Coding Club: Day 2

Two boys seeming to enjoy themselves

The coding club met for the second time yesterday. This time I took photos. Most kids went on Codecademy and continued where they left off the week before, and some kids went on Scratch. Scratch they learned with Mr. F. in technology class and they love it! I can see where it is a lot more fun than Codecademy because it's like a game and you can program the characters any way you like - make them certain colors, make them run around, make them talk, give them speech bubles, etc. Codecademy is not like that. You do lessons and you have to read the instructions. I can see where kids are having trouble though. It is because they are not reading the instructions. So I help them with their code and I tell them what they are doing wrong, but I don't think that is helpful. I have to model reading the instructions for them and with them. I also have to get farther in the lessons myself.

Three girls coding after school

This week I had just a few fewer kids than last week so I had enough laptops to go around. I had exactly 20 kids for exactly 20 laptops. The four MacBooks that I have are still the favorite. I would have loved to buy more of them but they are almost $500. more expensive than the Windows machines. Still, I hope to buy more of them in the future. They are a big hit and the first to go when the club starts.

At least two kids gave up with coding already and decided to use the time to do their homework.  The whole point of the club though is to turn kids on to coding and to expose them to coding and hopefully spark an interest that might develop into a career for them - a lucrative career.

Coding Club: First Day

Whole class working

Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures but it was a success. It turns out I had more students than I had computers. All 20 laptops were used up, all 5 desktop computers, plus the 2 behind the circulation desk. I had the kids go to Codecademy and the 4 CSI students were working diligently on it. The younger kids did well too, but of all the questions I fielded, all of them were from the younger kids. I have got to learn some other programs for the younger kids to use. I don't think it turns out that Codecademy provides enough feedback to keep the kids interested. There are no bells and whistles.

The club started at 3:00 and ended at 4:00. I really thought I would not have that much of a turnout, at least on the first day, but I did - something like 27 students! That's almost an entire class. And like in class, I was running around the room, breaking into a sweat, answering questions. It's okay. If I am exposing kids to something they might not expose themselves to on their own, than that is a good thing.

I applied for another grant to buy two more MacBooks and a computer science collection and I hope I get it. I only have four MacBooks at the moment and the kids really love using the MacBooks.