Garden TOOLS PD - Module 4

Erin Ingram Author

01/09/2023 Added

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In this module, we will be discussing how to scaffold coding experiences to allow for development of learners' computational thinking skills.

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[00:00:01.350]Hey, y'all.
[00:00:02.310]Thanks for continuing on the journey
[00:00:04.500]of professional development here
[00:00:06.390]in the Garden Tools Professional Development Series.
[00:00:09.210]In this module, we're gonna focus on scaffolding
[00:00:11.940]student coding experiences.
[00:00:15.480]So my very first thing that I want to get across to you
[00:00:19.657]is that coding shouldn't be stressful.
[00:00:23.370]Not to say that computer coding wouldn't ever be stressful
[00:00:27.330]down the line, because it definitely can be.
[00:00:30.570]But at this stage in student learning,
[00:00:32.910]and your own learning,
[00:00:34.260]if you are stressed out about coding,
[00:00:36.900]we need to rethink things.
[00:00:37.851]Okay? So we need to scaffold coding, and in other words,
[00:00:41.400]we need to provide structures that help students
[00:00:45.720]to basically meet them where they're at,
[00:00:48.690]and then help them develop
[00:00:50.820]more and more sophisticated learning
[00:00:53.130]about coding, but also beyond that.
[00:00:57.150]And so we need to practice
[00:00:59.700]and gain those computational thinking skills.
[00:01:02.220]We need to do it while not feeling overwhelmed
[00:01:05.070]or completely disengaged during the process.
[00:01:08.190]And I want to share with you a little story
[00:01:11.730]that kind of illustrates what I'm talking about.
[00:01:15.090]So I wanna share a story about Claire.
[00:01:16.990]This is a real student who took part
[00:01:19.350]in the Garden Tools curriculum during its development.
[00:01:24.360]So this is her drawing of herself.
[00:01:26.130]You can see she's a third-grader.
[00:01:27.600]She has her cat ears,
[00:01:28.740]her Hello Kitty T-shirt, and her glittery pants.
[00:01:32.100]I was there witnessing the Garden Tools pilot
[00:01:36.330]and someone else was teaching.
[00:01:39.871]Her likes were very clearly doing her own thing
[00:01:43.050]being outside and moving around the classroom.
[00:01:45.120]When I came in to observe, they were teaching
[00:01:48.210]in the library and she was at the back of the library
[00:01:50.730]on an exercise bike just pedaling furiously.
[00:01:55.410]And everyone else was seated at their computers
[00:01:58.870]working on a light level sensor code.
[00:02:03.690]So she clearly liked doing her own thing.
[00:02:06.570]She very much disliked following directions
[00:02:09.090]sitting still or staying in her seat.
[00:02:12.030]I think all of us have probably worked with a Claire,
[00:02:14.640]if not been Claire in the past.
[00:02:17.580]And what I wanna point out is,
[00:02:21.030]I was lucky enough to be able to approach Claire,
[00:02:24.510]take a pre-coded microbit
[00:02:29.430]that had been already coded as a light level sensor.
[00:02:32.880]And I showed her it,
[00:02:34.470]I let her kind of explore with it for a moment.
[00:02:37.740]She immediately took it to the window
[00:02:40.270]and saw how much light level she could get to go up.
[00:02:44.610]She then got on the floor in the library,
[00:02:47.340]crawled under the library shelves,
[00:02:50.010]to see how dark she could get it.
[00:02:52.200]She was hooked.
[00:02:53.310]She got a chance to kind of explore with something
[00:02:55.800]that she didn't have to build the code for first.
[00:02:58.701]And then we were off to the races.
[00:03:00.510]As soon as I explained a little bit
[00:03:02.160]about how the graphing on her microbit worked,
[00:03:06.210]that it would show, you know, if the light level was high,
[00:03:11.220]then it would make the graph go up.
