Brilliant is a gamified online and app-based STEM teaching and learning platform that offers highly interactive lessons with step-by-step problem solving, dynamic visualizations, and brief explanations designed to keep learners engaged.

Brilliant’s slogan, “Everyone is a Math Person,” suggests its appeal to learners of every aptitude, and conveys its aim to reduce math anxiety and foster students' self-motivation.

The platform not only appeals strongly to students, but also to educators, as full premium memberships are available free to qualified educators.

What is Brilliant?

Founded in 2012, Brilliant comprises a STEM learning website plus Android and iOS apps. It partners with the nonprofit Mathcounts Foundation to support math education for middle school students and is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges as supplementary education in math, science and technology.

Brilliant’s STEM games and puzzles are highly visual, interactive and engaging, while providing immediate feedback as students progress through problem sets and lessons. Its gamified interface uses clever sound effects and top-notch animations to reward and encourage persistence and concept mastery.

Aimed at students in grades 3-12, Brilliant offers thousands of lessons in the topics of math, computer science, science and data.

How Does Brilliant Work?

To apply for a free premium education account and start teaching with Brilliant, sign up at educator.brillaint.org. You will then be prompted to create two accounts - an educator account and a student account. The student account is required in order to explore and test the interactive courses and lessons, and view the site from a student perspective.

The next step is to create classes and invite students. This can be done easily via an invitation link or by syncing with Google Classroom. In this way, student accounts will automatically be created as premium accounts, free of charge. Note that educators log in at educator.brilliant.org, while students log in at brilliant.org.

Finding and Assigning lessons
Brilliant’s well-designed lessons dashboard makes it easy to find lessons for your students. First select the desired subject tab, then search by topic, grade, or standard. From the results page, teachers can copy the lesson link, post directly to Google Classroom, or preview the lesson before assigning. To complete the lesson as a student would, you’ll need to use your Brilliant student login that you created earlier. The platform will prompt you to do so.

Student Progress
While Brilliant is not an assessment platform, it does provide progress notes on students by reporting on the number of lessons each student completes and time spent on each lesson. The Highlights dashboard offers an overview of the class performance, including the total number of lessons completed and time spent, as well as listing students ranked by lessons completed. These reports, while not granular, do provide a general sense of the progress gained by individual students and the class as a whole.

What Are The Best Brilliant Features?

Brilliant’s clean interface, sophisticated graphics, and sound effects yield a fun and fluid interactive experience, allowing students to learn by doing. Gamified features such as streaks, points, and battery charges boost engagement and provide small rewards on the way to topic mastery.

Lesson Abundance and Variety
The sheer variety and abundance of STEM lessons in math, computer science, science, and data is remarkable. Within each lesson, levels progress from simpler to more complex, offering multiple exercises to reinforce learning in different ways. Suggested grade levels give teachers the ability to carefully curate lessons based on student grade and achievement. Since lessons can be separately assigned, teachers are able to individualize instruction according to student skill level.

Self-directed learning
Brilliant is an excellent platform for self-directed learning, as it allows students to follow their STEM curiosity without worrying about grades. The ability to jump ahead in lessons will be especially appreciated by advanced students who need less practice time to gain mastery.

Enrichment
Brilliant is ideal for highly motivated and advanced students. Instead of feeling bored and restless when they finish their lessons ahead of their classmates, they can move ahead to the next related lesson or simply "jump ahead" to a topic that intrigues them. At the same time, with its scaffolded lessons and the opportunity to repeatedly practice a single concept, it's also a great tool for struggling students.

Is Brilliant Safe for Kids?

Brilliant does not share, sell, or disclose any personal information of students, nor does it use student information for marketing or other non-educational purposes.

Additionally, the website states that Brilliant for Educators is designed in compliance with global privacy laws, including COPPA, FERPA, and GDPR.

How Much Does Brilliant Cost?

Thanks to a grant-funded program, Brilliant Premium is 100% free for qualified educators. Just as important, students of qualified educators are also qualified for a free premium account.

Eligible educators include the following:

• Elementary, middle, and high school teachers at accredited K-12 schools.
• Principals, superintendents, and other administrators at accredited K-12 schools or districts.
• Camp instructors, club leaders, or nonprofit employees working directly with children for educational purposes.

For general users, Brilliant operates on a freemium model, with basic features such as daily lessons available to free users. Premium users can take advantage of unlimited learning in an ad-free environment, personalized practice, and the ability to jump ahead in courses.

Skill Struck is an educational platform that aims to work with K-12 students to help with computer sciences and AI literacy.

While this is used to help teach AI and computer skills, it also leverages those two features as part of the package. The end result is an adaptive teaching resource that can work with each student for a personalized learning experience.

Teachers can also use this platform with tools designed to help make education simpler, such as the ability to build chatbots, and more.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about Skill Struck in your class.

What is Skill Struck?

Skill Struck is a digital platform that is designed to be used by teachers and K-12 students as a way to learn computer sciences and AI skills.

In fact, this offers a complete K-12 CS and AI curriculum that the company says prepares students for industry-certified skills using the various tools on offer.

The learning can be self-paced for students to allow for confidence building while growing skills. This is thanks to auto-grading, which provides feedback so students can progress without taking valuable teacher time.

Students can learn coding, work on typing skills, interact with games, puzzles, and more, all thanks to an array of teaching options.

How does Skill Struck work?

Skill Struck offers a curriculum and grade-based selection of lessons and tools. Teachers can use the premade lesson plans, and the auto-grader, as ways to focus on the one-on-one teaching time with students, who can learn at their own pace.

The mapped out and structured curriculum makes teaching time more free, while the variety of tools allows students to stay engaged and learn consistently.

Thanks to useful videos and descriptive instructions, many students will be able to follow along and progress with little teacher guidance needed.

Admins and teachers are then able to access data to see directly how effectively these tools are working, or not, in a class and with each student.

What are the best Skill Struck features?

Skill Struck features a range of tools. For students that includes:

• Launch Pad to begin K-5 students on CS with unplugged activities, puzzles, and games.
• Voyage for 6-12 students to work on projects and code editing with auto-grading.
• Type Station to help K-10 students work on their typing with a selection of courses.
• Chat for Schools, an AI chat for specialized tutoring and to help detect cheating.

Then teachers also have a dedicated selection of tools including:

• Educator Portal for premade lesson plans and a student progress dashboard.
• Community with more than 400 unplugged activities to help connect students and teachers.
• Community Plus for professional development courses.
• Learning Studio, in which educators can use AI for personalized learning options.

How much does Skill Struck cost?

Skill Struck offers free and paid for variants of its services.

The free tier has some "free for classroom" features, including some coding lessons, activities, and challenges. These are all autograded but are limited.

The paid tier, charged on a bespoke basis, gets you more, including web-based coding platform access, state-standard aligned curriculum alignment, portfolio projects, and AI tools.

Skill Struck best tips and tricks

Start simple
Try the basics for free to see if students and staff enjoy this tool before deciding to go for the full package.

Build a bot
Create AI chatbots to allow students to get answers to common questions without taking teacher time.

Reward with games
Use the games and puzzles as ways to reward students for successfully progressing through coding and the like.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

CS First is a Google platform that is offered for free to learn computer science. The online system is a way to help anyone teach the subject more easily for a range of ages.

Primarily targeted at late elementary to middle school ages, this is a tool that aims to bring new students into the world of computer science in a range of ways. Ultimately, this is free as it allows Google to help grow its future workforce, including any students who can benefit from potentially working in that field.

Sure, there are plenty of computer science resources out there but this one, being from Google, is very easy to use, intuitively designed, and integrates well with most systems and subjects.

This guide aims to explain all you need to know, to see if Google CS First could work well for your class.

What is CS First?

CS First is a Google tool that is based online and accessible by anyone, and offers an array of resources for teaching computer science.

Built by Google, this is designed to run inside a browser, which makes it a very minimal setup that can be accessed from most devices and internet connections. While this is full of lessons ready to go, the platform is also filled with resources for teachers. It is designed for in-class use, rather than simply being used by students alone -- although both options are there.

Available in English and Spanish, everything is very clearly laid out and intuitive to use. As such, this can be used to teach computer science even by teachers who are new to teaching the subject. Since this uses the Scratch programming language it is very useful, and there are lots of online resources to support and implement that immediately.

How does CS First work?

CS First can be accessed online, and offers more than 80 programming situations across 19 themes. This allows students and teachers to work across areas such as animation, stories, music, art, sports, game design, and more.

Themed lessons are sectionalized into one hour activities or multi-day projects. Teachers can use the Curriculum Finder to work on specific areas that need to be addressed.

The lesson generally begins with a video that students watch to get an overview. They are then tasked with creating their own content by following the examples provided. Thanks to step-by-step guidance, it's possible for students to complete a project or work with very little assistance required.

Customization is an option to put a personal touch on projects. It's then possible to present these back to the class for moderation and assessment as required. Thanks to activity badges, most of the feedback is actually built-in along the way so students can see what still needs to get done to finish the work.

What are the best CS First features?

CS First offers a nice wide range of difficulty levels that span a decent age range, from late elementary to middle school. Consequently, there is something suitably challenging enough for most students in those age ranges to be able to progress at a good pace.

Thanks to the online nature of the platform and breakdown of content, this can be used in class, at home, or for distance learning. Usefully, this can be applied to many lessons, so computer science can become a part of learning another subject without the need for a dedicated class.

The dashboard is really useful and works well for those teachers using Google Classroom already. This fits into that system and shows student progress as well as offering lesson plans and guide access, competition certificates, classroom kits, downloadable files, and plenty more.

Thanks to digital materials along with solution guides, this can make for a very independent learning experience for students, allowing this to be used at home as well as in class with minimal teacher engagement necessary.

How much does CS First cost?

CS First is provided by Google as a totally free resource. That means any number of teachers and students can use this and all the resources are all freely available. Plus, there are no ads and everything is built for safe use in schools by students.

CS First best tips and tricks

Go slow
A lot is packed into a relatively short amount of learning time, so having break-out moments to reflect and absorb can be an effective way to teach.

Go fast
Load students up with project options so those that want to, can go deeper, while others can pick the pace at which they wish to learn.

Go home
Send work home so that students can gain confidence working alone but can also progress to more effectively use the Scratch skills as they may want.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

The only bigger challenge than improving a struggling computer science program is building one from the ground up. 

That’s the impressive feat accomplished by Stephanie Potito, Administrator of Digital Learning for Leominster Public Schools in Massachusetts. Potito has created opportunity and engagement for students through ingenuity and out-of-the-box problem solving, earning her respect from colleagues and gratitude from families whose children benefit from the new doors her hard work has opened for their futures. For these efforts, she was also honored as Innovative Technology Director at T&L’s recent Northeast Regional Leadership Summit.

