Fast-forward a couple months and I recreated the same learning environment with my 1st and 2nd graders by using the Kodable. It was amazing to see just how engaged and tenacious my students could be while developing coding skills.
Kodable and Lightbot are fantastic tools for getting started with coding with lower grades. They are also a great way to add gamification to the classroom. Kodable provides great support for their product. They also moderate the weekly #KidsCanCode hashtag to facilitate an ongoing discussion about coding in the classroom.
However, the true joy of coding lies in the act of creation. From the simplest "Hello World" to the elaborate creation of apps and websites, coding is about making. Until recently, I hadn't found a tool that inspired young students to create with code.
Then Scratch Jr. was released. While I have been familiar with the MIT developed desktop version of Scratch for some time, I thought that I read somewhere that there would never be an iOS version of Scratch because of some old disagreement between Steve Jobs and the folks at MIT. Either way, Scratch Jr.'s arrival has filled a void that I think has been missing in the kids coding world.
My favorite way to introduce an app is during a part of my class called "Explorer Time". We spend about 15 minutes at the beginning of each class exploring a new app or engaging in some kind of creative play. With Scratch Jr., I showed students how to add and remove characters to a project. I also showed them how to use a couple trigger commands and the movement commands. Otherwise, they are free to explore the app on their own.
The following week, we had a discussion about the history of animation. We talked about how computers are used to do most animation for today's movies and cartoon series. I asked students to create an animated fish tank similar to the fish tank in Finding Nemo. We connected students' use of loops in Kodable to solve puzzles, to the use of loops in Scratch Jr. to make our fish continuously swim. Students were also instructed to make their fish talk by using the talk-bubble block. We tried to use the microphone block, but it crashed several of our iPads. I'm not sure if this is a bug or just our laggy iPad 2s.
Scratch Jr. opens so many opportunities to allow young student's to creatively code their own animations, stories and simple games. I wished it had some sharing options so that students could export their work to a portfolio or gallery. It would also be great if there were some cloud-based collaboration tools like Hopscotch.
Scratch Jr. is essential. And its FREE! Get on it!
