Back to Work

Now that the students have familiarized themselves with their Type To Learn accounts, we have finally been able to get back to doing other stuff.

In addition to typing, this week 1st-3rd graders explored Google Earth.  We talked about the basic navigation features, and students tried to find their house, their school, and other landmarks.

And in 4th and 5th grades, in preparation for the return to our PowerPoint project, we watched a BrainPOP video about online sources.  While the library is an invaluable tool for research, as they get older our students will find themselves doing more and more research online.  It is important for them to start to think about reputable vs. non-reputable sources of information on the web.

In kindergarten we continued to play math games on the iPads, and we added one more game to our arsenal: Hungry Fish, by Motion Math.  This app is much more versatile than Hungry Guppy in that it has a wide range in levels of difficulty, and also has a subtraction option.

Lots of Typing Goin' On!

After their three week break from school, the 1st-5th graders have spent the past couple of weeks reacquainting themselves with the keyboard.

They have all been given a four-digit "username" so that they can access their Type to Learn 4 accounts from home, as well as from school.

If you do not want to, or are unable to, download TTL4 onto your home computer, Dance Mat Typing is still an excellent, FREE, online program.

The kindergarteners have started to get serious about their math work with Florita, and the kindergarten teachers requested that we work on math during their Technology time.  To that end, we have been exploring three apps on the iPad:  Adding Apples, Subtracting Sardines, and Hungry Guppy.

The after-school Coding Club got started this week, with kids learning about, and working with, binary code!  In addition, they tackled their first coding puzzle.   We had a lot of fun!

Happy New Year!

Welcome Back!

I'm looking forward to a fun and exciting second semester in the Technology Lab!

We are going full steam ahead with our new typing program: Type To Learn 4.  If you would like your child to be able to log in from home, please click on the TTL4 link -- to the right -- to download the program to your home computer.  (Our Account Code is: 152721.)

I received a lot of positive feedback about the Hour of Code we did in December, and many of you have asked how the kids can do more.  The good news is that you have a bunch of options:

All of the Hour of Code activities are still available online, for FREE.  I've put the links in the "Quick Links" section to the right.

Scratch programming is part of my curriculum for 3rd-5th grades this year.  We will probably start sometime after Spring Break.

There are also a number of online, after-school, weekend, and summer coding programs available for kids.  Below is a partial list:

CMCS Coding & Computer Animation Club -- at Community (after school program)
Join me on Wednesdays after school (starting 1/22) and learn to code in this fun and educational program.  Based on the curriculum designed by code.org, students will engage in exciting and creative coding activities similar to our December Hour of Code.  For more information, or to sign up, please contact Martha Melinda in Community's after-school program..

CoderDojo -- Various Locations (weekend classes)

KidsCanCode -- Various Locations (many program options)

iDTech Camp -- UCLA (Summer Program)

Digital Arts & Media Academy -- UCLA (Summer Program)

Planet Bravo's Techno-Tainment Camp -- Various Locations (Summer Program)

Codecademy -- Online Program

Code School -- Online Program

Khan Academy -- Online Program

Turtle Academy -- Online Program

Scratch -- Online Program

Code Monster -- Online Program

Hackety Hack -- Online Program

If you know of a good coding program for kids, please let me know and I will add it to my list!