[00:03:15.150]And that if she pressed the button A,
[00:03:18.450]that it would show her the number that corresponded
[00:03:22.860]with that light level.
[00:03:24.090]So immediately she took this information back
[00:03:26.040]and she started leading the rest of her group at their table
[00:03:30.540]through the process of building this light level sensor.
[00:03:34.290]I tell you all of this because I want you to understand
[00:03:38.370]that the order that we presented this material in
[00:03:42.780]was very important
[00:03:44.400]to having a successful and engaging coding experience.
[00:03:47.091]Having her start with coding didn't work.
[00:03:49.620]But giving her a pre-coded microbit to explore with first,
[00:03:52.950]was really successful.
[00:03:57.188]That learning sequence is not just something
[00:04:00.480]that I pulled out of nowhere.
[00:04:02.550]It is research-based.
[00:04:04.080]So the learning sequence is known
[00:04:06.390]as the use-modify-create learning progression.
[00:04:10.200]And it comes from research that focuses
[00:04:12.360]on building students computational thinking skills.
[00:04:15.600]Remember, we are trying to move students
[00:04:18.750]from consumers to creators of technology.
[00:04:21.600]This is the research-based model that tells us
[00:04:24.750]that this sequence works.
[00:04:29.490]In it, and this comes from a paper.
[00:04:32.250]If you're interested in reading the journal article,
[00:04:35.940]it's out there and it's known
[00:04:38.310]as "Computational thinking for youth in practice".
[00:04:42.480]Some of the texts from this paper
[00:04:44.280]I thought it was really interesting.
[00:04:46.320]But just to kind of point out
[00:04:47.610]what each of the stages would look like.
[00:04:50.640]In the use stage,
[00:04:51.800]students are consumers of someone else's creation.
[00:04:55.650]Over time, they begin to modify the model
[00:04:57.810]or game or program with increasing levels of sophistication.
[00:05:01.050]Later, the student may want to change
[00:05:03.540]the character's behavior,
[00:05:04.830]in this case they're talking about a game,
[00:05:06.600]in a way that entails developing new pieces of code.
[00:05:09.690]Through a series of modifications and iterative refinements,
[00:05:13.860]new skills and understandings are developed
[00:05:16.290]as what was once someone else's becomes one's own.
[00:05:20.640]So it's this process of moving from,
[00:05:22.417]"I gave you something to explore with."
[00:05:24.600]Now you feel some sort of ownership
[00:05:26.280]because you got to be motivated by it and it got to be fun.
[00:05:30.810]And then suddenly you are invested,
[00:05:33.090]and you might want to know
[00:05:34.200]how to build one of these yourself.
[00:05:37.830]So what can this look like?
[00:05:39.750]What does the scaffolding look like?
[00:05:41.260]So what can you do as an educator
[00:05:44.760]to help students move through this learning progression?
[00:05:47.700]Because it doesn't just happen, you have to plan for it.
[00:05:51.600]So if our goal is use, modify, create;
[00:05:55.890]in the use step, you might pre-code microbits.
[00:06:00.300]And what does that require on your behalf?
[00:06:04.290]It means that you will keep, and this is what I do,
[00:06:08.850]I keep microbit code fully downloaded
[00:06:14.000]on my computer at all times.
[00:06:16.830]I have it saved in a folder,
[00:06:18.060]so that whenever I need to move that code
[00:06:21.120]onto the microbits, it's ready to go.
[00:06:24.600]I have made the folder,
[00:06:26.250]the same folder I have on my computer,
[00:06:28.230]I have made that available on Google Drive.
[00:06:31.140]You can find it on our How-to Coding guides page.
[00:06:33.540]And you can just go directly there
[00:06:35.130]and download the entire folder
[00:06:37.110]to your computer and have it ready to go.
[00:06:41.970]So once you've moved past,
[00:06:43.740]the student is just taking a pre-coded microbit,
[00:06:46.050]they're not coding anything and they're playing with it.
