Moodle and Web 2.0

Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

Code with Google is a new resource for educators that brings together Google’s programs that build coding skills.

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

Apple surprised the developer crowd with the unveiling of a brand new SwiftUI framework, a modern UI interface coding structure that is built from the ground up to take advantage of Swift. The new framework uses declarative paradigms to let developers write the same UIs in less code. SwiftUI enables a realtime UI programming environment …

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa) , Yashy Tohsaku

Codelabs is a free online platform for learning, understanding and practicing programming. It provides a supervised tutorial on the working of a programming language works and enables the user to learn a new programming language easily and quickly. The user can execute their programs in the browser driven programming labs. It is useful for beginners as well as programmers with advanced knowledge. Tutorials are well-organized, one-page articles that help users to learn the basics of some of the most widely used programming languages across the world.

Via John Evans

BY ELLEN ULLMAN

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

Technology diversity advocacy body Girl Geek Academy has started a new teacher training course today with the eventual aim to teach coding to girls aged from 5 to 8 years.

Via John Evans

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

There’s no denying it. For better or worse, technology is taking over the world. Being able to program a computer is a skill that will serve our children well in the future. I didn’t write my first simple program until I was 18, but ultimately I got my PhD and worked full-time writing and operating codes for scientific research. It was a skill that I’m so grateful to have developed as it now allows me to earn money from home and be with my kids all day. I don’t expect my children to wait until they are in college to learn the principles of coding. I believe that even my kindergartner is fully capable of getting down some of the basics.

Via John Evans

Over the past decade, millions of kids around the world have used Scratch to code their own interactive games, stories, animations, and more. This outpouring of creativity inspires us to continue to extend and improve Scratch, so that kids everywhere have new opportunities to express themselves creatively with new technologies.

Today, we’re launching Scratch 3.0, a new generation of Scratch that expands how, what, and where kids can create with code. As we’ve tested prototypes of Scratch 3.0, we’ve been amazed by the projects that kids have made — like a hedgehog that speaks French, a hippopotamus that dances to hip-hop, and a soccer game you control with your shoe.

Via John Evans

Coding is the ability to write step by step instructions (programs) for a computer to understand to complete a task. The Hour of Code website has tons of ready to go online activities that get students to write code that results in a number of cool outcomes, such as making a monster dance, creating avatars, remixing music or making a game. When students complete these easy tutorials they learn these important skills- logic, problem solving, fitting puzzle pieces together, selection, instructional writing, editing, revision, and creation. Below are some great websites to find engaging coding projects that take an hour or less. Most require no registration! Just provide students with a quick introduction to the task on the projector and the link for them to get started. I would highly recommend doing the activity first. In the next post I will introduce you to unplugged activities, which get students to focus on specific coding skills you will notice in these activities, which include working with puzzles, providing good instructions, problem solving and algorithms.

Via John Evans