Tech Edge, Mobile Learning In The Classroom - Episode 16, Learning to Code

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06/06/2016 Added

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Technology Information: Learning to Code

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[00:00:00.295]Coming up on Mobile Learning in the Classroom,
[00:00:02.412]Learning to Code.
[00:00:04.238](lively instrumental music)
[00:00:17.247]Hi, my name is Guy Trainin, and this is
[00:00:18.625]Mobile Learning in the Classroom from Tech Edge.
[00:00:20.778]Today we're talking about learning to code,
[00:00:22.867]and we're doing this episode in the summer
[00:00:24.586]although I think it will apply to any point in time.
[00:00:27.652]But in summer it's actually a great opportunity,
[00:00:29.742]if kids are at home and they have some spare time
[00:00:32.146]to put aside some time every day, or a few times a week
[00:00:35.787]to really learn something the doesn't happen
[00:00:37.746]enough in school.
[00:00:38.579]I would argue that coding is one of these things.
[00:00:40.676]We really want kids to start thinking about coding
[00:00:43.965]and interacting with coding fairly early.
[00:00:46.226]And we could start that as early as you want,
[00:00:48.341]kindergarten or beyond, because some of the interfaces
[00:00:50.935]are completely visual.
[00:00:53.079]Others have text in them.
[00:00:55.472]But really an opportunity to start
[00:00:57.617]to get the curiosity going,
[00:00:59.209]to get kids creating through programming.
[00:01:02.141]Lots of opportunities there.
[00:01:03.876]And summer is a great time to talk about it.
[00:01:06.493]What I do want to say about interacting with all of these
[00:01:09.865]is you really, really want to have conversations
[00:01:12.984]about what kids create, and not just let them play around.
[00:01:15.624]Because sometimes when kids play around,
[00:01:17.406]all they do is trial and error.
[00:01:19.217]They're not really thinking about their steps.
[00:01:21.235]They're not really thinking about design
[00:01:22.796]and they don't really even get really good results.
[00:01:26.086]So questioning techniques,
[00:01:27.551]really saying how did you do that?
[00:01:29.958]Why did you make this choice?
[00:01:31.467]What do you think you should do now?
[00:01:33.509]How would you do it if you had to do it
[00:01:36.289]all over again?
[00:01:37.352]Are great questions to have kids start thinking about
[00:01:39.799]what does it mean to program,
[00:01:41.473]and how does the design process really fit
[00:01:43.716]into that idea of programming,
[00:01:45.312]which is really, really important.
[00:01:46.539]We want them to be metacognisant,
[00:01:48.303]to think about how they do this.
[00:01:50.717]I do have a few apps and websites that can be used for that.
[00:01:55.296]The first one is Tynker.
[00:01:56.129]I'm going to show Tynker the way it shows up
[00:01:58.978]on a Chromebook.
[00:01:59.913]But you have to know that you can get Tynker
[00:02:01.873]on the iPad as well.
[00:02:03.750]I just had to choose one way.
[00:02:05.869]You can log into Tynker as a student, as a parent,
[00:02:09.256]and as a teacher.
[00:02:10.868]So I have parent account and I have also an account
[00:02:12.956]for one of my kids.
[00:02:15.749]You can see you immediately, when you go on it as the parent
[00:02:20.220]you can see how many activities were completed.
[00:02:23.459]If you go to the other view you can also see
[00:02:25.466]what's available as somebody as the free account,
[00:02:31.582]and what you can do if you actually subscribe.
[00:02:33.952]So you can get quite a bit of practice
[00:02:35.588]and quite a bit of thinking done without subscribing,
[00:02:38.244]without paying at all.
[00:02:40.040]You do need to have an e-mail and a log-in.
[00:02:45.024]If you do think it's worthwhile, you have some budget,
[00:02:47.755]definitely get the full panel
[00:02:51.750]because it does provide a lot more.
[00:02:55.105]If you look at the process of the activities
[00:02:58.455]that we have right now, you can see that for example,
[00:03:04.826]let me go to what I have created.
[00:03:10.465]Let's give an example of a simple command.
[00:03:15.808]This is a level that I've tried before
[00:03:18.052]and it's fairly simple.
[00:03:21.277]You have a character, you have to tell it what to do.
[00:03:23.476]You need to move to turn right, and retrieve the coin
[00:03:26.127]that's on the bottom.
[00:03:27.476]So you have move and you have to select how much.
[00:03:31.890]You can see that there's a scale here.
[00:03:34.052]My guess is it's about 400.