[00:06:48.300]Next might look like modify.
[00:06:50.070]And this can have a couple of different scaffolds
[00:06:51.990]that you might be doing with students.
[00:06:53.490]One, you might be providing a coding tutorial.
[00:06:57.540]Two, you might be providing a picture of completed code.
[00:07:01.380]Or three, you might be providing unassembled code blocks
[00:07:04.920]that are shared out.
[00:07:05.790]And let me tell you, or show you a little bit more
[00:07:08.010]about what each of these looks like.
[00:07:11.220]So in providing a coding tutorial,
[00:07:13.650]you should have already experienced this
[00:07:16.870]in an earlier module where you were doing, you know,
[00:07:20.820]creating either a smiley name tag,
[00:07:23.760]or a flashing heart, something like that.
[00:07:26.520]So there are lots of tutorials
[00:07:28.260]that are already freely available
[00:07:30.120]on the front page of the MakeCode for microbit website.
[00:07:33.930]This picture shows you
[00:07:35.460]what the flashing heart tutorial looks like
[00:07:38.580]at the beginning.
[00:07:39.630]You'll note, and this is just a few things
[00:07:41.490]you'll want to consider, that there are limited code menus.
[00:07:45.390]You'll see in this example, it literally only has basic
[00:07:48.660]as the code menu that you need for this step.
[00:07:51.690]So that's all that's shown.
[00:07:53.730]This is really great in eliminating distraction
[00:07:56.040]for students who can get lost in all of those code menus.
[00:07:59.700]Two, it provides step-by-step instructions
[00:08:01.680]in the text up at the top.
[00:08:03.777]That's kind of a double-edged sword.
[00:08:06.000]If students are not good at following written directions,
[00:08:09.000]or they're just not a high-level reader,
[00:08:11.670]this may not be workable for them.
[00:08:14.370]Luckily, hints are provided in pictures.
[00:08:16.580]That's the little sort of breakout bubble
[00:08:21.090]that is shown there where you've clicked
[00:08:22.950]on that little light bulb.
[00:08:25.470]And a picture will show up
[00:08:27.810]of what the code is supposed to look like
[00:08:29.850]and where you're pulling those code blocks from.
[00:08:32.800]And then lastly, this is very important,
[00:08:35.661]and this is something I've learned along the way,
[00:08:38.490]do not expect that students are gonna know
[00:08:40.350]how to use the tutorial without you teaching them first.
[00:08:44.910]And this is true for youth, this is also true for adults.
[00:08:48.660]So you likely will need to guide them through things
[00:08:51.900]like, "Here's where you find the tutorial,
[00:08:54.130]here's where the instructions at.
[00:08:56.700]They're all written out.
[00:08:58.110]You'll notice that some of the words
[00:08:59.520]have certain colors that corresponds to the code menu.
[00:09:04.320]When you're done with that step
[00:09:05.790]and you created that part, you click on the 'next' button.
[00:09:08.370]Or you can click the little bubbles
[00:09:09.810]at the top that have the different numbers."
[00:09:11.979]You will have to teach those parts
[00:09:14.430]to be most successful using tutorials.
[00:09:18.930]Next, I mentioned providing a picture of completed code.
[00:09:23.550]This is what I typically do when I do trainings.
[00:09:27.960]I take screenshots of an empty, you know,
[00:09:31.650]workspace on MakeCode,
[00:09:33.060]and then I create code and take a screenshot of that,
[00:09:36.390]lay the two over the top of one another, and print it off.
[00:09:40.530]A few notes to consider about using this one,
[00:09:44.160]these are super helpful when no tutorial
[00:09:47.040]is already available from MakeCode.
[00:09:49.950]It doesn't require any written instructions.
[00:09:53.190]Generally, students will figure out
[00:09:54.676]at least the simplistic programs,
[00:09:57.420]or the simplistic codes, without any other instructions
[00:10:02.130]just by looking at the code and copying it.
