A Minecraft Add-on To Teach Kids Coding and Programming Skills

August 10, 2015
LearnToMod is a Minecraft add-on to help students learn coding and programming skills through creating interactive mods to the game. LearnToMod, which we discovered through this article from The Guardian, offers a Modding Studio where students get to experiment with coding using two powerful programming languages. It also enables them to collaboratively learn from each other by exchanging code and remixing codes that others have written.

Related: Minecraft Released A New Website to Help Teachers Use Minecraft in Their Classes

LearnToMod offers a wide variety of resources geared towards helping students learn to mod. These include video lessons, puzzles, quizzes and many more.It also provides a private server where users can test their mods and share them with their friends. Unfortunately, learnToMod is not free. It comes with a one year subscription for $30.

Check out the video below to learn more about LearnToMod

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Tynker- A Wonderful App for Teaching Students Coding and Programming Skills

July 16 , 2015
Tynker is an excellent website for teaching students coding. Students will get to learn the fundamentals of coding and programming through game-like puzzles, tutorials, stories and several interactive activities. Tynker also provides a wide variety of educational resources for teachers and educators.  Some of these include: ready-to-use , grade specific lesson plans,  STEM project templates that integrate coding across the curriculum, automatic assessment and powerful tracking tools for a better classroom management and many more.

Tynker’s Hour of Code activities is another wonderful resource designed specifically to teach students computational thinking and the basics of computer programming via a wide variety of activities. To use Tynker in their class, teachers are not required to have any coding experience or training. The site’s self-paced curriculum is developed in such a way to help students get started on their own.

Tynker is available for Android and iPad.

Watch the video below to learn more about what students can create with Tynker

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Get 500 Free Books on Coding

February 27, 2015
Coding is one of the most demanded skills in the 21st century learning. There is a growing need for teaching students the fundamentals of coding and computer programming not only because these are the skills needed for the future job market but also because coding allows learners to better understand their digitally focused life and therefore enhance their interaction with digital media.

We have already featured a plethora of interesting resources, apps, and tools  that teachers and parents can draw on to introduce coding to their kids  and today we are sharing with you another important resource we learned from Life Hacker. The popular GitHub has compiled this excellent list comprising more than 500 free books on programming and coding. The books cover different  topics from programming languages to software architecture.

We thought you might want to have a browse through this list and see if anything grabs your eye. Enjoy

Photo by Johan Sonin

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Excellent Free Resources from Google to Teach Kids Coding and Computer Science

February 23, 2015
Google Computer Science First is a free program launched by Google in 2013 to help students enhance their computer science education through a variety of after-school, in-school, and summer programs. All clubs are run by teachers and volunteers. The materials provided by Google CS First are free and available online and each of these materials include lesson plans to help you use them with your students.  These materials include:

1- Music and Sound

Play musical notes, create a music video, and build an interactive music display. Learn how programming is used to create music. Check out lesson plans.

2- Fashion and Design

Learn how computer science and technology are used in the fashion industry while building fashion-themed programs, like: a fashion walk, a stylist tool, and a pattern maker. Check out lesson plans.

3- Storytelling

Use computer science to tell fun and interactive stories. Storytelling emphasizes creativity, with club members telling a unique story each day. Check out lesson plans.

4- Art

Create animations, interactive artwork, photograph filters, and other exciting, artistic projects. Check out lesson plans.

5- Friends

Create projects for a friend! Students are encouraged to sign up with a friend or make a new friend in the club! Projects include things like: telling the story of how the friendship started, making a cooperative game and imagining a company together. Check out lesson plans.

6- Game Design

Learn basic video game coding concepts by making different types of games, like: racing, platform, launching and more! Check out lesson plans.

No computer science experience is necessary to host or volunteer. CS First provides all the training and materials you need to successfully run and lead a CS First club. All training and materials are free and available online. If you are hosting a club in the United States, you can also request materials at no cost to you. Click here to get started.

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Tynker- Teach Kids Coding Through Puzzles and Interactive Games

February 15, 2015
Yesterday when posted about Code Blast, which is a coding app for iPad, somebody requested an app that could do the same but on Android.Of course there are several titles out there but the one I would recommend the most is Tynker. This is basically a visual programming language designed to assist kids learn how to program and code by soling puzzles, building interactive apps and games. Tynker works both on Android and iPad.

Some of the interesting features Tynker provides  include:

• Learn coding by solving over 200 puzzles
• Design and create interactive games and animations
• Offline access
• Create classrooms with multiple students accounts
• Monitor students progress
• Create and publish a class showcase with best student projects

Google Kickstarter Guides has this wonderful guide explaining in-depth how you can use this app in your classrooms.

Watch the video below to learn more about Tynker

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This Is Why Students Need to Learn Coding

January, 2015
Coding is becoming one of the essential literacies in the 21st century education. There is a growing demand now for teaching students how to code. In his wonderful TED talk titled "Let's teach kids to code", Scientist Mitch Resnick made this beautiful analogy :

When kids learn to code , it enables them to learn many other things, opens up many new opportunities for learning. It's useful to make an analogy to reading and writing, when you learn to read and write it opens up opportunities for you to learn so many other things, when you learn to read you can then read to learn, which is the same thing with coding, if you learn to code you can code to learn. 

To further highlight the importance of teaching kids coding skills, I am sharing with you this beautiful visual titled" Rise of Coding". The visual features some interesting facts and information on  why coding is essential in our digital era.


Source: Online College.  Courtesy of : elearning infographics




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4 Powerful Tools from Google to Teach Kids Coding

January, 2015
Coding is becoming one of the essential literacies in the 21st century education. There is a growing demand now for teaching students how to code. In his wonderful TED talk titled "Let's teach kids to code", Scientist Mitch Resnick made this beautiful analogy :

When kids learn to code , it enables them to learn many other things, opens up many new opportunities for learning. It's useful to make an analogy to reading and writing, when you learn to read and write it opens up opportunities for you to learn so many other things, when you learn to read you can then read to learn, which is the same thing with coding, if you learn to code you can code to learn.

Coding helps kids develop a variety of skills. Some of these skills include:

• It helps kids learn in meaningful context
• It teaches them that learning is a process and not a product
• It teaches them how to take complex ideas and break them down into simpler parts
• It teaches them how to collaborate with others 
• It also teaches them how to keep persistent and persevere in the face of frustration when things are not working well
• it teaches determination and risk-taking
• It helps them become fluent with technologies and enable them to open open up and express their ideas.
• It helps them be creative 
• It helps them interact with the world around them

There are several web tools and mobile apps that teachers and parents can use  to teach their kids coding. I have already covered some of the major ones in previous posts. Today, I am sharing with you another list of powerful coding tools but this time all of these tools are from Google for Education.

1- Code Gym

A Google-supported open source coding laboratory using drawing, music and creative fiction to introduce coding concepts

2-Blockly

Shaped-based coding environment introducing young programmers to fundamental coding concepts and challenges.

3-Made with Code

Coding is the new literacy - it carries the potential to create, to innovate, and quite literally change the world. This initiative is designed to inspire millions of girls to experience the power of code.

4- MIT App Inventor

Create your own Android app with this easy to use tool! Learn how to program with a drag and drop interface appropriate for middle school and up.

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