Week seven notes and reflection:
Coding with kids
Why engage children with learning code:
- Understanding code helps explain the world and how technology can be integrated.
- Learning code developed problem solving and critical thinking skills.
- It can be a fun way for children to learn technology!
Coding sites:
- Scratch
- Code Monkey
- Hour of Code
- Grasshopper
- Twine
Reflection:
I remember when I was in elementary school, coding and current technology was just slowly being integrated into the curriculum. I can recall working with coding sites such as scratch to learn how to code. It never felt like a lesson, rather it felt like we had time to play on the computers and have a break from academic lessons. While we spent our times on these projects, we were being introduced to the basics of coding. Things that seem so little and silly in our curriculum can actually be the things that stick with us the longest and that we can apply later on in our lives as technology continues to grow.
How do you see technology being used in your mentor teacher’s classroom:
In my mentor teachers classroom, there is not quite a lot of technology based learning. Given that it is a kindergarten class, it is important to manage screen time and how it is being used in the classroom; especially at such a young age when they are in a point in their development that they are easily manipulated by technology and its time it consumes. In our class, there are stations that they use during what they call their “literacy centres” where they get to do different stations that excerises different lessons and teachings. At one of these stations, they have a tablet with headphones which any student at that can explore a wide variety of games. These are often games that introduce patterns, shapes, numbers, letters, and rhyming.