[00:03:36.586]Then we need to move, and this allows you to choose
[00:03:40.635]which direction we're moving in.
[00:03:42.882]Then we need to move again and probably another 400,
[00:03:47.165]although I'm not sure.
[00:03:48.962]Let's try to run the program and see if it works.
[00:03:51.334]You can also run the program, and this is the point
[00:03:54.529]where you start asking questions because you can really show
[00:03:59.510]what has happened.
[00:04:01.066]You can go to the next level and obviously each challenge
[00:04:03.234]and gets more and more sophisticated
[00:04:06.831]and therefore more challenging.
[00:04:09.169]So this one is called Tynker.
[00:04:11.497]It's got lots of other options, but you get the hang of it.
[00:04:14.393]It's game-based, it's new challenges every time.
[00:04:18.273]It gives positive feedback, and if it's not working
[00:04:21.134]it'll show you what didn't work because you can see
[00:04:23.621]the interaction on the table.
[00:04:26.637]The other thing that I wanted to show as we go through this
[00:04:32.389]and let it just load,
[00:04:34.753]is that while you're writing this program,
[00:04:39.848]you're writing this program, you're adding this thing.
[00:04:45.102]I can do this and this.
[00:04:48.162]You can actually just hide everything
[00:04:50.855]and watch what's going on, or watch the program,
[00:04:54.623]and from anywhere you want to navigate it,
[00:04:56.576]it's very easy to go back home to replay or control,
[00:05:00.985]including a help function so kids can actually work
[00:05:06.043]on their own rather well.
[00:05:07.726]So this is called Tynker, it's a great option.
[00:05:10.544]I find this very interactive.
[00:05:14.183]I find that my kids love playing with it.
[00:05:16.967]And the fact that there's feedback and you can actually
[00:05:19.328]look at the progress that the kids have made over time
[00:05:21.941]is really useful as a teacher and as a parent
[00:05:24.877]because you really get the sense of what is going on.
[00:05:27.082]This one is Tynker.
[00:05:28.308]The next one I wanted to talk about it Code.org.
[00:05:31.122]Code.org is very common in classrooms right now.
[00:05:34.636]They supply tremendous amounts of free materials
[00:05:38.305]to teachers, but also to parents.
[00:05:40.554]Obviously, the main idea is to help kids do all of this.
[00:05:45.119]What I love is they're really worked with content providers.
[00:05:50.461]They're working with Microsoft through Minecraft.
[00:05:52.827]They're working with Disney for working with Anna and Elsa
[00:05:56.909]as you can see on the right side.
[00:05:58.465]On the left side you can see they're working
[00:06:00.019]with Disney through Star Wars.
[00:06:02.268]I love the fact that there's a lot of guiding videos.
[00:06:05.627]For example, if you start building a galaxy with codes,
[00:06:10.120]you try something right now, you will get a video
[00:06:15.064]that explains a little bit of a promo
[00:06:17.851]why you want to code.
[00:06:19.937]This one has a little bit of Star Wars there
[00:06:23.366]which is attractive to some kids, not to everybody.
[00:06:25.862]But there are other options as well.
[00:06:27.656]It doesn't have to be Star Wars.
[00:06:29.901]You get people to talk about exactly why coding is good.
[00:06:35.254]But if you, about a minute into this and you can see
[00:06:39.823]we actually start talking about how do we code.
[00:06:43.658]You get this introduction to coding by as you can see,
[00:06:48.150]building your own Star Wars game.
[00:06:49.660]That's the end goal, although in the beginning
[00:06:51.618]you just learn how to do some simple commands
[00:06:54.477]in the approaches blocks, very similar to Tynker
[00:06:56.756]that we just saw, also works with blocks.
[00:07:00.142]Very, very simple way to work through that.
[00:07:03.809]It walks you through the activities.
[00:07:06.994]I'm not going to watch the whole movie,
[00:07:08.996]but you can see that now I need to give commands.
[00:07:12.270]Now I've got the program on the right
[00:07:15.332]and the actual field on the left.
[00:07:18.430]There's a run button under it.
[00:07:20.963]When run move right, and let's say move right again.
[00:07:25.451]Let's see what happens if I run it.
[00:07:28.795]One of the features I love about this is
[00:07:32.667]you can actually show the actual code.
[00:07:35.565]It will generate the SIM code you just wrote.
[00:07:39.603]It will generate the code that is already in those blocks,
[00:07:44.993]so it actually shows you the programming language
[00:07:47.239]that you would really be doing if you were coding it
[00:07:50.506]on your own.
