Like any content area, teachers need to see what students know when it comes to coding. They need to have fantastic Dara to make instructional decisions, and that data needs to be easily accessible. It’s also nice to have it automatically grade.
When looking at coding data, you should always start by looking for mastery. Can you see if students are mastering both the coding concepts and whatever other content you are trying to get them to show (such as core class knowledge.) That mastery could be delivered both through a score given by the software and by what students create. It’s always great to have varied data points. To understand that mastery, you can also look at three activity-type data points, and the first is simply lesson completion. In most coding resources, there is some sort of metric that just tells you when students get through a lesson. If the lesson is structured correctly, it should not allow them to advance without doing things like coding puzzles correctly. You can infer that they are mastering whatever concept the lesson is on if they are doing that puzzle correctly. The second thing to look for is some type of assessment that automatically grades for you, this is usually in the form of a multiple-choice quiz, but it could be in other formats. Having something like this gives you the ability to check mastery quickly and adjust instruction if necessary. It takes the onus off the teacher to assess, saving time for both the teacher and the student. Just like any automatic assessment, its value is I. How you use it. You also need to look at what students create to know where they are and if they have mastered concepts. Creation should be the ultimate goal, but it’s also the hardest to assess. All you can ask from a coding platform is that the projects are easily shareable and accessible. If they are, you should be able to apply rubrics to them easily, and students will also be able to share them for authentic feedback. That access is everything here. As you look at data and assessments, just remember it’s always good to be varied. As long as you get the correct data and it’s easily accessible, that’s about all you can ask. As coding becomes even more prominent, you may see other forms, but they still need to conform to that ease of use for you. You have to be able to act on that data!
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The first two parts of this series focus on what the student learns. We talked about curriculum and about how standards connect. You can read the first blog here and the second here. Who have we not discussed at all, though? The Teachers. Let’s look at what coding resources have for ancillary materials and see how you can tell which ones are good and which ones aren’t.
The first thing. To look for is the most obvious: lesson plans. The key, though, is that not all lesson plans are created equal. Does that lesson plan have additional activities? Does it have opening and closing activities? Are there standards? Of course, details about the actual lessons don’t always seem to be there either. Anyone can make a lesson plan, but is that lesson plan useful? With coding, teachers also need straight-up answer keys. Programmers often don’t have the right mindset to be teachers, and they can make more money in the field. It means teachers who are learning programming along with their students are typically the ones teaching it. We have to make that easy by giving them both answer keys to puzzles and sample projects. If you teach coding, you also want to have avenues to direct instruction. Are there resources that you can use to teach and add to that connection that is so important for students to learn? You might look for something like class presentations that let teachers introduce concepts. Above all, teachers need to be able to demo. They need to be able to open any activity that students are having trouble with, and they need to walk through it with them. By doing that, teachers give students a base that they can go off of. I am sure there are other resources you can add, but if a platform has the ones outlined above, you should be good to go. Look that it is chock full of resources, and focus on the quality. Things like lesson plans can vary widely, so make sure you see them first. While the curriculum is the most crucial part, you also have to connect that curriculum to what you are supposed to be teaching. Coding can always be a creative activity with any standards, but connecting it directly to the existing standards gets even better. Thankfully, many coding tools have multiple direct connections. Let’s talk about what to look for here and what makes one resource better than another.
When you start with standards and coding, the discussion begins with the specifics. Are there specific coding standards, and does the resource align? Most states are just starting there. They may have adopted standards recently, or they still need to adopt them. The beauty, though, is that most of these match up almost directly with CSTA standards, and until things are set, you can use those as a starting place. You also won’t find many coding resources that don’t have them. The key will be to find the ones that have started the process of adding states. It will begin with the big states and inch out further. If you start looking, look for that. The other thing to look for is alignment with core standards. While many states don’t like Common Core, it does hit core concepts that your individual state standards align with. It should allow you to map your standards quickly. Thankfully, most states don’t have the same contempt for Next Generation Science Standards. You could look for those in a coding resource and get a whole different view of what the resource brings. They likely have to have core concept lessons to use those, though. Of course, coding is creative. You can always apply any standard just by thinking of it that way. As you look at your content, see if a game, animation, or story could come out of it. You can play any standard there. If you use your imagination, you can make any standards work! With Christmas fast approaching, I thought it would be interesting to look at some Ed Tech gifts for teachers. While subscriptions are outstanding, we will primarily focus on hardware because many subscription services are school-based purchases. I want this to be things spouses, kids, and other relatives can get.
The gifts:
Time for another conference preview! It’s been a few years, but I am headed back to TETC in Tennessee. This will be my third conference back (after GAETC and NYSCATE), and I am fascinated to see the conference attendance and response
As of this writing, I just did GAETC, and while the attendance was down, the energy was still palpable. You could tell people were ready to be back and do conferences again. It was also a great time to see old friends, and I can’t wait for all of the future opportunities for that in the coming months. So, sessions I am doing at TETC
As we get near and progress through the holidays, it’s time for a blog series! This series focuses on what to look for in a coding resource, and we will do one step each week. We might take a well off here and there o do conference blogs or special holiday ones, but you should see these carry through to the new year. Hopefully, these will give you the ideas and questions you need to choose wisely.