“Stephanie has been instrumental in implementing a pathway where the district originally had no K-12 computer science curriculum in place. Her tireless efforts to advocate for computer science education have been nothing short of remarkable,” says a colleague. “She initiated training for media and STEM teachers at the elementary level to ensure that students receive the best possible instruction from an early age. She introduced staff to the ISTE Standards and created a crosswalk between ISTE and DLCS to help and highlight the importance of computer science education.”

Potito also facilitates all seven district schools' participation in Computer Science Education Week via activities from Code.org—an implementation so successful that she was able to secure a grant from Code.org to purchase items to help and ignite passion for computer science. 

At the high school level, Potito formed partnerships with the University of California Berkeley to offer AP computer science courses, giving students the chance to earn college credit while still in high school—creating a lasting impact on the lives of these students.

Championing Investment in Computer Science Programs

“Convincing stakeholders to invest in computer science does require some effort,” says Potito. “It is essential to present a well-researched and compelling argument highlighting the benefits of computer science education. This includes emphasizing the growing demand for technological skills in the job market, the importance of preparing students for the digital age, and the potential for increased student engagement and academic achievement.”

Some level of flexibility is also required when taking on such an immense mission. Although Potito believes in the importance of early intervention so the youngest learners begin with a strong baseline of computer science knowledge, she initiates her program at the middle school level because that corresponds to the available federal grant program. 

“At the K-5 level, our focus was growing a computer science program organically, relying on media and STEM teachers to integrate a few computer science lessons in their classrooms and participate in the Hour of Code,” she says. “We are working on restructuring this. We leveraged a partnership with EDC and the University of Berkeley to bring a supported AP computer science program to the high school (open to all interested students). Our overall goal is that every child will have some computer science education every year—it’s a lofty goal, but we’re hopeful we can get there.” 

Partnerships are also essential because they provide industry expertise as well as suggestions for roll outs. “They force accountability outside of the school district, so it makes us pause and think about our participation,” says Potito, who credits a supportive administrative team, as well as interest from community stakeholders and teachers willing to take calculated risks, for her success.

5 Best Practices to Build a Computer Science Program 

1. Establish a clear vision and goals: Define a clear vision for computer science education in your school district. Identify the goals you want to achieve and how computer science fits into the broader educational landscape. Ensure alignment with existing curriculum standards and educational priorities.
2. Provide professional development opportunities: Offer PD programs for teachers to enhance their computer science knowledge and teaching skills. Provide workshops, courses, and resources that cover both foundational concepts and emerging technologies. Encourage collaboration and sharing of best practices among teachers to foster a supportive community of computer science educators.
3. Develop a comprehensive curriculum: Design a comprehensive computer science curriculum that spans different grade levels and incorporates various aspects of the discipline, such as coding, computational thinking, algorithms, and data analysis. Ensure the curriculum is age-appropriate, progressive, and aligned with industry standards. Consider integrating computer science across other subjects to reinforce its interdisciplinary nature.
4. Create a supportive infrastructure: Invest in the necessary infrastructure and resources to support computer science education. Ensure access to appropriate hardware, software, and internet connectivity. Establish computer labs or provide devices for students to practice coding and engage in hands-on activities. Foster partnerships with technology companies, universities, and community organizations to access additional resources and expertise.
5. Foster engagement and inclusivity: Promote computer science as an inclusive and accessible field for all students. Encourage participation from underrepresented groups, including girls, minorities, and students with disabilities. Offer extracurricular activities, coding clubs, and competitions to engage students beyond the classroom. Showcase successful role models and highlight the diverse career paths available in computer science.

Smart Strategies for Tight Budgets 

Even the most impassioned leader can be derailed by the bottom line. Here are suggestions to help get the most out of your budget for computer science 

• Leverage partnerships: Collaborate with local and national computer science education programs. Potito’s school district was awarded a financial prize for commitment to the Hour of Code that covered items such as robots that could make CS come to life.
• Seek grants and funding opportunities: Districts can actively pursue federal, state, private grants and funding targeted towards technology integration and PD for teachers in CS. Potito’s district partners with DESE as well as the EDC and University of Berkeley for invaluable resources in knowledge and roll outs as well as financial incentives.
• Prioritize professional development: Invest in PD programs for teachers to equip them with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively teach computer science. Districts can explore cost-effective options such as online courses, workshops and tapping the expertise of in-house technology specialists.
• Emphasize open-source and low-cost resources: Free or low-cost resources available include open-source programming languages, online coding platforms, and educational websites. Districts can leverage these resources to provide students with meaningful computer science experiences without significant financial investments.
• Encourage partnerships between schools: Encourage collaboration among schools within the district, sharing resources, expertise and best practices for computer science education. A collaborative approach helps distribute costs and provides opportunities for networking and peer support.

The Tools They Use

• Code.Org
• Scratch
• Sphero Robots, such as Indis and Bolts
• Code & Go mice, for screenless coding
• Hummingbirds
• Cubelets
• iBlocks curriculum via TEQ

• Why More States Are Requiring Computer Science Classes
• Best Technology Lessons and Activities

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here

Despite ongoing efforts to offer more computer science class options in K-12 public schools across the country, a new report found that significant disparities still exist in who has access to these courses. 

“Computer science is really foundational to what students need to be able to learn and do not just for their careers but for their post-high school academic careers and for their family security,” says the report's co-author Sean Roberts, Vice President of Government Affairs for the nonprofit Code.org. The report was released by Code.org, the Computer Science Teachers Association, and the Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance.  

Requiring Computer Science Increases Access for Young Women 

Five states currently require students to complete computer science classes to graduate high school. While that may not sound like many, that number represents significant progress since the beginning of 2022. “In the past year, we’ve gone from having two states having this graduation requirement to three more adding requirements,” Roberts says. 

Nevada and South Carolina were the first states in the country to make computer science a graduation requirement for high school students. Arkansas, Tennessee, and Nebraska have recently passed similar policies. 

Nevada and South Carolina have seen significant benefits from the requirement. “The national average for young women participating in high school computer science courses is 32 percent; in South Carolina, it's 47 percent,” Roberts says. “More young women took a computer science course in South Carolina this year than in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama combined. Roughly the same number of young women took a computer science course in South Carolina as in Texas, and Texas has a population six times greater.” 

This type of progress is why the policy appeals to many states. “We've struggled for so long to ensure equitable access to computer science courses, but when only 32 percent of the participants are young women nationally, I don't think you can say access is really equitable,” Roberts says. “That's really the driving force behind this for a lot of states, they want to ensure that every student has this opportunity.” 

Progress, Yet Inequities Persist  

Beyond the five states that make computer science coursework a graduation requirement, 27 states now require schools to offer computer science courses. This is a significant increase from 2017, when only four states had such a requirement.  

“For the first time the majority of states in the United States require computer science to be taught in all their high schools,” Roberts says. 

The report also found 53 percent of U.S. high schools offer foundational computer science, an increase from 51 percent last year and 35 percent in 2018. 

Despite this progress, inequities persist. Hispanic and Latino students represent only 20 percent of those participating in foundational computer science courses, despite representing 27 percent of teens in high school. Students living in poverty account for 52 percent of all students yet only 36 percent are enrolled in computer science courses. 

“We're still in a position where if you are a Black student, or Hispanic or Latino or Native American, you're less likely to attend a school that offers computer science,” Roberts says. 

However, if you offer it, students from all backgrounds will come. 

“One of the things that’s really interesting to come out of the report though is when students attend a school that offers computer science, generally they take it,” Roberts says. “It really just is a matter of making sure we're providing those opportunities for students.” 

• Best Coding Kits 2022
• How To Teach Coding with No Prior Experience

The esports industry provides myriad opportunities for career and technical education due to its wide range of available career pathways. One obvious program choice is computer science; after all, without developers to create the games, there would be no esports to play. However, there are other ways programmers are needed in esports, including the development of custom Discord bots.

Bots are not unique to Discord. They have business functions in any industry that benefits from automation of simple, repetitive tasks. For example, a banking application might need to listen for a user to add a document that sets off a chain of events requiring input and approval from many departments. A medical chatbot might be used to triage the symptoms of a patient before directing them to the appropriate personnel for their needs. Learning the basics of bot development will provide students with a job skill they can take into any future role.

Bot development also covers several bases for computer science standards such as the CSTA K-12 CS Standards. A bot is a perfect way to learn and implement the steps of the software development life cycle; employing Discord as the vehicle is an easy way to get a student’s peers using and reviewing their bot’s functionality for ongoing development. Additionally, many bots will require some form of data management and will also provide opportunity for conversations on security from the very first time the student copies their bot token to paste into their code. As with any socially-minded project, students will be presented with the ethical and cultural impacts of their work.

Getting Started

Despite all of the reasons to use Discord bot development as a real-world implementation in a CTE classroom, resources toward this goal are scarce. There are many tutorials of varying quality available in a quick Google search, but they are all geared toward users with some experience in programming, IDEs, and other background skills. It can be a lot to process!

The first thing to consider is which language to use. While there are official Discord implementations available for around a dozen languages, JavaScript is a great choice for beginning programmers. Resources such as codecademy provide accessible ways for students to get started writing quickly. It is also a good language for CS programs that include video game design, as it transitions easily to learning C# for Unity or C++ for Unreal Engine.

Once a language is chosen, the next step is to select the best tools for development. Visual Studio has a Node.js extension that will let many established CS programs add another development tool without adding another environment. Node.js allows for simple installation of the Eris library to a project (unlike its namesake, Eris interacts with Discord to make things run more smoothly for the developer). Discord.js is another powerful library choice.

How to Create Discord Bots

Creating a bot to run code and a server to run it in is fortunately quite simple. Most students won’t even need any assistance in setting up their own server. However, it is important to confirm they have permissions to Discord before starting the lesson; some districts block it by default, so it may take time to make a case to IT for opening it up and to allow them to do so in a way that fits with their policies and workload.

Armed with basic JavaScript skills, an IDE, and a testing environment, it becomes easier to narrow down the options for online tutorials to adapt or be inspired by for creating lessons on Discord bots in the classroom. Looking at the examples can still be a little daunting: simply getting a bot to respond with a traditional “Hello World” can take ten to fifteen lines of code. However, even this provides an excellent lesson in coding etiquette through reading and writing commented tutorials.

