MrErrico.net

Since returning to teaching students last year, I have been interested in using Hour Of Code activities with my 3-4-5 students. This would be a great exposure to programming and computer science for many of them. To help facilitate this I recently attended a Code.org Workshop at the Monmouth County Library in Shrewsbury, NJ given by a presenter from Code.org.

I have been teaching for over 15 years and have been involved with EdTech for half of that time and this was probably the best workshop I have ever been to! I don’t say this lightly as I have had close to 500 hours of professional development the past 5 years. I have seen plenty, some great, some not so much.

The main reasons for this being such a wonderful and informative training are:

• The focus of the workshop was computer science for elementary K-5 and most, if not all, of the attendees were from K-5 schools.
• The presenter, Joann Presbrey, fully understood the material she was presenting and showed us how to skillfully implement the curriculum in an elementary setting.
• Free stuff!

As an educator I have gone to workshops that have been geared towards grades K-5. Many times the presenters are not elementary level teachers and they try to lower the academic level of the presentation to fit what they feel would fit an elementary school level. More often than not this approach doesn’t work. If you are an elementary educator you know there is more to it than than simply lowering the academics.

Before I go on, let me point out that the workshop, Instructor Handbook and curriculum are all free. If you want to implement this in your class, school or district it doesn’t cost anything. You do of course need computers.

This workshop was different, the curriculum that Code.org has created is truly a K-5 curriculum. They do provide middle and high school materials but this workshop was for elementary. The curriculum is divided into 3 courses with course 1 being for the youngest students as it is geared towards early readers and is mostly visual. Course 2 is good for students who are readers but have no coding experience and course 3 builds on course 2 with and has students creating interactive stories and games.

The curriculum uses Code.org’s Code Studio website for the majority of the lessons. This is where the students develop, build, test, debug and complete their code to create programs, stories and games. In addition there are many “unlpugged” lessons that use pencil & paper, physical activity and other non-computer means to introduce new topics and learn concepts.

The workshop spent about half of the time reviewing the curriculum and guide. It truly provides a full K-5 experience for students. The guide and lessons are laid out in a way to be accessible to teacher and easily taught even if you have a minimal understanding of coding, computers and technology in general.

The other half of the workshop had us split into groups to review, develop and teach on of the lessons form the curriculum guide. This is often an intimidating task in a workshop. You find yourself randomly grouped with strangers preparing to present a lesson on previously unknown material. The lessons are very easy to deliver and, as we found out, quite fun.

I would suggest you attend one of these workshops, they seem to be given once a month at the Shrewsbury Library, if you are a technology teacher/coach/coordinator or a regular classroom teacher interested in technology. You do not need to know much about coding or computers beforehand. And it’s a free workshop!