Coding for Kids
Inside the classroom, outside the box!
05/05/13
“Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius.” by Michael J. Gelb
Tynker is a great new FREE web tool designed to teach students computational thinking and coding skills. It is similar to Scratch but you don’t need to download and it works on multiple browsers which is great for schools that are bring your own technology (BYOT). It is easy to set up a class and only takes minutes.
What I like most about Tynker is it balances the left and right side of the brain while using 21st century skills. The students have to critically think about the challenge that you give them, collaborate with others and create using coding skills. Below you can see a screen shot of what is shown in Tynker once you have completed one. My challenge to myself, so I could help learn coding, was to have at least 1 actor, 2 costume changes and a background.
You can give your students challenges that are similar or you can have them use certain coding blocks such as you must have 2 ‘if, then’ statements or you must use 1 coordinate grid code. You can also have them use different coding block themes for a challenge such as 3 events, 1 flow, 2 motions, 2 stage changes. You can also use it to help differentiate because you can assign different challenges to different students.
Below the students challenge was a little different, the students had to reinvent the game ‘Pong’ so they could play it. There is a backpack button in the top right corner that also lets you store coding blocks so you can ‘favorite’ ones you like to use a lot or if you want to ‘steal’ someone else’s coding block to learn how to do it, you can. The possibilities are endless with Tynker and the students are having fun, problem solving and using many of the common core skills such as computation, angles, coordinate grids, physics, digital story telling, cause and effect and if, then statements and much more.
You can create lesson plans inside Tynker along with using ones that are already created for you. You can also view other’s Tynler projects to gain ideas about how you want to use it in your classroom. When visiting schools recently, I have watched 3rd graders recreate the ‘mouse trap’ game. Fifth graders created interactive ebooks that explained force and motion. While in a 6th grade classroom, their challenge was to create a 1 min screen that had to sync 5 actors with music to the Harlem Shake.
Here you can see how Common Core 3.NBT is met with this project that is in the lesson plan section.
I would love to hear how other educators are using Tynker in the classroom. Please share in the comment section. Below are some other articles about Tynker that have been in the news that also have great examples of how it can be used in the classroom.