From this point, it becomes a matter of determining how many weeks of class time can be devoted to bot-writing, because the possibilities are endless! Students might work on a wide range of projects. An interest in building a community might lead to a bot that allows a user to automatically choose roles in a way that is unique to their server’s needs. Casual game players might build a simple game such as tic-tac-toe to entertain users while they wait for a match to start. Budding tournament organizers might create a bot to streamline stage bans in a competitive match.

Once students have the hang of creating Discord bots, their new skills can be put to use outside of the classroom. The school’s esports team is a great place to start; undoubtedly there are many fun ideas they can come up with through polling the other members. On a broader scale, servers developed around state or national scholastic esports organizations could also make use of custom bots to help run seasons or tournaments or to enhance their communities. Some, such as the Missouri Scholastic Esports Federation, are already incorporating Discord bots into competitions for students interested in esports as a career in a role outside of playing the game.

Regardless of which direction they choose to take their new skill, a Discord bot will be a valuable experience to add to a student’s portfolio when presenting themselves to future employers.

Want to learn more about how esports can benefit students? Visit eduesportsexpo.com for more information and to register.

Amy Harris is a mom in her tenth year of teaching CTE Computer Science, and has been the adult in the room for Hart Career Center’s esports program since its inception in 2016. She is also a director and the treasurer for the Missouri Scholastic Esports Federation.  

When Ian Michael Brock was 8 years old, he didn’t have any interest in coding. 

“I only cared about playing video games, going to hang out with friends at recess, and also playing basketball and sports,” he says. 

His parents showed him a video about the importance of teaching the topic in school, featuring some prominent voices, but Brock was bored at first and unimpressed with what the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg said in the video. 

“I couldn't relate to them,” he says. “I knew their names, but I didn't even know what they did.” 

Then he heard NBA star Chris Bosh talking about his personal experiences with coding as well as its importance. Brock’s feelings about the topic were instantly reprogrammed. 

“Hearing that from somebody that, number one looked like me, number two played my favorite sport and is someone I can relate to, that's what really made the difference,” he says. 

With the help of his parents, Brock founded Dream Hustle Code, a computer science and coding education program, specifically geared towards kids from diverse backgrounds. Today, Brock, now 16, homeschools and devotes his free time to teaching kids to code, particularly kids of color. His organization hosts a variety of programs, including various competitions in which students learn about computer science and compete as they get better at coding. 

Brock is also becoming well-known for his efforts. He’s been featured on NPR and CBS This Evening, and he has more than 24,000 Instagram followers. Dream Hustle Code’s sponsors include Mcdonald’s and Microsoft. And Brock’s passion for basketball and gaming came together when he moderated a recent Microsoft-sponsored event in conjunction with the release of Space Jam: A New Legacy that featured athletes and gamers and was aimed at inspiring a new generation of innovators. 

Brock’s primary focus remains inspiring others who look like him to get involved in the world of coding. While working with students, he’s learned there are some key ways to foster an interest in coding. 

Build a Relationship  

In his coding classes, one of Brock’s first goals is to let students know he cares about them as people. “Sometimes it's not about the actual lesson, it is the way the lesson is being taught,” he says. “Even if you just have like a two-minute conversation about asking how their day is, that is going to get a kid all in because they now think, ‘Oh, this teacher actually wants me to succeed.’”  

Connect Gaming to Coding  

“Gaming is another huge component in the computer science and coding industry,” Brock says. “The gaming industry is huge, it’s actually bigger than the music and movie industry combined. One in three people on Earth, they are either gamers themselves or watch people play video games.” 

Helping students understand the connection between coding and games can get them excited about programming. “What you have to do is explain that that favorite video game they love, there are developers that update the game every single day to improve it and make it even better,” Brock says. “And there are actually a lot of kids who love the idea of creating their own video game because every kid has an idea for making either a game better or creating their own game.” 

Make Clear The Opportunity 

Pursuing a career in the gaming industry is not all about tech skills and it’s important to convey that to students. “You don't even necessarily have to be the best computer programmer, you could be a graphic designer, you could be a project manager, there's so many different aspects of building a game,” Brock says. “And if you explain to them how that passion that you have for playing video games, could actually turn into a lucrative job opportunity down the line, it does get kids engaged on a deeper level.”  

Employ Project-Based Learning  

Once you’ve sparked student interest in computer science, having students do textbook-style exercises can be the quickest way to extinguish that interest. Instead, Brock advises having students work toward a project of their choosing. 

“If you have a kid, you teach them the basics of what they need to learn, and then challenge them with a project, it's not only going to force them to apply the skills that they learn, but is giving them the freedom to say, ‘Hey, I get to use my creativity and build this amazing thing,’” he says. 

Representation Matters  

As Brock knows from personal experience, it can also help to have a pro-coding message come from people who look like the students you are trying to reach. “One of our biggest models is ‘See it, be it,’” Brock says. “If you can see somebody who either looks like you or who you can relate to? That's what's going to get your attention, because that's how it worked for me.’” 

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• How To Teach Coding with No Prior Experience

Champlain College Online—one of the oldest U.S. online higher ed Institutions (also home to a robust traditional brick-and-mortar component)—is known for technology. Targeted toward adult learners, the college offers popular degree programs in cybersecurity, digital forensics, healthcare, and business accounting, among other areas.

At first glance, it might seem tech would be one area in which remote learning is a seamless transition. Kathleen Hyde, Chair of Cyber Securities, CIS and Web Design Development of Champlain College discusses the new challenges and offers tips to solve problems before any arise.

The Good, The Bad and The Bug’ly

First, the positive news: “We have absolutely seen an uptick in potential students asking for digital forensics and cybersecurity programs," says Hyde. "They are attending webinars and asking about Computer Information Science degrees."

In addition to students looking for a general information tech degree, the institution has seen a major uptick in the web design and development program in the last five to six months. 

"So much of what we do relies on web infrastructure and web technology," says Hyde. "With the pandemic, everything has moved online. In the work arena, there's an incredible need for qualified applicants for positions that are available now and are anticipated. If you weren't online before you are now."

Challenges to teaching technical skills online definitely exist, specifically in the adult learning sections. "We're talking about career changers, students coming from a variety of backgrounds, for example coming from a career in customer service and they now want to become a cyber security pro—there's a lot they have to learn," says Hyde. 

In that particular case, it's important to safeguard against frustration. If there is a course that isn't designed well to teach tech, it can cause a lot of issues. Educators have to work on introducing the concepts and then leading the students to apply those concepts, says Hyde. 

Bugs and hiccups can be overcome with a little foresight. For example, with the variety of backgrounds and geographical locations involved with remote learning, issues with bandwidth and available hardware are common. 

"One of the things we do is provide our students with minimum hardware specs so we know they have the tools," says Hyde. "Every six months we review those specs to make sure we are telling our students exactly what they need to be successful within our program, because of the requirements needed for the different software.”

Pro Tips

Know your students and know your industry. Everything starts here because teaching and learning is a relationship, says Hyde. Yes, it's a product, but it's critical to know what students will need in the future so that they are going to be experienced and have the skill sets required by industry. 

Design courses that provide value. When you are building programs, make sure to design courses that introduce key concepts and can take the students from learning the concept and the theory all the way through application. "Our students acquire skills they can use the real world," says Hyde. "Some students have those skills and they need to enhance them, others are career-changers who need to acquire those skills to apply for a position in a new field or require upskilling to maintain their current position. We allow them to apply what they learn and become familiar with software used in the industry, things such as Wire Shark, AXIOM, EnCase and also open source titles in our forensic BDI. We use a virtual environment to teach students how to actually use the software."

Test for effective course design. "In the rush to bring everything online this spring, many things were rolled out and then people went, 'Ooh, this isn't working, we didn't anticipate this,'" says Hyde, who adds it's important to leave time to test to make sure there isn't a gap. "I've seen students introduced, say on encryption—and then told they need to encrypt something, but aren't given the steps in between. Not every student will be able to make that jump or grasp it on their own, you need to teach that and not ask them to make that leap."

Ultimately, it comes down to effective course design, a skill similar to being a good technical writer. Hyde likes to have her labs tested by someone who is not tech savvy, so she can determine whether or not the instructions are going to work and be well understood by the majority of students. Anyone participating has to be able to follow those steps with no gaps. "There's nothing more frustrating for an adult learner working a full-time job to go on late at night to work on an assignment or a lab only to realize they can't get past step three," says Hyde.

Offer flexible learning options. Include a combination of real time, synchronous and asynchronous learning, says Hyde. And with all, still offer students the opportunity to have one-on-one meetings with their instructor. At Champlain, many educators have Open Hour and students can do a drop-in Zoom or Meet, or visit in-person to reduce frustration, get answers to questions, and further develop the relationship. Institutions should consider offering virtual infrastructure-supported courses for a different level of experience. Not every student has the ability to develop their own lab, so let them personally experience the learning instead of just reading about it in a textbook.

Foster true conversation. In an asynchronous setting, if you have a well designed discussion question, students are going to want to come to the classroom and participate, says Hyde. The students start responding and have an ongoing dialogue. "We require our instructors to be present, not just reading and grading at the end of week," she says. "There's an expectation our instructors can engage in that discussion, bringing their personal and work life experiences to add to it, which adds a richness and creates a true conversation—that's where a lot of the learning takes place. And when the answer comes from a peer it can be more well received and memorable."

Be agile. "We all were incredibly agile this spring, to suddenly shift from in-person to remote learning," says Hyde. "But we still need to think about that with respect to program and industry needs. In the midst of this we have actually changed some our programs and added certificates, blockchain and data science, to respond to the needs of the industry."

Tools They Use

Information Security/Cybersecurity 

• OpenVas
• Nessus
• Nexpose
• Nmap
• Hydra
• Burp Suite
• Zabbix
• Splunk
• SNORT
• Recon-ng
• Wpscan
• Sysinternals Suite
• AngryIP
• Metasploitable
• Logstash
• Hping3
• Python
• Wireshark
• Kali Linux

Digital Forensics

• Autopsy
• Magnet AXIOM
• Cellebrite UFED Physical Analyzer
• Cellebrite UFED Reader
• EnCase
• FTK Imager
• NetworkMiner
• OpenPuff
• Python
• RegRipper
• Silent Eye
• The Sleuth Kit
• Volatility
• Wireshark
• X-Ways Forensics

CoderZ and the Amazon Future Engineer program are working together to offer free access to the CoderZ Virtual Robotics Learning Environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon Future Engineer is sponsoring this content. 

