Over the past few years, we have featured a number of key resources to help you teach coding in your class. We strongly believe that coding is becoming an essential skill for 21st students. This is clearly seen in the increasing number of school districts that are now incorporating coding and computer science into elementary curricula. And as we have argued elsewhere, learning to code will benefit students at all intellectual levels and most importantly will equip them with the thinking tools to help them explore, problem solve, analyze, synthesize and think critically. The purpose of today’s post is to share with you few more resources on coding. Google for Education has this excellent section featuring a number of tutorials, lessons, programs, tools geared towards engaging students and educators in computer science learning. From the numerous resources featured there we curated for you the following:
1- Computer Science Custom Search
Use Computer Science Custom Search to look for lessons, tutorials and activities for k-12 computer science education. ‘You can search on any combination of terms, such as by grade level (e.g. "middle school", "high school"), the type of material (e.g. "lesson plan", "tutorials"), or the computer science topic (e.g. "variables", "loops”).’
2- Computation Thinking for Educators
This is a free online course which helps teachers and educators integrate computational thinking into their curriculum. Although the course ended last January, but its content and materials are still available online. This course is divided into five units: Introducing Computational Thinking: What is CT? Exploring Algorithms; Finding Patterns; Developing Algorithms, Final Project: Applying Computational Skills. Check out the links on the Course Content or click on ‘Enter Course’ to access the materials provided there.
3- Blockly Games
‘Blockly Games is a series of educational games that teach programming. It is designed for children who have not had prior experience with computer programming. By the end of these games, players are ready to use conventional text-based languages.’
