncn.com/clip/10930574/ek-powe-elementary-is-todays-cool-school-for-dec-9-2014
has had an hour or more of code. It’s been one of the most exciting weeks I can remember as a school administrator. Watching the thinking, collaborating and the “It worked!” moments of my students has been thrilling.
I started each coding lesson with a “human computer”, choosing a student to be the computer and walk a grid with commands. From there each group moved to the digital world of Lightbothttp://lightbot.com for collaborative coding. All the kids had an opportunity to work with multiple programs to learn that, as my 8 year ESL student stated, “…the directions parallel each other!” What a great way to see that once you’ve coded directions indeed take a similar course.
So…what’s next? For our students at E.K. Powe we’ll be using our $10,000 Code.org grant http://code.org
to expand our Makerspace with a 3DPrinter and Copernicus cart
http://www.copernicused.com/result_detail.aspx?group=3D-printer-cart&sku=TD5001 and two additional mobile labs of tablets, likely Dell Venues
http://www.dell.com/us/p/dell-tablets?#dell-venue&ST=dell%20venue%20tablets&dgc=ST&cid=270767&lid=4962884&acd=123098073120560
or Samsung Galaxy http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab/
These two tablets were named #2 and #3 best tablets of 2014 right behind the iPad Air. We’re working to get value for limited funds so we won’t purchase iPads for this round.
Finally with our existing and new labs I’ll be offering a Before-School Coding and Making Club for our kids. We’ll gather in our media center each week to continue coding and making too. Look for big news from Powe as our “Year of Code” continues!