CoderZ is an online educational environment where independent students or full classes program their own virtual robots while working on collaborative virtual missions linked to real world concepts and computer science learning standards. The cloud-based platform features a graphical simulation of LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robot and a CoderZ virtual robot named Ruby. Users activate the virtual robot, in game-like “missions” and watch the results in a real-time simulation.  Novices in grades as early as second grade can use the program’s Blockly visual code editor while it allows more experienced users and those in high school to use text-based coding. 

Users also have access to CoderZ’s Virtual Robotics curriculums. The program’s newly-released standards-aligned Cyber Robotics 102 curriculum was just chosen as a 2020 SIIA CODiE Award finalist in the Best Game-Based Curriculum Solution category. Designed to teach computer science and robotics to students in grades 5-8, the curriculum utilizes mechanics, physics, navigation and sensors to introduce students to programming concepts such as commands, variables, conditional logic, loops and more.

To learn more about Amazon Future Engineer’s free computer science course offerings, read more: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-future-engineer-offers-free-and-creative-coding-coursework. 

To access CoderZ through Amazon Future Engineer, visit https://gocoderz.com/amazon-future-engineer.

RoboKind today announced the advanced release of their District Enterprise robots4STEM® Avatar Version software to provide coding instruction at no cost for students in districts that are experiencing school closures due to the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. 

Designed for students in grades 1-8, robots4STEM® engages beginning and intermediate learners and is aligned to the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) standards for computer science education. Educators can learn more in this video. 

Many district leaders have expressed concerns about students and online safety as they prepare for an extended period of online learning. The first lessons in RoboKind’s robots4STEM® course are focused on digital citizenship and online safety, so districts can rest assured that students begin the course with instruction on how to use technology safely and responsibly. 

Districts who have announced or are anticipating potential COVID-19 related school closures can visit Robokind.com/avatar to learn more and take advantage of this opportunity. 

Today, GitHub announced two new features, the GitHub Teacher Toolkit and autograding for GitHub Classroom.  

With this update, the GitHub Education team is providing teachers free access to  developer tools and automating parts of the grading process:

• Teacher Toolbox: The Teacher Toolbox brings together services like Arduino, Datadog and Name.com at no cost for teachers
• GitHub Classroom with autograding: Autograding tests run automatically on every student repository, and teachers can pinpoint where students are succeeding or struggling

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) announced four high school students were selected from among a pool of graduating high school seniors throughout the U.S. for the Cutler-Bell Prize. Eligible students applied for the award by submitting a project/artifact that engages modern technology and computer science. A panel of judges selected the recipients based on the ingenuity, complexity, relevancy, and originality of their projects. 

The Cutler-Bell Prize promotes the field of computer science and empowers students to pursue computing challenges beyond the traditional classroom environment.

Each Cutler-Bell Prize winner receives a $10,000 cash prize. This year’s Cutler-Bell Prize recipients will be formally recognized at the Computer Science Teachers Association’s 2020 Annual Conference, July 11–15, in Arlington, Virginia. 

The winning projects illustrate the diverse applications being developed by the next generation of computer scientists. 

Kevin Meng, Plano West Senior High School, Plano, Texas

Two years ago, Kevin Meng’s grandmother suffered from a slip-and-fall injury that resulted in skull fracture. This accident, which was suffered out of the view of cameras, got Meng thinking: what if we could see through walls? In his project, Meng uses VisionRF, a deep neural network  model that accepts raw radio frequency signals and outputs continuous video of 15-point human skeletons behind obstruction. Because radio camera data on its own is harder to analyze, analysis through Raspberry Pi-based programming supports mobile, real-time interference.  This results in accurate and complete predictions of the human skeletons. The implications of this project are broad and can be used to support military operations, monitor the health of patients non-invasively and aid first responders in search and rescue missions. 

Lillian Kay Petersen, Los Alamos High School, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Lillian Kay Petersen’s younger, adopted siblings faced food insecurity in their previous homes. Inspired by their experiences and the news of crop failures in Ethiopia, she became determined to help aid organizations in increasing food security in developing countries. To accomplish this, Petersen developed a tool to inform cost-effective nutrition interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, inclusive of predicting grain harvests, predicting acute malnutrition prevalence and optimizing the supply logistics of specialized nutritious foods. The tools can be adjusted to include-real time data, enabling aid organizations to adjust distributions accordingly. As the result of her work, Petersen was invited to speak at eleven aid and research organizations, including USAID, the USDA and the International Food Policy Research Institute. She was also an invited speaker at multiple conferences, including the 2018 and 2019 CGIAR Big Data in Agriculture Conventions in Kenya and India. 

Axel S. Toro Vega, Dr. Carlos González High School, Aguada, Puerto Rico

While identifying topics for his research project, Axel Toro Vega read that more than 36 million people in the world are visually impaired and more than 217 million have some type of severe visual impairment. Toro Vega created an initial prototype consisting of an ultrasonic sensor mounted onto a pair of glasses. He continued to test different sensor arrangements and tweaked the software for a simple and efficient user experience. After gathering additional feedback after a presentation at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Toro Vega took his prototype further by integrating artificial intelligence. This project made Toro Vega realize the great accomplishments that can be reached through computer science and the core meaning of CS for Good. 

Zeyu Zhao, Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Springs, Maryland

Inspired by his grandfather who is facing chronic kidney disease, Zeyu Zhao began researching the kidney exchange system in the U.S. and was shocked to learn that 3,000 kidneys are wasted each year and 13 people die daily, in part, due to failed matches. Zhao wanted to use computer science — specifically machine learning — to improve the current kidney exchange system. He created a data-driven approach to solving the kidney matching problem through the designation of a Graph Neural Network to guide a Monte Carlo Tree Search. Zhao identified baselines for his project and tested his algorithms against this baseline, thus improving the current kidney exchange by developing a data-driven approach to finding matches. The research from Zhao’s project could be extended to other applications, such as operations research. 

CSTA and ACM would also like to recognize Raghav Ganeth, who received an honorable mention for his project “Precision Medicine for Lupus Nephritis: Predicting and Profiling Patient Response to the Euro-Lupus Treatment Regimen through RNA-seq derived Transcriptomics and Machine Learning.” 

Cybersecurity is clearly a growing field, with endless challenges. When things go south, digital forensics experts secure the cyber scene, collect evidence, and solve the whodunit. One Kentucky university is training these detectives of the digital world.

We chat with Ed Zuger, Associate Professor and Director of Digital Forensics, about the creation and evolution of this unique masters program.

Who: University of the Cumberlands, School of Computer and Information Sciences, ucumberlands.edu

Where: Williamsburg, KY 

What: Master of Science in Digital Forensics (MSDF)

In 2014, the University of the Cumberlands, under the direction and force of Dr. Donnie Grimes, saw the severe gap between industry and government’s cybersecurity needs and the pittance of professionals, particularly leaders, with such distinct skills. We created our M.S. in Information Systems Security and within three highly successful years grew to over 100 faculty helping thousands. The natural academic and practical progression—“What next after all these cyber pros inevitably cannot stop the black hats?” It’s the uniquely talented digital forensics experts who secure the digital scene, collect evidence, and solve the whodunit. The MSDF was born.

There’s no point for us at UC to teach to our fancy, so I identified the market’s need for digital forensics analysts and made sure the necessary hard skills were balanced with complementary soft skills to create professionals, leaders, innovators who want to practice and apply their service. Atop the main MSDF curriculum of hard skills, such as mobile forensics or malware analysis, UC’s MSDF students learn the regulatory domain. They take a deep dive into evidence law; leadership and communications attuned to information security environments. It’s an education with a substrate of ethics and growth into servant-leaders.

Though we have a beautiful main campus in the bucolic Appalachian Foothills (and satellite campuses in D.C., Seattle, and Dallas-Fort Worth) all of these graduate-level, School of Computer and Information Sciences programs are available online.

• How Higher Ed is Handling Cybersecurity During COVID-19
• Cybersecurity Planning for Next School Year

Positive Results

We’re securing your information security and privacy, first and foremost. It’s the DF version of cops chasing robbers. We’re expanding students’ opportunities in cybersecurity and IT, drawing in students with biology, real estate, and legal backgrounds to join forces with the techies and security nerds. A forensics investigation, at its base, follows the scientific process, or in a more entertaining view solves a puzzle. That, in the end, is what students become. Smart, efficient, courtroom-ready problem solvers.

Some graduates land in law firms using digital forensics to solve divorce and other civil disputes. Others enter the corporate world where keeping internal fraud, waste, and abuse out of the public eye—and operating securely in the global minefield of networks—are critical to share value. One of the first to earn the degree became a U.S. Secret Service special agent. (She’s my go-to exemplar with a biology B.S. whenever non-tech students are nervous about getting into the MSDF at UC.) 

Biggest Challenge

Slow growth. Students might have a sense of the field from TV or films, but we had to really polish how we discussed digital forensics with prospective students. We have a worldwide student body so the messaging language needed to be particularly clear. 

We now have a formal advisory board of talented program directors (of complementary degrees at Cumberland) who share their diverse academic experience. Sappy as it sounds, it’s the proverbial group effort that fixes things at this level.

Pro Tips

First, know that you can’t take the reins, batten down in your office and come out a couple months later, “program-in-a-can.” Build a team and immerse yourselves into the cybersecurity community. We’re surprisingly small—insular almost, but a very collegial bunch. After all, when your network gets hit, we’re all connected down-or-upstream. We’ll help you, help us. 

Identify and perfect some standards to create the program skeleton. These will ultimately become your courses and learning outcomes. Make sure the institution’s leadership understands, even champions, the program. We are blessed at UC—if you do the groundwork with students’ educational welfare in mind and can conform to the mission, there’s a green light coming. This support makes all the difference. 

Finding Funding

Successful internal budgetary proposal, alongside the academic proposal, proffered to our curriculum committee.

Tech Tools

Many of our DF tools are open source. By the time the student gets to my capstone project and conducts an actual forensics examination, they have a useful toolkit. 

The federal government provides “dummy” hard drives and data sets to investigate. Global academicians create simulations and solutions for practice. The students “defend” their investigation via Zoom. We have encountered forensic findings from publicly acquired devices that cause me to contact state or federal law enforcement, C-level leaders of organizations, or other need-to-know actors.

AlgoBot

Simple coding game a fun intro to algorithms

Pros: Game teaches several basic programming concepts very well; moving Algo Bot around gives instant feedback.

Cons: Difficult to refer to scoring on past levels; supervising robot is mean to Algo Bot.

Bottom Line: This coding game is a fun and helpful introduction to basic algorithm development, but other resources will be needed for more depth.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

With so many STEM-related career opportunities in the 21st century, it's no wonder that STEM topics are considered a key part of learning in today's classrooms. Because of this, more and more students are learning coding and programming earlier than ever before. Fortunately, there are many cutting-edge web tools and apps that help teachers teach, and students learn, coding and programming skills. Below is a list of some of the best resources for students and educators who want to learn how to program and code.

