Hour of Code Week - So Many Great Choices For Learning Code!!

It is so fun to see how excited students are to learn coding!  We even had a coding rockstar who brought in his "coding" sunglasses to celebrate Hour of Code week!  

It's Hour of Code week and students are learning with a variety of fun holiday tools designed to give students experience with coding!  Since last year, there are so many more choices for students interested in computer programming!  The White House, Google, and even a little Disney from Code.org are all jumping into coding education with some fantastic tools!




Made w/ Code - Holiday Lights let students drag and drop coding variables to change the way a Christmas tree lights up.  They can even submit their lighting code to light up a tree in the nation's capital.  There are more advanced projects at Made w/ Code too.  The project appears to be focused on coding education for girls, but all of my students participated and loved it!!

Below is a little nine second video of one student's lighting designs.

Google's Santa Tracker has a coding section!  Students can get the elf to the present in this drag and drop coding game.  We had some trouble with this one.  It didn't seem to want to work from our iPads, or lab with more than a few students going at the same time.  This one works well for independent time.

Code.org is now offering Code with Anna and Elsa! This Disney favorite is fantastic! Another great option from the people at Code.org!

Code Academy Holiday Card is a great tutorial that actually gets students to work with code.  It is a simple project, so it keeps the initial tasks from getting too overwhelming.  All of my students aren't ready for this, but I do have some who are begging to dig deeper.  This is a great project for them!!

Below is a six second video of the final product!