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:
Providing tech information and resources for your patrons can be a continuing challenge in libraries! There are several discussions floating around the library world right now about different areas in this topic; so we are sharing one here to see what kind of resources might be available for your own work.
The question:
I am wanting to give my teen homeschooling community access to easy and fun access to beginner’s coding courses here in the teen department of my library. Where would you suggest I start? (I have absolutely NO knowledge on how to code or where to begin!)
Hour of Code is coming and it is a global movement, bigger than ever!
93,860 Hour of Code events reached over 100,000 students in 180 countries last year.
Anyone, anywhere can organize an Hour of Code event.
The grassroots campaign goal is for students to try an Hour of Code anytime during the week of December 7-13, in celebration of Computer Science Education Week.
One-hour tutorials are available in over 40 languages. Ages 4 to 104, no experience is needed.
It is especially exciting to see the surge of girls participating in this empowering skill. Go to the main Hour of Code site, read through the FAQ’s right off the main page to get questions answered. Although some may think this is only school centered, it could be a great makerspace activity too!
CMLE staff would love to share your Hour of Code success stories. Be sure to send us who, what, when and where after your event and include Hour of Code in the subject line.
This year’s Hour of Code was another successful one! Talahi Community School is one of the many schools that participated in the worldwide event, and they were featured in the Saint Cloud Times. Mark Sommerhauser writes, “supporters say Hour of Code gives a much-needed injection of computer skills training into elementary-school curricula.” Students from kindergarten to senior high participated in the event throughout Minnesota as well as the nation. According to the Hour of Code’s page of Minnesota events, these schools from the CMLE region also participated:
Big Lake High School – Big Lake
Delano Public School – Delano
Eagle Valley Public Schools – Clarissa
East Central Elementary School – Finlayson
Hershey Middle School – Hinckley
Howard Lake-Waverly-Winstead Public Schools – Howard Lake
It’s almost here: the Hour of Code! Millions of students from all around the world are expected to participate in the Hour of Code this year, which is known for encouraging young students – especially girls – to learn coding. As if kids needed another reason to participate this year, Code.org will be featuring characters from the movie ‘Frozen’.
Want more on the Hour of Code? Check out our blog post from last month, which includes more details and links – including links to coding apps. Since that post, we have found another coding app that is worth your time: Hopscotch.
Check out this video about the Hour of Code, which helps illustrate how excited students get about this opportunity:
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