*This list is in alphabetical order.

1. Boogie Bot - A super fun iOS app that teaches kids how to program and code using Blockly - Google's visual programming language. Kids drag and drop code to make the robot dance.
2. Coda Game - A free iOS app that helps students create their own games, such as Air Hockey, Flappy Bird and Platform and learn how to program or code. Kids’ creations can be shared with others.
3. Code Avengers - A great site for teachers who want to teach their students how to code games, websites, apps, and more. Kids as young as five  can learn foundational coding skills . 
4. Code Karts - An interesting and fun iOS game designed to teach students as young as four how to code by programming a car to drive through a racetrack and finish a race.
5. Code Kingdoms - An excellent site for students to learn how to code games like Minecraft and Roblox through a drag-n-drop interface.  For teachers, the educator portal allows them to track and monitor student progress.
6. Code Kingdoms: Treasure - A cool free iOS app that teaches students ages 8-14 how to program and code by drag-n-dropping blocks of code to have their character move around a board and collect an item. Games can be played and shared with friends. 
7. Code Monster - A fantastic user-friendly site with a deceptively simple interface. Students learn how to program Javascript by practicing in side-by-side windows and watching what happens as they type in commands.
8. Code with Google - A new initiative from Google to help students strengthen their STEM skills and learn to program/code. It combines Google’s free curriculum and coding programs from beginner to advanced.
9. Codecademy - This interactive site helps students learn how to program in Javascript,  PHP, Ruby, or Python using stepwise instructions. A free Basic plan is offered as well as Pro and Teams plans. 
10. CodeCampKidz - Offers 24/7 access and live sessions for kids to learn HTML, CSS, JS, and more. 
11. CodeCombat - A fantastic way to teach coding including HTML, CSS, and more through playing a game by typing text instead of dropping blocks of code.
12. Codelicious - A wonderful Computer Science Curriculum for grades 3rd-8th designed to teach students Javacsript, Photoshop, game creation, and more.
13. Codemoji - An innovative new site that uses emojis to teach kids to code and tracks student progress through an educational dashboard, which helps to assess student progress and differentiate instruction.
14. TheCodePlayer - Video walkthroughs guide users in learning HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript.
15. CoderZ - An innovative site for learning how to program or code 3D virtual robotos through gamified lessons. CoderZ offers robotics coding competitions for students of any skill level as well. 
16. codeSpark Academy - A fun way for kids 4-9 yrs old to learn how to code through activities, puzzles, projects and more by interacting with the Foos. The app uses a patent pending "no words" interface. 
17. Coding, the Musical - A free iOS game designed for girls age 4-8  to teaching programming and coding by creating their own musical.
18. Daisy the Dinosaur - From the creators of hopscotch, this fun iPad app  teaches kids how to program and animate by dragging blocks together and watching Daisy the Dinosaur animate the action.
19. Dystopia - This innovative site teaches students how to code through a digital graphic novel.
    
    [Robotics in the Classroom]
    
    
20. Gamefroot -  Provides excellent resources for teachers to learn or teach coding.  Gamefroot for Education’s “ learning packages“ and workshops for teachers and students help to integrate Gamefroot and STEM into curriculum.
21. Gamestar Mechanic - A nice site for teachers to teach students how to program games by reinforcing skills such as problem solving, writing, storytelling, and more.
22. Grasshopper - A free mobile app that teaches students how to program through Javascript by playing through games and puzzles.
23. Hopscotch - A wonderful iOS app that teaches kids how to program and create animations by dragging and dropping blocks together.
24. Human Resource Machine EDU - Designed for classroom use, this fun iOS game lets students program their worker to complete an assigned task. Requires a Filament Learning account, which includes standards-aligned curriculum. 
25. hyperPad - Formerly known as GamePress, hyperPad allows students to create games, apps, interactive books and more. This iOS app is ideal for learning the basics of programming with lots of resources and activities for educators.
26. Kodable - A fun iPad app designed for younger kids that has them controlling fuzzballs to complete each level.  Each level deals with a simple concept of programming with higher levels exploring more advanced concepts.
27. MIT App Inventor - A wonderful site filled with a multitude of educational resources for teaching students how to program mobile apps. 
28. Osmo - An award-winning education game system for the iPad that teaches students how to code through three different games (i.e. Awbie, Jam, and Duo).
29. Pixel Press Floors - An amazing app that lets students create games by drawing them.
30. Programmr - A nice way to learn programming by solving coding exercises.
31. Quest - An innovative site/app for creating text-based games that will show/hide the programming language while it is being worked on.
32. Sam Labs - Sam Labs Alpha Kit is an educational kit designed for the classroom that ignites creativity and teaches students how to code and more.
33. Scratch - Probably the most popular site on the list, as 1000s of students have created online games through their very easy-to-use web interface.
34. Scratch Jr - A spinoff of Scratch designed for younger kids 5-7 yrs old to teach them how to code and create interactive stories by drag-n-drop blocks of code.
35. ScreenPlay - A fun game that introduces the basics of programming by solving puzzles through a variety of worlds.
36. SoloLearn: Learn to Code - A subscription app with free features, SoloLearn offers courses in Python, C++, JavaScript, Java, jQuery, machine learning, data science, and more. Certificates awarded for completed courses. 
37. Stencyl - A wonderful site for creating iOS or Flash-based games by putting blocks together (i.e. Scratch).
38. Swift Playgrounds - A free iPad app that lets students learn how to program in Swift. This is a fun and easy-to-use app that has users take on different challenges and even integrates with iTunes U.
39. Tynker - A great site for students grades 4-8 learning how to program.
40. while True: learn() - An innovative iOS game in which students learn to communicate with a cat by moving blocks of code to solve puzzles.

David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. For more information about his work, contact him at dkapuler@gmail.com and read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com.

Amazon today announced a new addition to its Amazon Future Engineer program – a music remix competition that teaches students how to write code that makes music. Alongside Georgia Tech and their learn-to-code-through music platform, EarSketch, participating high school students have the opportunity to win prizes by composing an original remix featuring original music stems from Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter Ciara and her song, “SET” from her latest album Beauty Marks. All high school students across the country are encouraged to enter the competition now through January 20th. Teaching guides are available for teachers to bring the competition to their classroom, or as part of their introductory computer science curriculum.

Students will use computer science and coding to build their remix using musical samples from Ciara’s song “SET,” as well as other sounds from the EarSketch library. Students will learn looping (repeating) to extend the length of their song, use strings to create new beats, create custom functions representing different song sections, and learn to upload their own sounds to the EarSketch library.

The top three student winners will each receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington to be an “Amazon Future Engineer” for the day. Additional winners will receive a PreSonus Audiobox 96 Studio and Amazon.com Gift Cards. The competition opens today and will close on Monday, January 20 at 11:59 PM EST.

Roblox

Popular game development platform has classroom potential

Pros: Roblox gives students a platform to share their games with a real audience.

Cons: With millions of users worldwide, it’s impossible to control the people and content students will encounter on Roblox.

Bottom Line: Teens who love gaming can learn to be developers, too, with Roblox's tools and hosting service.

Read more.

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed byCommon Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Today Amazon opened applications for its Amazon Future Engineer scholarship program, which will award 100 high school seniors from underserved communities with $40,000 scholarships to study computer science, plus a guaranteed paid internship offer at Amazon. 

Scholarships will be awarded based on academic achievement, demonstrated leadership, community involvement, work experience, future goals, and financial need. Students can apply at amazonfutureengineer.com now through January 17.  

Computer science is the fastest-growing profession within the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) field, but only 8% of STEM graduates earn a computer science degree, with a small percentage from underprivileged backgrounds. 

This year’s inaugural class of 100 Amazon Future Engineer Scholars all demonstrated financial need and more than half of the students are from an underrepresented group in the computer science field.

SAM Labs

Kids use block code and wireless blocks to program, design, and create

Pros: Students will love the hands-on creation process and interactive features that bring their designs to life.

Cons: The site is slow to load, and costs for the various blocks and kits can add up quickly.

Bottom Line: With some perseverance, it's a great fit for PBL and STEAM, helping students learn programming skills and engineering concepts through invention.

Read more.

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed byCommon Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

From our friends at TechRadar:

While reviewing the Raspberry Pi 4, it struck us that it seems like only yesterday that we received our first Raspberry Pi. In 2012 a 256MB (yes we were an early adopter) 700MHz Linux PC democratised access to computers, albeit rather slowly. 

In the years that have followed the Raspberry Pi has achieved dominance in the single board computer market. But why? Well a single specification helped everyone make the most of what they had. But with the Raspberry Pi 4 we see something much different.

Our take: 

With an understanding of the importance of STEM topics in the 21st century education, teachers are increasingly incorporating coding, makerspace and PBL into lesson planning. But which technologies are best suited for your classroom and budget?  This in-depth review of the technical specifications, performance and functional capacity of the popular Raspberry Pi 4 will help teachers and administrators decide if Raspberry Pi 4 is the education technology of choice for their innovative STEM classrooms. For the full review and verdict, visit techradar.com

Today Google announced Code with Google, a new comprehensive computer science resource for educators. 

Code with Google brings together Google's free curriculum and programs that build coding skills - from beginner level to advanced - to help students succeed.

In addition, the company announced a $1M Google.org grant to the Computer Science Teachers Association, to support their mission of building community and providing CS professional development to teachers in communities across the United States.

Learn more on the Google blog post. 

7 Billion Humans

Amusing puzzler challenges kids, teaches programming principles  

Pros: Humorous storyline, cute graphics, easy-to-use interface, plenty of solid programming challenges.

Cons: Students new to programming may feel in over their head without first being introduced to some basic concepts.

Bottom Line: This high-quality puzzle game is a fun way for students to learn effective and efficient programming skills.  

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

UBTECH Education, a company dedicated to promoting STEM and computer science (STEM+C) education through interactive robotics, is partnering with The Center for Educational Innovation (CEI) to provide support to educators across New York City with professional development programming designed to facilitate the integration of the UKIT supplemental STEM curriculum into classrooms. 

The two organizations will launch the partnership with 600 seventh-graders in New York City as part of CEI’s Project BOOST, a multi-faceted school-based program for under-resourced, at-risk New York City public school students who have demonstrated academic talents but may not have the opportunity to develop them due to their economic circumstances.

