This sounds just great! We love books, and encourage people to participate in book groups – it makes finding good books so much easier.
Their first book is Coding as a Playground by Marina Umaschi Bers.
“Coding as a Playground by Marina Umaschi Bers is the first book to focus on how young children (ages 7 and under) can engage in computational thinking and be taught to become computer programmers, a process that can increase both their cognitive and social-emotional skills. Readers will learn how coding can engage children as producers-and not merely consumers of technology in a playful way.
You will come away from this groundbreaking work with an understanding of how coding promotes developmentally appropriate experiences such as problem-solving, imagination, cognitive challenges, social interactions, motor skills, development, emotional exploration, and making different choices. You will also learn how to integrate coding into different curricular areas to promote literacy, math, science, engineering, and the arts through a project-based approach.”
Check out this excerpt from their blog:
“CIRCL Educators’ Blog is written by a small group of educators from across the nation who collaborate and think together about issues related to learning and technology. We share research, resources, and best practices. We have so much fun as we learn together that we decided we should open up the space and see who else would like to participate in the learning fun.
Our goal is to discuss a few books as a book club in 2019. Our first book will be Coding as a Playground, inspired by the Infosys Pathfinders Institute. The book club will start on 1/13/12019. To discuss our first book, we will use Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a video discussion platform that is used in classrooms and universities. If you haven’t used Flipgrid, we’ll help! It’s a platform used by a lot of teachers in their classrooms and most find it pretty easy to use. When you visit the CIRCL Educators’ bookclub site on January 13th, you will be able to click a green “+” to add a Flipgrid response. After you click the green “+” you will be prompted to share your reflection. Flipgrid will walk you through how to make your response post. There is no password or code needed!
We will also use Twitter to discuss conversations! Follow our Twitter account @CIRCLEducators and use the hashtag #circledu to share your thoughts!”
“Joyce Carol Oates is the author of multiple best-selling novels and critically-acclaimed collections of short fiction, as well as essays, plays, poetry, and a memoir. Writing in The Nation, critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. said, “A future archeologist equipped only with her oeuvre could easily piece together the whole of postwar America.”
