Tag Archives: Coding

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Best Digital Tools 2020: codespark

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL)  has announced their top choices for “electronic resources that provide enhanced learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their educator collaborators.” These resources were formerly separated into the Best Apps and Best Websites for Teaching and Learning and are now combined into the Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning.

This awesome coding app is FREE for teachers and librarians! “CodeSpark Academy is an app and website that wordlessly introduces young users to the world of coding through games. Parents and children can use it on their own, and educators can create classes to manage student use.”

Shared foundations: Explore, Engage, Inquire

Common Sense Education has this review of the app, along with instruction ideas for teachers. Class Tech Tips has this article about the app, and the University of Pittsburgh included the app on their page of STEM learning resources.

This quick video shows how the app works:

Watch this 3 min video on getting started with CodeSpark for educators:

Books, Programs

Check out the CIRCL Educators’ Book Club!

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:

Get ready for the
CIRCL Educators’ Book Club!

“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!”

Guest Blogger, School Media Specialist, Services

CMLE Mini Grant: Dash and Dot Robots

This is a guest post from Amy Serbus, Media Assistant at the Kimball Elementary School Library. Need a Mini Grant to purchase materials or try an interesting new program at your library? Apply today! 

Students at KES have had a lot of fun playing with and learning coding from our new robots, Dash and Dot! Through various apps on an iPad, they are learning to program the robots to communicate with each other and perform tasks such as bringing messages to their teacher, play the xylophone, tell jokes on command and so much more. When using the apps, students can program, or code, the robots by connecting blocks with specific commands. For example, if you want Dash to tell a joke, you start with a block that tells him to “wait”, then listen for voice command of knock, knock, then say “who’s there”, etc. It teaches students the basics of coding and how specific and important each step is.

Tech, Training

Vets Who Code

Libraries offer great resources to their veteran patrons, so when we saw the work this nonprofit is doing in regards to serving veterans, we thought we should share!

Vets Who Code was created by veteran and programmer Jerome Hardaway. The organization’s goal is to help veterans become programmers and also to challenge some stigmas out there about veterans and the workforce.

From their website:

“Launched in 2014, Vets Who Code is a non-profit dedicated to filling the nations technical skills gap with America’s best. We achieve this by using technology to connect and train veterans remotely in web development in order to close the digital talent gap and ease career transition for military veterans and to give military spouses skills to provide stability as they move to support their families. We believe that those who serve in uniform can be the digital economy’s most productive and innovative assets. Vets Who Code prepares them to enter the civilian work force with tangible skills for new careers.”

Check out this podcast interview with Hardaway, where they discuss some of the challenges he has faced, such as “reentering civilian life at the height of the Great Recession, how Vets Who Code was born, the specific assets vets bring to programming and the tech world, and how they overcome the challenges and stereotypes they face.”

Children's services, Programs, Tech

ALA, Google Seek Libraries to Apply for Coding Pilot this Summer

Month of Military Child 150425-Z-CH590-276

(From School Library Journal)

“Is your library ready to code? The American Library Association (ALA) and Google want you. As part of Phase III of the Libraries Ready to Code initiative, ALA and Google are forming a cohort of 25-50 school and public libraries, which will receive resources and support to create youth coding programs to serve their communities. In turn, participating libraries will help inform the creation of a toolkit to be used to inform coding programs at libraries nationwide.

The $500,000 initiative—announced at Google Chicago June 22, during ALA’s annual conference—will involve a competitive application process set to open in mid-July and run until the end of August 2017. Both school and public libraries are encouraged to apply, according to Marijke Visser, associate director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP).

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