Before we get there, though, let’s look at the marketplace. As a whole, Ed-Tech is contracting. There was a period in the late 2000s where startups ruled. Companies were new, innovative, and there was a place for them in the market. Now, many companies are moving to acquisition, and the major players are either big curriculum companies or big tech companies. There are a few academic fields where that contraction hasn’t come yet, and coding is for sure one of them. There are just a ton of curriculums and other resources out there that you can use. How do you choose? The first thing to look for is the actual curriculum. CSforAll Scripts training has this as the first point of their rubric, and it just makes sense. You have to start with the teaching side of it. Some tools and resources would rather stick with the flashy or something cool. The actual curriculum usually comes second there, and it’s somewhat of a reskin to fit the game, resource, or robot. So, what should you look for in a coding resource? It comes down to two things: What is the ceiling, and can the platform grow with the student? If you look for both of those things, you will narrow the field down quickly because only a few fit those needs. Looking for the ceiling means the kids can create multiple things off it easily at any level of experience. That eliminates many of the robots right off of the bat. It also removes items that are focused on one type of character or game. There just isn’t enough for kids to do there. If you combine ceiling with the ability for students to grow, you can eliminate many more resources. Many resources focus on one grade band or one language, and you would have to get a multitude of them just to hit every student’s need. While it makes sense to put students at about the same place, you will have some further ahead and some further behind. You want to have that resource that can grow with them at their speed. It also makes it easier to manage when the number of coding tools is limited. You just have to have the right resource to make that happen, The other thing to look at with curriculum when you consider both the ceiling and the ability for students to grow with it is what coding languages does the platform or resource support. Many only support one, which hinders both what students can do with it and their ability to advance in the field. You can have more than one language in resource, and by having it, you allow the students who need more and are ready to advance to a scripted language to do so. Scope matters in a coding curriculum, and there are platforms out there that have it. It’s what attracted me to join the Tynker team (we go k-12, have a host of languages, and you can create almost anything), but I hope you can find it in whatever you use. Keeping instruction to one platform will help you train teachers, students, and just makes everyone more successful. It also limits IT’s work to one platform, which I know they will like! It’s my third year at NYSCATE, and I am so excited to say they have entrusted me with8 different sessions! It seems like a bunch, but I think they bring value and will be fun to bring to NY teachers. I want to take this blog to preview the sessions that will be there.
This blog also is not just for New York teachers. If you are not at NYSCATE, you can simply become a Bow Tie Member, and you can have access to ALL my presentation resources. If you’re a conference organizer, you can just email me at bigguyinabowtie@gmail.com for access. Sessions at NYSCATE 21
Scenarios matter in getting students to create, and one of my favorites is to put the student at an event. By doing so, students can imagine they are Joe Schmo, and they can retell the story of what they see. Making them go the first person will give them a deeper understanding of that event, and the best part is that you can make those events up. They can be abstract.
You would think that scenarios would have to be actual events, but they don’t. Obviously, you could do this with literature events. If the author paints a picture, it should be easy to be imaginative off of it. You could also be even more abstract. You could put students inside an animal cell, they could be present in an abstract concept, or it could be an original scenario concept. It’s up to you! The possibilities are endless. Products you could get include:
Oh GAETC how I love thee. How I missed thee. This last year has been such a long process, and I especially missed the great friends and colleagues that I got to see at GAETC. Doing it virtually just wasn’t the same. I am writing on October 4th, and in-person is on. I am going to take it that way!
GAETC means more to me than most know. I started my journey into ed-tech in 2012 with my first session at this very conference. Thankfully it was well-received because they had me back, and in subsequent years had me do multiple sessions at the conference. I never got up to featured speaker status, but those 6 or 7 sessions for several years meant my passions of making, creating, and coding was able to get out to my home community. This year I have two sessions at the conference. I like where both sessions are, and I hope you might join me for them. They are:
I have been in the Ed-Tech space for a while, and I have attended many events and conferences. As in-person conferences heat back up, I thought it might be good to give you some tips on finding the best learning experience for you. Obviously, funding and time vary depending on many factors, but these are the things I would tell any newbie getting started in the Ed-Tech community and world.
To find the right event, you should look at a couple of places. If you want to go big, you can always look at national events that will be close to you, but they may not be the best community experience. I started my EdTech journey at ISTE. That’s about as big as you can get. While it will get you incredibly into the Ed Tech world, I did feel very lost at ISTE in Philadelphia in 2011. It’s just too big, and I have realized the reason to go is that my friends go. If I don’t have that friend group established first, you end up missing a good deal. That brings me to my favorite group of conferences: state-level ones. These conferences typically are big enough to feel like you are getting something but small enough where you are bound to see someone you know. It is a great way to see what EdTech can be and meet people who can affect your life. I personally love these, and all you need to do is Google your state’s version of this. You can also always email me, and I am happy to give you some notes and advice on the ones I have attended. When you get into local conferences, the quality varies widely. I have been to some that I thought were amazing, but others that I thought were lacking. Attendance and quality of presenter can be vast at these conferences, so I would do your research first. I would also stay away from proprietary ones as much as possible. They could turn into sales pitches quickly. The other option is to get out of the EdTech space completely. These can be events based on grade level, content area, or some specific education field. You can find different communities there. My struggle to attend them and avoid the registration fee is I always want to present. There then has to be a space for my sessions. If money is a struggle, presenting can be a primary key. Most conferences will comp your registration if you do, and it’s one of the main reasons I have visited so many great events. You may also be limited in how much time you can take away from the classroom, so I would also encourage you to look for summer events. Yes, it means you have to do work stuff, but wouldn’t you rather get PD hours in a way you would love, rather than a way that annoys you? |
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