UKITS encompass the NGSS ‘three-dimensional’ model, integrating scientific and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. Written by NGSS authors, the UKIT curriculum includes activities that cultivate 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication, creativity, team-based work and use of technology. Because English language arts and math connections are part of the NGSS, the UKIT curriculum also integrates those two subjects into its lessons, making it a useful supplement for ELA and math learning as well.

CEI educators will also play a lead role in delivering UBTECH Education’s professional development offerings, designed to help teachers integrate robotics into STEM lesson plans and infuse the curriculum’s Common Core–aligned cross-cutting concepts into literacy and math programs.

Amazon today announced it will fund computer science courses in more than 1,000 high schools across all 50 states and the District of Columbia reaching tens of thousands of students from underprivileged, underrepresented, or underserved communities, through its Amazon Future Engineer program. Of the more than 1,000 high schools, more than 700 are classified as Title I schools. Amazon’s funding provides full-year courses designed to prepare students of all backgrounds to pursue a computer science education and career.

The more than 1,000 high schools will offer Intro to Computer Science and AP Computer Science classes through curriculum provider, Edhesive. Amazon’s funding provides preparatory lessons, tutorials, professional development for teachers, fully sequenced and paced digital curriculum for students, and live online support every day of the week for both teachers and students. All students participating in this program will receive a free membership to AWS Educate, which provides them with free access to computing power in the AWS Cloud for their coding projects and content to learn about cloud computing.

Launched in November, 2018, Amazon Future Engineer is a four-part childhood-to-career program intended to inspire, educate, and prepare children and young adults from underprivileged, underrepresented, and underserved communities to pursue careers in the fast-growing field of computer science. 

Schools, administrators, and teachers interested in applying to any stage of the Amazon Future Engineer program can apply and learn more here.

The goal of computational thinking is really about getting students to use computer type thinking to solve real world problems. So often we are the users of algorithms, but rarely are we creating them. Facilitating this skill for our students will allow them to innovate,  understand, and find purpose. Most of all they will be equipped to fast a world which is constantly changing.  It is from the book The Power of Computational Thinking by Paul Curzon and Peter W. McOwan we find the following quote:

I can personally relate with this quote. I found myself many times in school following algorithms of which I had no idea for their meaning. I did pass the ACT because I had answers for which I had no understanding of. We as educators must go that next step, providing students a way to problem solve and come up with algorithms that provide the solutions.

For this reason I provide to you some resources I hope you will find valuable. Keep in mind that Computational Thinking can use devices, robots, and computers to support learning. It also is valuable to do some “unplugged” activities that allow students to dive deep into their own thinking leaving the digital object to the side. I have tried to provide resources that support both. Last, the ability to understand the workings of a computer is only half of the algorithm. Keep in mind that human element. How do we find a way to use the power and speed of the computer along with the comprehension and meta-cognitive ability of the human mind. Enjoy the quote and resources that follow.

Main Site Computational Thinking Resources:

• Ignite My Future
• Beanz: The Magazine For Kids, Codes, and Computer Science
• Google CT Resources
• CODE CT
• Excel Charter School
• MIT Scratch
• ISTE CT
• Teaching London Computing
• Computer Science For Fun
• Brebas Cards
• Hello Ruby
• Break Out EDU
• Tom’s Digital Breakouts
• Lock Paper Scissors
• Code.ORG
• CSTA Computational Thinking 

Puzzles for Computational Thinking

• Teachers London Cut Block Logic Puzzles
• Hidato
• Akinator
• Free Thinking Games
• Games For The Brain
• Thinking Myself
• ABCYa Tangrams
• PBS Kids
• Math Toybox
• CIA Break The Code
• Jigsaw Puzzles
• Kids’ Page Jig Saw
• Discovery Free Puzzle Maker
• Best Thinking Games
• Digital Breakout Sandbox
• Breakout EDU Digital 

Articles, Information, Ideas

• Computational Thinking Kindergartners (Edutopia)
• Flexibility Computational Thinking (Edutopia)
• Getting Smart (Edutopia)
• Computational Thinking Across The Curriculum (Edutopia)
• Computational Thinking For Kids (EIMACS)
• Explore CT (ISTE)
• Introduction to Computational Thinking (Brooklyn Friends)
• Teaching Students Computer Code (NY Times)
• Computational Thinking (Swiss Informatics)
• CT Educational Guide (BBC)
• CT K8 Inroads (Project Guts)
• Computational Thinking (Broken Airplane)
• Computational Thinking For Teachers and Parents (Circlcenter)
• Cut Hive Puzzles (Teaching London Computing)
• What’s the Difference Between Coding and CT (Edsurge)
• Breakout EDU 10 Things To Know (Flipped Learning)
• Programs (Puzzle School)
• Integrating CT in the Elementary Classroom (Getting Smart)
• The Fifth C of the 21st Century Skills… CT not Coding (Edsurge)
• Learning To Think Like A computer (NY Times) 

Booking Info – It is time to think about your school or conference needs.  Are you looking for a practical and affordable professional development workshop for your school or conference? I have traveled the country delivering PD relating to technology integration, PBL, STEM, Digital Literacy, and the 4 C’s. I have delivered hundreds of workshops and presentations. Check out my Booking Page.  Please contact me soon if you have an interest. My 2019  calendar is filling fast. In fact, it might be time to begin thinking about the summer  and start of school of 2019! Look for contact information at the Booking Site. 

cross-posted at 21centuryedtech.wordpress.com

Michael Gorman oversees one-to-one laptop programs and digital professional development for Southwest Allen County Schools near Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is a consultant for Discovery Education, ISTE, My Big Campus, and November Learning and is on the National Faculty for The Buck Institute for Education. His awards include district Teacher of the Year, Indiana STEM Educator of the Year and Microsoft’s 365 Global Education Hero. Read more at21centuryedtech.wordpress.com.

Students in Lane and surrounding counties in Oregon will soon benefit from a $642,000 federal grant to help high-school students transition from Career Technical Education (CTE) programs to post-secondary education and jobs. The money will provide CTE students with apprenticeships in STEM fields, including computer science. The three program pathways to be implemented in Lane County are web development, network security, and IT support programs. 

https://tinyurl.com/y92m2qzc

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) announced its new ISTE Standards for Educators: Computational Thinking Competencies (CT Competencies) during the CSforALL Summit, which followed ISTE's first No Fear Coding Lab, held in Detroit.

CT Competencies focus on the knowledge, skills and mindset needed to bring computational thinking (CT) to all K–12 content areas and are designed for all educators, including those who are new to computer science. The CT Competencies represent the first-ever approach to correlate and align the ISTE Standards for Educators, the K–12 Computer Science Framework and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) standards for students. TheCT Competencies will also be used by schools of education across the country helping to prepare new educators to lead the way with CT skills.

Cyber Security Resources for Teachers and Students

ISTE Standards for Educators: Computational Thinking Competencies include:

1. Computational Thinking (Learner)

2. Equity Leader (Leader)

3. Collaborating Around Computing (Collaborator)

4. Creativity and Design (Designer)

5. Integrating Computational Thinking (Facilitator)

For more information about the ISTE Standards for Educators: Computational Thinking Competencies visit http://www.iste.org/standards/computational-thinking.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and Computer Science for ALL (CSforALL) are coming together in support of K-12 computer science education with ISTE’s first No Fear Coding Lab (October 6-8, 2018) and the annual CSforALL Summit (October 8-11, 2018). The events will take place in Detroit, Michigan, at Wayne State University.

The ISTE No Fear Coding Lab and CSforALL Summit events are designed to provide spaces for active discussion and hands on learning for educators, as well as set new goals for bringing CS learning opportunities to more students and educators. As part of the event, ISTE will release the new ISTE Standards for Computer Science Educators - a set of competencies around computational thinking skills for all teachers.

[Welcome To Fair Haven Innovates]

ISTE’s No Fear Coding Lab is designed to provide educators with tools to help integrate CS and computational thinking into their classrooms, no matter what the subject area.

What a wild summer. I took a break from blogging because my summer has been jammed packed. I started out by going to ISTE in Chicago. After I got back, I went on my honeymoon in St. Lucia. Then, it was back to Chicago for the amazing Our Voice Academy. A week later I flew cross country to Seattle to help run Picademy for over a hundred educators and in two days, I’ll by flying to Moscow for the EdCrunch forum where I’ll talk about Gamification and Fair Haven Innovates. Oh, and I also wrote a book on teaching through entrepreneurship that will be published through EduMatch by Christmas. But with the start of a new school year, I’m back to blogging.

Hello. I missed you. Let's go.

Going into the second full year of running Fair Haven Innovates, one of my goals this year is to help parents better understand why a class like Fair Haven Innovates is important and let them know how they can help their children get the most out of my class. Below is a letter and video I’ll be sending home to parents. The video introduces my program and what students will be learning while the letter lets parents know why I made Fair Haven Innovates and how I run the program. I encourage everyone: send home a video and letter before school starts or before back to school night so everyone can be on the same page when it comes to the learning taking place in your classroom. This goes doubly so if you run an innovative program or are an innovative teacher disrupting education. People can’t always imagine learning in a classroom that they didn’t grow up in. Let parents know what you do and why you do it. Here’s mine:

Parents,

Our students are growing up in the 4th Industrial Revolution. Thanks to automation, the workforce of your kids’ future is going to look a lot different than it does today. Studies and experts say anywhere between 30% and 60% of jobs that are around today won’t be around by 2030. The jobs most likely to be automated are the jobs that require predictable patterns of activity or repetitive actions. Jobs in fields like transportation, logistics, and administration are the most at risk of going extinct by 2030. 2030 may seem far off, but it is not. The class of 2030 is in second grade this year.

Don’t worry, though. The reality is that technology replaces jobs, not work. There will still be plenty of jobs for our students in fields that can’t be automated. Fields that require creativity, problem solving, and relationships such as most health and wellness fields, STEAM fields, and (thankfully) educational fields may look different, but are ultimately safe. The careers lost to automation will be replaced by emerging jobs or jobs that don’t even exist yet.

So how do we prepare students for this evolving future? Skills.

Fair Haven Innovates is Fair Haven school district’s 21st century life, innovation, and technology program. In FH Innovates, students are exposed to computer science, engineering, and the digital arts through entrepreneurship. Not only is entrepreneurship safe from automation, it is the best vehicle for delivering the problem-solving opportunities that our students need to hone their skills.

In Fair Haven Innovates, I use entrepreneurship to grow the five key skills our students will need to be successful:

• The ability to use a creative problem-solving process to solve complex challenges.
• The ability to set appropriate goals for oneself and team.
• The ability to persist in problem solving by making effective use of available resources and by taking the initiative to do appropriate research, testing, and troubleshooting.
• The ability to give, find, and use feedback to improve oneself, team, and design to persevere through failure and find success.
• The ability to initiate and contribute to a variety of collaborative discussions and tasks with diverse teammates.
  

