Teaching Programming Languages in Education

Last year, the UK announced the redesign of their educational curriculum that requires all students to learn computer programming in school from the ages of five through sixteen. Since then, there has been a great surge across the nation to incorporate and highlight programming courses in educational organizations. Historically, programming courses have been in existence for some time now, mostly on the secondary level, but were always thought to be elective courses for a select few whose interests were in high tech careers where programming was an essential element. No need to learn how to code unless your career target was that of a programmer in the back of the office, isolated from the crowd! 

This concept has changed dramatically with the understanding that students now need problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity and analytical skills to be effective members of a global society. The ISTE standards clearly indicate that students should acquire the "4Cs" (communication, critical thinking, creativity, communication/collaboration) to perform better in all disciplines. Technology has changed the way in which we teach and learn, and having these skills allows students to become more engaged in a student-centered, differentiated environment where learning is more personal and meaningful to the world around them. Here are some favorite apps/sites that promote programming skills at each level:

Elementary Programming Apps and Resources:

Daisy the Dinosaur (free)
Move the Turtle (iPhone/iPad, $2.99)
Hopscotch (iPad, free)
Scratch (web, free)
Stencyl (Windows, MAC, Linux, free)
Dynamic ART ($2.99)
Kodable (free)
A.L.E.X. (free)

Middle School/High School Resources

App Inventor: (web, free) Hosted by MIT, App Inventor is similar to Scratch with drag and drop coding blocks.

Alice:

(Windows, MAC, Linux, free) Carnegie Melon's desktop app uses a 3D programming environment to teach programming. Needs Java runtime to run, but great for kids to see the code behind the scenes.

Pluralsight: (web, free) Online training site that offers three video courses for kids. Videos include training in C#, Visual Basic, Scratch, and App Inventor.

Codeacademy and Khan Academy: (web, free) Interactive online tools to learn coding. Codeacademy teaches web fundamentals, jQuery, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP and more. Khan Acadmey's coding uses JavaScript.

Hour of Code
Khan Academy created a site for teaching the "Hour of Code" in the classroom

Using a Teleprompter with Student Videos

In my experience integrating technology in the classroom with K-12 students, one of the most challenging tasks is when a teacher asks a student to speak in front of a camera without reading a written script on a desk in front of them. The student could memorize the speech, but why not offer them the chance to use a teleprompter!  Here is a great idea mentioned on the Digital Inspiration blog by Amit Argarwal.  In one of his blog posts, Amit mentions how to use the Power Point scrolling text feature as a solution to students who need to face the camera and confidently read text aloud. A great idea, easy to set up and use with your students! If you are using an iPad or are looking for an online web based software program, try these options: Teleprompt+ for iPad (app is $14.99) Free online teleprompter CuePrompter.

Here are the steps to create a teleprompter using Power Point:

Step 1: Using Power Point, create a new presentation and select Blank as your layout.
Step 2: Select the Design tab and identify Black as your background style.
Step 3: Create a new text box and enlarge it to the entire width of the slide.
Step 4: Copy/paste your text to be read inside the text box and change the font size to a large size somewhere around 40 so that it is readable.
Step 5: Go to the Animations Tab, select your text box, and add the LINES animation from the Motion Path.
Step 6: Go to Effect Options and select “Up” as the animation direction.
Step 7: Open the Animations pane and double-click the Text Box object to open the Effect options dialog. Set the Smooth Start and Smooth End timing to 0 seconds. From the Timing tab, set the duration of the animation to 50 seconds.
Step 8: Reduce the zoom to 20% so that the entire animation and the slide are visible.  Move the red tip of the animation arrow above the top edge the slide.
Step 9: Press F5 to play the slideshow and start your teleprompter. You can adjust the timing and the arrow positions depending upon the amount of text. You can also split text into multiple slides if it extends longer than a minute.

Using ePortfolios for Storage, Showcase & Evaluation

e-Portfolios: Collecting, Sharing, and Organizing Student Work

With the start of a new school year, how to collect, share and organize student work for collaboration and assessment is on the minds of many teachers. The days of countless folders filled with piles of papers is slowly being replaced with digital e-Portfolios in the classroom. Now a teacher can keep online records of a student's progress throughout the year and share those documents with parents as well. (Yes, parents can still create a hardcopy to hang on their refrigerators!) Digital copies contained in a folder/notebook (e-Portfolios) are a perfect way to track a student's success as well as keep an eye on areas where student's may need some extra help.

The May, 2013 issue of Edutopia listed some ideal ways in which a teacher can collect, store and share student information using some of the current apps on the market today. Some are free and those with an asterisk have a fee. Depending upon the grade level that you teach, check them out to see which one works best for you.  All of them are great ways to begin capturing student work:

ProjectFoundry

Organizes, tracks and shares learning in a project-based learning classroom. Includes standards-based grading tools and feedback tools. Teachers have the option to include a digital portfolio website for students.

Google Sites*

Create a website to share classwork and projects. Potential users must be at least 13 to sign up. Students can use the "file locker" option to upload files.

Wikispaces and PBwiki*

These two wiki-creation tools allow students to create a website of their work. Due to the collaborative nature of the tools, student teams can build a workspace to showcase their work. The teacher can create student accounts without an email address. (Note: PBwiki is also known as PBworks.)

Dropbox*

Students can create a public folder in Dropbox to share their work. This platform supports multiple file types and can be used collaboratively by sharing folders.

Evernote*

Students can create "notebook" within their Evernote account for each class, and that notebook can be shared publicly. Students can upload files to their notebooks, including documents, photos and audio files.

eBackpack

Teachers can assign, collect, grade and return assignments to students through eBackpack. Students can upload files to their digital locker to create an online portfolio for their course. Work uploaded cannot be seen outside of the closed system.

Edutopia: (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/e-portfolios-in-the-classroom-mary-beth-hertz)