[00:07:51.690]Eventually, it leads you to coding a game on your own.
[00:07:55.358]This is code.org, lots of opportunities as you saw.
[00:08:00.537]There's Star Wars, there's a coding with Anna and Elsa.
[00:08:06.531]So it really is trying to appeal simply to a wide audience
[00:08:12.245]by having different options.
[00:08:14.689]This is the video that explains how you program
[00:08:17.230]with Anna and Elsa.
[00:08:18.501]That's based on ice skating again,
[00:08:20.655]and nice application there.
[00:08:23.110]This is code.org, lots of other things to explore.
[00:08:26.167]Most of the content, actually all of the content is free
[00:08:30.000]and available, you do need to register.
[00:08:32.087]You can do that as a classroom, so again great way
[00:08:36.455]to learn about coding.
[00:08:38.051]The last thing I want to talk about is in an app,
[00:08:43.843]and app on the Chromebook that is called Hopscotch.
[00:08:51.837]We talked about Hopscotch before,
[00:08:54.571]but they've really, really done new work on Hopscotch.
[00:08:59.551]So this is Hopscotch.
[00:09:01.431]Hopscotch has lots of projects already loaded.
[00:09:04.459]You can see what I love about Hopscotch, unlike the others,
[00:09:06.502]is you have a lot of access to things
[00:09:07.971]that others have created using Hopscotch.
[00:09:10.725]You have an idea of what the capabilities are.
[00:09:13.013]You can see some cool things that other can program.
[00:09:15.836]That allows you to think quite a bit
[00:09:18.495]about what you want to do.
[00:09:20.330]What you can do on Hopscotch is really make or view.
[00:09:27.101]Right now we're in the make section.
[00:09:29.264]You can, for example, create a blank project
[00:09:32.206]or draw something or do a geometry dash, light sabers.
[00:09:35.834]You can see that there are lots of options of things to do.
[00:09:39.627]Let's for example, create a Flappy Bird.
[00:09:43.184]What I love about this, if you can see immediately
[00:09:47.182]we have an actual video showing you how to program this.
[00:09:52.243]What I love even further is while she's talking
[00:09:55.261]I can do some of these things.
[00:09:57.388]I can actually select and start programming
[00:10:02.279]while she's talking about how you program.
[00:10:05.092]I can stop her video and do what she just said.
[00:10:08.313]It stays in the corner and we can go on.
[00:10:10.683]This is a great use of that picture inside picture feature
[00:10:14.846]that iPad can do right now.
[00:10:16.562]It really walks you through the steps.
[00:10:19.536]You keep the video on and you are creating at the same time.
[00:10:23.228]Great way to learn.
[00:10:25.311]For example, we created a character.
[00:10:27.392]Then you make the rule.
[00:10:29.149]For example, when the character is tapped what happens?
[00:10:32.900]The character jumps, right.
[00:10:35.064]Now right, I've done something.
[00:10:40.132]I've programmed this character to do something, right.
[00:10:44.135]Once the project is done, if I press on the character
[00:10:47.929]it will jump.
[00:10:49.806]It allows you to actually make more rules because
[00:10:53.193]this is a Flappy Bird kind of game,
[00:10:54.827]so this is a side scrolling with obstacles.
[00:10:57.409]You can create these obstacles and program everything
[00:10:59.862]that's happening there.
[00:11:01.128]The video will guide you through it.
[00:11:03.374]The projects are not just there,
[00:11:04.926]but they're actually each one of them guided
[00:11:07.094]with a person talking to you, walking you through the steps
[00:11:09.748]so it's not reading.
[00:11:10.851]It's not necessarily guess work.
[00:11:12.399]I like that approach very, very much
[00:11:14.609]just like I like the use of videos in code.org.
[00:11:19.344]Although I think this picture inside pictures
[00:11:21.549]is a really useful way to do this.
[00:11:24.079]This is Hopscotch.
[00:11:27.105]Today we talked about three different apps
[00:11:28.734]that are used to teach coding.
[00:11:30.447]Again, the emphasis is not just to work through these apps
[00:11:33.430]to get reports on what kids are doing,
[00:11:35.099]but actually to have this metacognitive questions
[00:11:38.080]that really apply to the design process
[00:11:40.854]and as a result of the programming process.
[00:11:43.882]That's it for this time, I'll see you next time
[00:11:45.675]on Mobile Learning in the Classroom.
[00:11:47.695](lively instrumental music)

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Tech Edge, Mobile Learning In The Classroom - Episode 16, Learning to Code

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