This week we were challenged to experiment with coding.  Now if I am being honest, just the mention of the word coding makes me cringe and instantly feel confused and overwhelmed, something I am sure many of our students face.  But with our ever changing digital world it is important we expand our students’ knowledge about coding and help it to be a little less scary.

I chose to explore the Hour of Code to test the waters of coding and as a future middle years teacher, I selected grade 6 – 8.  There were multiple options to pick from creating your own Code Farm to Dance Party to my choice, create your own Google logo.

I really appreciated the step by step tutorial that the site offered, walking you through all the different features and how to build code.  One thing that would have been more helpful, for me anyway, was to have more specific directions on where to find certain blocks such as giving the specific category.  While they did do this for some, most of the time I found myself scrolling endlessly through trying to find the right one and felt myself getting agitated by it. 

 

In the end I persevered and was able to create my own Google logo with the code I had created.  Let me know what you think!