[Taking Student Voice Beyond The Classroom: Student Perspective]

Developing these skills requires authentic, hands on experiences in a low risk environment. Students can’t develop a skill if they don’t apply it and students won’t try to apply a skill if they think they will be punished for failure. That is why I’ve built the Fair Haven Innovates program to be a safe place for students to apply these skills. As you can imagine, all of this makes Fair Haven Innovates a unique learning experience. Parents often ask what they can do to help their child do their best in my class. Here is what you can do to help:

Encourage Them To Have Creative Confidence

FH Innovates is student-centered learning. Student-centered learning moves students from passive consumers of knowledge to active participants in the learning process. In a student-centered classroom, the teacher is not the sage on stage, they are the guide on the side. I only do whole class instruction to layout key concepts and expectations. This takes less than ten minutes a class. The rest of the class students are expected to work together to solve their entrepreneurial challenges using our problem-solving process. As the guide on the side, my job is not to do things for students. My job is to empower them to do things for themselves. My job is to guide students toward success by giving my advice and opinion, resources, and direction.

In class I say things like “I can’t wait to see how you solve this problem” “What have you tried?” “What research have you done?” and “Let’s see what happens!” to help students take ownership of their learning. The uncertainty that comes with being in the driver’s seat of their learning can be tough for some students.

You can help by encouraging your students to have creative confidence. As I remind them in class, nothing students do can’t be undone and no risk will be held against them. If they do research and make their best educated guesses, they’ll be successful in my class. By encouraging students to have creative confidence, we can get them to take that first step toward owning their learning.

Encourage Them To Rethink Failure

Choice paralysis exists in FH Innovates. Some students would rather do nothing, then do something and make a mistake. In FH Innovates, failure is a valuable teaching tool. When we fail, reflect, and try again, we learn a lot. Failure is a wonderful teacher and reframing failure as iteration is an important character trait. As part of the problem solving process, I encourage students to fail quickly and cheaply, so they can iterate and make their solution even better. Some students have never been allowed to fail before, so they will go to great lengths to avoid experiencing the adversity of failure.

You can help by helping your student understand that failing is a temporary state of being. Just because you failed doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Failure doesn’t mean the project is over or you stop trying. Failure is great, as long as you learn something from it. FAIL really just means First Attempt In Learning.

Encourage Them To Set Goals

Of all the skills being developed in Fair Haven Innovates, research is showing the ability to be persistent may be the most valuable skill for our kids to possess. In my class, success rarely comes quickly. Through the extended challenges students work on, I’m hoping to build their persistence. Unfortunately, if a task seems too big or too hard, instead of being persistent, some students give up. Giving up looks like goofing around in class, complaining that they don’t know what to do despite my having worked with them to develop next steps, or otherwise using avoidance techniques to get out of working.

Persistence is developed through goal setting. In class, we use (SMART) goal setting to break down big, complex problems and projects into smaller, more manageable parts. Talk to your students about the goals they set for their project and how they plan on meeting those goals.

Encourage Them To Be Empathetic

No one works by themselves. Working as part of a team is a given these days. The same goes for Fair Haven Innovates. Students will work together in teams to complete shared goals, but I know working as a team isn’t always easy. In class, we talk about what being a good teammate looks like and the actions that one should take to be a good teammate. I have activites and feedback systems in place where students will learn how they can grow as teammates.

The most important aspect of being a good teammate that you can help me drive home is empathy. Some students struggle to think about things from their teammates point-of-view. I find when I get students to slow down and think through how something makes the rest of the team feel, the collaboration and end product are much better. When students can predict, understand, and share the feelings of a teammate, it goes a long way in achieving the psychological safety that teams need to be their best.

Ultimately, the goal of Fair Haven Innovates is to expose students to the technology, fields, and careers that are both available to them now and will be available to them in the future while also developing the skills they’ll need to be successful no matter what they do when they grow up. I believe in what I teach, how I teach it, and I work incredibly hard to make FH Innovates the best it can be. I believe every student can find value in what Fair Haven Innovates has to offer and I am committed to guiding every student toward success.

I’m looking forward to a great year!

Mr. Aviles

Until Next Time,

GLHF

cross-posted at Teched Up Teacher

Chris Aviles presents on education topics including gamification, technology integration, BYOD, blended learning, and the flipped classroom. Read more at Teched Up Teacher.

Tata Consultancy Services and Discovery Education’s “Ignite Innovation Student Challenge” Is a New Competition from the Computational Thinking Curriculum “Ignite My Future in School”

WASHINGTON, DC | NEW YORK, NY, August 29, 2018 – Tata Consultancy Services, (TCS), (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS) a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, and Discovery Education, the leading provider of digital education content and professional development for K-12 classrooms has announced the launch of the TCS Discovery Education Ignite Innovation Student Challenge. The brand-new competition gives young innovators an amazing chance to win $10,000 and receive virtual mentorship from a team of TCS technology experts to bring their winning idea to life.

The Ignite Innovation Student Challenge encourages sixth through eighth grade students to use computational thinking to create digital solutions that improve the world and solve problems impacting TCS’ social responsibility pillars of Our Planet, Health and Education.

Middle school students (up to four students per team) are invited to craft a digital concept and submit their entries by creating a written description or a one to two-minute video. Entries must define a problem in one of TCS’ three social responsibility pillars; explain how their answer solves a local, national, or global issue; identify the population being served; explain at least three benefits of the digital solution; identify at least two computational thinking strategies used to develop the solution; and present thinking and planning using visuals.

Submissions will be judged based on creativity, content, persuasiveness, and overall presentation. Ten winners will then be selected to receive prizes including the Grand Prize of a $10,000 scholarship and virtual mentorship with TCS mentors to bring their winning idea to life. Winners of the Top Pillar prizes in Our Planet, Health and Education will receive $7,500, and six Winner Circle prizes of $1,000 will be awarded. Winners will be announced in spring 2019.

All video and written description entries must be submitted online at no later than December 13, 2018.

Launched in 2017, is an initiative that combines the best of digital content, lesson plans, career vignettes, and professional learning to help teachers prepare their students for careers of the future. The initiative offers educators instructional resources and year-round curriculum support to ensure that computational thinking is embedded into core subjects such as math, sciences, arts and social studies. This interdisciplinary approach helps students to obtain the necessary skills required for 21 century careers across all industries.

On a national level, Ignite My Future in School has a goal of engaging 20,000 teachers and one million U.S. students by 2021. As a first step towards this objective, TCS and Discovery Education have partnered with U.S. school districts in the Washington, D.C. area, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan and Wisconsin as early adopters and launch sites of this transdisciplinary approach. Since launching, IMFIS has provided training materials valued at more than $2 million and engaged over 185,000 students and 3,300 educators in all 50 states. To learn more about Ignite My Future in School, go to www.ignitemyfutureinschool.org.

For more information on the TCS Discovery Education Ignite Innovation Student Challenge, including idea starters, project flow, four-week roadmap, planning guide, templates, and complete rules, please visit www.IgniteMyFutureInSchool.org/Challenge.

About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS):

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that has been partnering with many of the world’s largest businesses in their transformation journeys for the last fifty years. TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of IT, Business & Technology Services, and engineering. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business group, TCS has more than 400,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 46 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $19.09 billion for year ended March 31, 2018 and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. TCS' proactive stance on climate change and award-winning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading sustainability indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), MSCI Global Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Emerging Index. For more information, visit us at.

About Discovery Education

As the global leader in standards-based digital content for K-12 classrooms worldwide, Discovery Education is transforming teaching and learning with award-winning digital textbooks, multimedia content, professional learning, and the largest professional learning community of its kind. Serving 4.5 million educators and over 50 million students, Discovery Education’s services are available in approximately half of U.S. classrooms, 50 percent of all primary schools in the UK, and more than 50 countries around the globe. Inspired by the global media company Discovery, Inc., Discovery Education partners with districts, states, and like-minded organizations to captivate students, empower teachers, and transform classrooms with customized solutions that increase academic achievement. Explore the future of education at DiscoveryEducation.com.

• Ignite My Future
• Beanz: The Magazine For Kids, Codes, and Computer Science
• Google CT Resources
• CODE CT
• Excel Charter School
• MIT Scratch
• ISTE CT
• Teaching London Computing
• Computer Science For Fun
• Brebas Cards
• Hello Ruby
• Break Out EDU
• Tom’s Digital Breakouts
• Lock Paper Scissors
• Code.ORG
• CSTA Computational Thinking
• Teachers London Cut Block Logic Puzzles
• Hidato
• Akinator
• Free Thinking Games
• Games For The Brain
• Thinking Myself
• ABCYa Tangrams
• PBS Kids
• Math Toybox
• CIA Break The Code
• Jigsaw Puzzles
• Kids’ Page Jig Saw
• Discovery Free Puzzle Maker
• Best Thinking Games
• Digital Breakout Sandbox
• Breakout EDU Digital
• Computational Thinking Kindergartners (Edutopia)
• Flexibility Computational Thinking (Edutopia)
• Getting Smart (Edutopia)
• Computational Thinking Across The Curriculum (Edutopia)
• Computational Thinking For Kids (EIMACS)
• Explore CT (ISTE)
• Introduction to Computational Thinking (Brooklyn Friends)
• Teaching Students Computer Code (NY Times)
• Computational Thinking (Swiss Informatics)
• CT Educational Guide (BBC)
• CT K8 Inroads (Project Guts)
• Computational Thinking (Broken Airplane)
• Computational Thinking For Teachers and Parents (Circlcenter)
• Cut Hive Puzzles (Teaching London Computing)
• What’s the Difference Between Coding and CT (Edsurge)
• Breakout EDU 10 Things To Know (Flipped Learning)
• Programs (Puzzle School)
• Integrating CT in the Elementary Classroom (Getting Smart)
• The Fifth C of the 21st Century Skills… CT not Coding (Edsurge)
• Learning To Think Like A computer (NY Times)

cross-posted at 21centuryedtech.wordpress.com

Michael Gorman oversees one-to-one laptop programs and digital professional development for Southwest Allen County Schools near Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is a consultant for Discovery Education, ISTE, My Big Campus, and November Learning and is on the National Faculty for The Buck Institute for Education. His awards include district Teacher of the Year, Indiana STEM Educator of the Year and Microsoft’s 365 Global Education Hero. Read more at 21centuryedtech.wordpress.com.

