Thing 11: Coding

I found this "thing" very interesting since I've had no experience with coding at all. Exploring some of the sites even resulted in my signing up for the "Hour of Code" event in December.  I began by exploring Code Academy, where I worked through the activities and earned two badges. It was helpful to use the site to gain an understanding of how basic coding works. However, it isn't something I feel I could use with my 6th graders. There were times when I had to use the hint and still struggled to get it correct.  Next I investigated the Hour of Code site, where I signed up to participate. I considered pursuing it for my entire school, but then decided to scale down and do it with my own classes this year as a trial run. I love the idea, and the students I asked to test the sites I looked at were very enthusiastic. I investigated Scratch and the Flappy Bird coding site, as well as some of the articles about incorporating computer science into the library program. I will definitely be incorporating some of these coding sites and tools into my Digital Literacy curriculum, even beyond the Hour of Code program. I had no idea there were such simple sites to use!