I just attended a Personal Development session which addressed the importance of students acquiring computational thinking and coding skills. We discussed how 40% of the current jobs will become automated within the next 10 – 20 years. Fortunately, the role of a teacher is at a low risk of being replaced by robots. You can breath a sigh of relief in that regard. However, we do need to become accountable in preparing our students for the future.
Using Kodable
Kodable can be downloaded as an App placed on your iPads. My school doesn’t have iPads but instead we have netbooks. The video below is the best I have found in explaining how to use Kodable.
Practice With Movement First
Prior to moving to the computer, students practice following commands using the terms “right and left”. Commands would be given to the students to follow. This would be great to do during Physical Education.
Command One: Give students practice using their right and left hands and feet.
Command Two: Give oral directions such as:
Take two steps right, two steps left, two steps right, left, etc.
Explain that later on they will be using a computer and they will have to make similar commands, which is called coding.
Transferring Commands to Paper
The paths in the links below can be displayed on a Whiteboard. A discussion would take place on how to direct the girl to her house. After visual arrows would be used to show her the way. These activities and paths are similar to ones they will find in “kodable”.
Transferring Commands to the iPad or Computer
The link above directly takes you the beginners game which begins with Smeeborg. I placed this link on my Google classroom set on each student’s netbook. This allows them quick access.