Purpose & objective

The participants will have concrete ideas and resources to launch coding activities in their classroom. Participants will see examples and build an understanding of the importance of coding in elementary classrooms. Participants will see student created examples and have a chance to create and interact with the same tools including board games, apps, and robots. Participants will interact with BeeBots, ProBots, and Dot and Dash robots. Participants will walk away with lesson plans for their classrooms accompanied by supporting resources. Participants will learn the value of unplugged coding, codings apps, and beginning robotics. Participants will walk away with concrete ideas on how to integrate coding into literacy, math, and inquiry.

Outline

The presentation will being with an overview of what coding looks like in my elementary classroom accompanied by the supporting research about why teaching coding is important. The presentation will begin with 30-45 minutes learning about "unplugged" coding activities. We will look at resources available through Code.org as well as games used in my class such as Robot Turtles. I will share how I "hacked" these resources to make them seamless activities in my classroom. For the next 30-45 minutes, we will play coding apps such as Kodable, Lightbot, and The Foos and discuss how to tie these games to key vocabulary development and concept delivery. For the next 30-45 minutes, we will focus on the apps Scratch Jr. and Hopscotch and how they can used to create content in elementary classrooms. We will spend the final 30-45 minutes playing with robots and learning how to seamlessly tie them into classroom curriculum

Supporting research

Code.Org http://code.org/promote, LA Times Article "Want to Prepare kids for the future? Teach them to code" http://articles.latimes.com/2014/apr/07/news/la-ol-teach-students-code-computer-science-20140406 The Guardian "Why every child should learn to code", http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/07/year-of-code-dan-crow-songkick Forbes "Do our kids really need to learn how to code", http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/07/06/do-our-kids-really-need-to-learn-how-to-code/ Edutopia "15+ Ways of Teaching Every Student To Code" Vicki Davis http://www.edutopia.org/blog/15-ways-teaching-students-coding-vicki-davis, Programming: The New Literacy http://classtap.pbworks.com/f/Prensky+-+Programming:+The+New+Literacy.pdf