Who is using the space? Do teachers bring classes to use the space during the day? Is it an afterschool club?

Last year I held an afterschool club on Wednesdays from 3-4. I taught the students how to use http://codecademy.org because I thought it would be fun for the students to work at their own pace, but it turned out that the site is really fun for adults and not for kids. It is an unforgiving program that doesn’t give you enough hints when you have made a mistake. It also lacks the bells and whistles that middle school students have grown accustomed to. I also introduced the students to other programs like Tynker and RunMarco. This year however, I am not running a club. Instead the principal gave me my own computer programming elective, which meets on Mondays and Thursdays, two periods a week. I received 12 laptops with the INNOVATION! grant money and I use them with the class. No other teachers use them as I need them for my own program and can’t risk them being broken and waiting for tech support to come out and fix them. Hence, the materials, the laptops, are solely for the kids in my class(es). (I do teach a “library skills” class to each 6th grade homeroom as well and I use the laptops with those classes also). Since my makerspace is an actual class and teachers don’t bring their students to my class, they nevertheless come for research classes and although I am not teaching HTML coding to those classes, I am teaching research and I take out the laptops during those times as well. So the laptops are getting a workout. They are used not just for my makerspace.

Run Marco!

Yesterday and today I taught my students how to use Run Marco! It is very similar to scratch in the way you drag the commands to the left of the screen to tell Marco what to do. It was a success as 90+% of the students were doing the program. It is so much more fun than Codecademy, whereby many of my students gave up with it. One of yesterday's students didn't want to play it though, she wanted to continue to work on making a Web page using the Editra program, which of course was great. I found Run Marco! through edshelf the other day and gave it a try with my students yesterday and it was overall much much more fun than Codecademy.

Commands in Run Marco!

It is colorful, has music, is fun, and is somewhat easy. The students did run into snags though. I had several hands raised and I went from student to student helping them and I found myself challenged as well. Even though the program took about five minutes for me to learn, there were still things I wasn't familiar with. One thing I found with many students was that when they ran into problems with their code, I had them drag their commands to the trash and start again. This worked on at least two occasions and I was glad I was able to help.

Some additional coding programs

Run Marco: a coding adventure around the world

From edshelf: "Play an epic adventure game and have fun while learning to code i.e. program computers. Use visual instructions to guide Marco through a series of levels as he tries to discover himself. In this journey you will learn how to think as a software developer one step at a time! Instructions are in the form of the standard visual programming language “Google Blockly”, which is used by the official code.org tutorials."

Tynker

From edshelf: "Tynker is a new computing platform designed specifically to teach children computational learning and programming skills in a fun and imaginative way. Tynker is inspired by Scratch from MIT. It is a completely browser-based implementation written using Open Web standards such as Javascript, HTML5, CSS3 and does not use Flash."

Made with code

From edshelf: "Made with Code builds on our long­-standing commitment to increasing diversity in Computer Science. Since 2010 we’ve invested $40 million in organizations like Code.org, Girls Who Code, NCWIT and Black Girls Code. We are committing an additional $50 million over the next three years to further these efforts."

Code.org

From edshelf: "Launched in 2013, Code.org® is a non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color. Our vision is that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science. We believe computer science and computer programming should be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra."

LearningDataScience.org

From edshelf: "LearningDataScience.org is a collection of some of the most powerful and effective data science learning resources from across the web, including online classes, books, coding tutorials, articles, and lectures."

Kodable

From edshelf: "LOST IN SPACE The furry aliens, known as Fuzzes were exploring space when their ship unexpectedly crashed on the maze-covered planet Smeeborg. The naturally curious fuzzes need kids to program them to explore all the colorful Technomazes on the planet’s surface.ACCOMPANYING CURRICULUM (Common Core Aligned)Upload your roster for easy sign on, get lesson plans, and track what concepts and standards students are learning when you create a free account at Kodable.com. (Homeschool and Parent curriculum available as well)WHY CODE WITH KODABLE?Even before your children can pronounce the word “algorithm” they have an astounding ability to learn how to use them. Today’s best programmers fell in love with coding at a young age by experimenting with the concepts taught in Kodable. Understanding the basics of programming empowers your child for the jobs of tomorrow, and expands your child’s mind to solve problems today in more intelligent ways.Kids learn the fundamentals of every modern programming language in a fun and inviting way."

Trinket

From edshelf: "Trinket helps you teach with code."

ComputerScienceOnline

From edshelf: "ComputerScienceOnline.org is an in-depth website for potential and current students considering a career with computers, software engineering, and more. Our staff is passionate about technology and dedicated to helping others find the information they need to make decisions about their future in the fast moving and rapidly growing tech industry."

K-8 Intro to Computer Science

From edshelf: "This 20-hour course introduces core computer science and programming concepts. The course is designed for use in classrooms for grades K-8, but it is fun to learn at all ages."