[00:10:06.510]This doesn't solve the issue of limiting code menus
[00:10:10.770]on the student's device.
[00:10:14.460]So that is- The increased number of code menus,
[00:10:16.710]is going to be a little more distracting.
[00:10:19.200]Also, consider, you probably are gonna need a color printer
[00:10:22.380]in order to create these.
[00:10:23.730]I don't recommend if you're having students code
[00:10:26.310]on a, you know, like their Chromebooks
[00:10:28.350]or anything that has a small screen,
[00:10:30.390]there won't be enough space
[00:10:32.070]for them to have up a digital copy of this
[00:10:34.710]and do their coding at the same time.
[00:10:36.630]It's difficult to manage all of that on a small screen.
[00:10:40.350]So have paper copies and they'll need to be in color
[00:10:43.440]if students are gonna coordinate
[00:10:44.917]what color the code is to the code menus.
[00:10:49.854]And then lastly, provide unassembled code blocks.
[00:10:52.130]This is really kind of a cool way to do this,
[00:10:56.250]and it functions very similar to a tutorial.
[00:11:02.010]In that you are in the space.
[00:11:08.220]You're gonna create all of the...
[00:11:11.640]You know, you're gonna break down all of the menus
[00:11:14.550]and digest the blocks that you need.
[00:11:16.091]So you're only gonna pull out the blocks
[00:11:18.030]that are absolutely necessary
[00:11:19.470]for the project that you want built.
[00:11:22.830]But don't put them together.
[00:11:24.210]Don't assemble them into a full code.
[00:11:26.700]Leave them sort of scattered on the workspace.
[00:11:30.750]You can always right-click on one of the code blocks
[00:11:34.020]to leave a comment, and then you can write instructions
[00:11:37.140]for what you want students.
[00:11:38.190]So if they're supposed to assemble a light level sensor
[00:11:41.679]that shows a graph, and shows a number
[00:11:45.960]that corresponds to that light level,
[00:11:47.640]that's what you would write
[00:11:48.480]in your instructions in that comment.
[00:11:50.670]You're gonna have to publish your project,
[00:11:52.800]which I have the arrow pointing at the icon
[00:11:56.100]that you'll have to click in order to publish it.
[00:11:58.770]It's the same icon that you usually see
[00:12:01.020]when you're gonna share a webpage somewhere.
[00:12:05.190]And then you're gonna have to share that project link
[00:12:08.010]with your students.
[00:12:10.080]So those are the examples
[00:12:11.790]of what modify scaffolds can look like.
[00:12:15.420]Finally, once students have moved past modify,
[00:12:18.330]they're gonna move into create.
[00:12:19.890]This is where you might have open coding.
[00:12:22.770]So there might be less instruction for students
[00:12:26.310]on what it is that they're creating,
[00:12:28.080]and more discussion among either
[00:12:31.620]between you and the student,
[00:12:33.000]or with the student and others and their peers
[00:12:36.060]about what it is that they would like to design.
[00:12:41.190]My only guidance on this,
[00:12:44.700]because it can be done so many different ways
[00:12:46.530]once you're at open coding,
[00:12:47.760]and that they're sort of the, you know,
[00:12:49.830]the rails are off the side,
[00:12:51.780]they aren't restricted by tutorials anymore,
[00:12:55.276]is that we do have engineering project cards
[00:12:58.290]available on the website
[00:13:00.630]that give students sort of a place to start
[00:13:04.170]in engineering a project with step-by-step instructions.
[00:13:07.380]But it's more just there
[00:13:09.600]to get their creative juices flowing
[00:13:11.850]and then to move beyond them.
[00:13:14.250]So these are some ideas
[00:13:16.680]for scaffolding student coding experiences.
[00:13:20.220]Everything from the use, to the modify, to the create.
[00:13:23.490]I hope you have a good time trying them out.

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Garden TOOLS
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Garden TOOLS PD - Module 4

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