We recently saw the publication of the Roehampton Annual Computing Report. It makes for grim reading on the whole. There’s a massive disparity between the number of girls taking Computing and the number of boys, as several of us predicted would happen. This was also a trend pointed out a year ago: see It Wasn’t Me Wot Done It, Sir! The Depressing State Of Computing As A Subject. The subject appears to attract Chinese students especially, who are proportionately over-represented, but not as many black students, who are proportionately under-represented.. It is also perceived to be very hard.

[Teachers? We Don't Need No Teachers!]

In short, one has the very strong impression that this qualification is highly elitist.

Read more.

Terry Freedman is an independent edtech consultant and freelance writer based in London, England. He publishes the ICT & Computing in Education website.

I have to say that I am becoming increasingly frustrated at the number of people who think that because young people seem to know about technology and how to use it or code it, then by default nobody needs to be taught anything about it.

For example, a few years ago at some awful coding promotion event, a 13 year-old girl who had taught herself programming stood up and said teachers should be learning about coding from pupils. The worst thing about this was not the naivety of the statement, but the fact that most of the adults in the room applauded. Presumably they were all autodidacts in everything who also went to school to teach their teachers.

[Do We Really Need More Innovation?]

Another example occurred recently. I attended an event about artificial intelligence given by a teenager who had taught himself all the coding required. On that basis the person in charge of the project lectured me on how teachers ought to be taking a step back and letting the kids get on with it, and also asking the kids what they think of their teaching and what they would like to be taught.

I find this sort of thing annoying for four reasons:

Read more.

Terry Freedman is an independent edtech consultant and freelance writer based in London, England. He publishes the ICT & Computing in Education website.

Since January 2018, 20 states have passed legislation and funded $49 million to expand access to and diversity in K-12 computer science, according to the Code.org Advocacy Coalition, a group of more than 60 industry, non-profit, and advocacy organizations working together to make computer science a fundamental part of K-12 education.

[5 Tools to Teach Coding to Late Elementary Students]

These 20 states passed new laws or initiatives to support K-12 computer science (CS) since January of this year:

●Alabama

●Arizona

●Arkansas

●Colorado

●Delaware

●Florida

●Hawaii

●Idaho

●Indiana

●Maryland

●Mississippi

●Missouri

●Nevada

●New Hampshire

●New Jersey

●New York

●Oklahoma

●Pennsylvania

●Utah

●Wyoming

In addition to the progress made at the state level, have prioritized funding for computer science in schools, and Congress’ 2018 federal budget for STEM and computer science.

Let's talk about computer science. It's an area where we need more and more people that know what they are doing. To get those people, we are going to have to teach it in schools, and thankfully many schools and states are moving that way.

I think coding is best taught as we would teach a world language. The younger we start students, the better off they will be. There are tools out there that allow students to code with arrows and with lines, but eventually, students are going to have to move into block coding. That's where this post focuses on!

1. Root

I just got one of these coding robots, and it may already be my favorite. That's without even being able to get the full functionality of the app as I got one before the actual release with an Alpha version of the app.

I like this as a starting place for late elementary because there is so much I can do with it. I see many folks buying coding robots to fit specific needs, and I think this robot eliminates much of that. You can get this, and then purchase others more just to be varied.

Root's functionality for late elementary starts with the app. It allows me to start students who have never done anything off with an arrow based coding that is both functional and not overly childish where it turns off older elementary students. It then progresses to a block coding to fit most of your students, and you can also move your high flyers to text-based code.

What you can do with the robot adds to the experience. To start, it has a marker holster in the middle which can be raised and lowered to make drawing easy. It's size and shape also can come in handy as it allows you to build stuff both for it and to attach it. It climbs walls, and it has tons of sensors to set and play with. It truly is one of the first robot's I have seen that can fit more than one need.

2. Code.org

This seems like a no-brainer, but Code.org is a great place to start with late elementary coding because it's free. They also have some great partners that both provide content and characters that late elementary students would be interested in.

Code.org is known for there Hour of Code games. They are especially known for games like Star Wars, Frozen, and Angry Birds. Those games are almost perfect to introduce young elementary students to block coding, but code.org is definitely much more than that. They have tons of courses, materials, and other activities for students to do, and they have all the curriculum a teacher might want. They indeed are a good starting place for anyone starting off with learning coding.

3. Tynker

Tynker's strength lies in its broad use. Tynker is a block-based coding tool that is on almost every device, and it allows for several devices (like Drones and Spheros) to access it as a coding platform. It also has a classroom setup which allows the teacher the ability to set up classes. It means that there is a little something for everyone!

[5 Tools to Present Content in Non-Traditional Ways]

4. Scratch

Scratch's open source feel and interface mean that like Tynker it can be used in a multitude of situations. At its core, Scratch is a block-based coding platform that lets you build animation which are many times oriented around their cat mascot. It can take off though by connecting other things to it and creating your own commands. Both Hummingbird Robots and Raspberry Pi's connect to it, and through them you can build robots and almost any other electronic piece you might want.

5. Sphero Sprk

Sphero Sprk's strength lies directly in its shape. The round shape of a Sphero Sprk means that you can build almost anything for it. You can build chariots, obstacle courses, boats, and much more. You can then code them all. It makes Sphero a great way to add coding to almost any curriculum.

cross posted at www.bigguyinabowtie.com

David Lockhart is an edtech presenter, speaker, advocate, and coach with over ten years' experience teaching high school social studies. As an Education Technology Specialist with the Iteach Center at Kennesaw State University, he works with a metro Atlanta school district to personalize learning for students with the aid of technology. Read his blog at bigguyinabowtie.com and follow him on Twitter @bigguyinabowtie.

A public-private-social partnership formed earlier this year to bring STEMpath, a graduate-level educator preparation program that’s the first of its kind - to educators. mindSpark Learning, Couragion, Metropolitan State University and Colorado Succeeds have teamed up to create direct access and pathways for all educators interested in pursuing STEM-Computer Science credentials.

STEMpath will launch in Colorado in January 2019, with an eye toward nationwide expansion later next year. Open enrollment will begin May 2018, with generous scholarships available to educators from the Morgridge Family Foundation and other local donors.

[New Tools for Schools]

The STEMpath program combines coursework, work-based learning through in-industry externships, and professional learning to provide a perspective of computer science beyond the traditional skills of coding and programming. Upon completion of this 12-15 month program, educators are qualified to teach computer science and may be eligible for a salary increase.

To learn more about STEMpath, visit https://mymindspark.typeform.com/to/L8C7i7.

For the fourth year in a row, Garrison Forest, an all-girls’ K-12 private school outside of Baltimore, Maryland suspended regular classes for 4th and 5th Grade for one week for girls to be immersed in science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM). From January 29 to February 2, girls worked in groups to create and program musical instruments to play an original song.

Collaborating in groups of three, each girl was assigned the role of Main Composer, Main Engineer or Main Programmer and used Scratch, Makey Makey and PicoBoard to design and program their instruments. Throughout the week, the students tested and made changes to their instruments, preparing them to be ready to present to parents on Friday.

STEAM week is part of the Lower School’s Imagineering program; a Garrison Forest signature program in which the school’s full time Imagineering expert Chris Shriver works with students in Preschool through 5th Grade in pre-engineering labs to teach the problem solving and collaborative skills that students need to excel in science, technology, engineering, art/design and math. The program seeks to address gender inequities in STEAM-based careers by preparing even the youngest Garrison Forest girls with hands-on experience in those fields.

The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) has named Jake Baskin as its Executive Director, effective February 5, 2018. A long-time CSTA member and champion for computer science education, Baskin joins CSTA from Code.org, where he served as Director of State Government Affairs.

Most recently, Baskin worked with educators and policymakers to advocate for policies that expand access to high-quality computer science education with state departments of education and governor’s offices across the country. In his work at Code.org, he helped to build a nationwide network of more than 40 regional partners that worked with over 100 school districts in the U.S. to implement comprehensive computer science programs and provide professional learning for teachers.

Google CS First

Middle school CS platform offers stellar resources, organizing tools

Pros: Fantastic lesson plans, turnkey resources, and club-organization tools make it easy to build a great CS program with little work or prior experience.

Cons: Lessons still rely heavily on watching a video and replicating procedures rather than exploring, plus some tricky setup is required.

Bottom Line: If your middle school doesn't have a CS program or club, now you do!

Read more here.

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

Code Academy is an online tutorial-based website for teaching yourself how to code. You can select which programming language you wish to learn, from the following list:

• HTML and CSS
• JavaScript
• JQuery
• Ruby
• Python
• PHP

You can also practice building web applications using what you’ve learnt in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If it’s apps that you’re interested in, you can make them more useful – and interesting – by connecting them to other services via APIs – Application Programming Interfaces.

A screenshot from the JS tutorial. Note the counter telling you how many lessons you've completed, and how many there are in total

I thought I’d try learning Python. A few things impressed me:

First, you start coding right away by printing a greeting to the screen. This is good practice. It’s the equivalent of getting the computer program to print “Hello World”. It’s not going to have Zuckerberg quaking in his boots about a potential rival, but it’s a quick win that lets you see the results of your actions straight away.

Moreover, because it’s such a simple line of code, you can see immediately how it works.

Also, each lesson is very short. You just follow a few instructions and then see the results on the screen. If you do go wrong, it won’t take you long to spot where you made the error.

Each lesson also explains the theory behind what you’re doing, such as what a variable is.

If you feel so inclined, you can share your achievements with others thought he built-in badges provided.

I was impressed, too, by the fact that the application remembers the point you reached when you were last logged in.

Finally, it’s free.

I do have two criticisms.

First, when I deliberately entered an incorrect line of code, the application gave no feedback apart from ceasing to display the instruction “Save and submit”. Instead, it seemed to fold its arms and go into a sulk. I had to refresh my browser in order to get it to respond to me again.

Perhaps this was a temporary glitch, or confined to the Python module, because when I made a deliberate error a subsequent time, in the JavaScript tutorial, it did give me proper feedback in the form of telling me what I should do.

Second, the exercises were short and sweet, but seemed to be pointless. Perhaps I didn’t progress far enough, so I may be doing it a disservice, but I’m the sort of person who likes to have a definite project in mind.

Still, who’s complaining? Within about five minutes I discovered that Python is not as scary as I’d imagined it would be, and that in itself has encouraged me to go further. That confidence boost is exactly what a lot of classroom teachers will be needing over the next few months.

cross-posted at www.ictineducation.org

Terry Freedman is an independent educational ICT consultant with over 35 years of experience in education. He publishes the ICT in Education website and the newsletter “Digital Education."