I cannot say enough good things about the “Hour of Code” that my students participated in today. When I showed them the intro film yesterday they were so excited about coding they begged for the website link. I gave them code.org/learn. Another teacher told me that they started working on it immediately in work time yesterday. Multiple students told me they went home and worked on it last night, some for a couple of hours.
Today, they ran into my room before class even began and asked if they could start. I was overwhelmed with their excitement and curiosity in coding. They started with the code.org/learn tutorials but many of my students quickly moved on. Some of them ended up on Tynker or Code Academy, but the majority landed on Khan Academy and learned to write Javascript on their own. It was easy for me as all of the websites have video tutorials. Students were working together and asking each other for help if they had questions or when they got stuck. At one point, I had half of the classroom around one students computer until he told them to “go and sit down so he could think!” I took some pictures and videos to share (see below). If you watch the video clips, be sure to listen to all of the students brainstorming about their programming in the background. I just noticed that when I watched the video again. There definitely was a “electric math/computer” buzz from all of my students in the background! Videos on YouTube!
I signed up on the code.org website but did not receive an email with instructions or a teacher code. I later saw that I could have the students enter my email address on their code.org page, but by that time they were very involved and I didn’t want to interrupt them to have them put my email in. Even though I would love to get a summary of what they accomplished it was not worth stopping them. The whole point of the day was to get all of my students coding. The mission was accomplished, as I’ve had several students email me the progress they have made tonight with the projects they are still working on!
I’m not sure how long these tutorials will be available, but I do intend to find a way to give students class time to learn coding in the future. We have been inspired and I want to give them the opportunity to develop this skill and keep this excitement alive!
I Speak Math 
So awesome!!! Thanks to you and a few others in the MTBoS I found out about Hour of Code this week. I’m going to introduce it tomorrow and we’re going to code on Thursday. It’s one of those “forget what you were planning and do this instead” kind of an activity that I think is incredibly valuable for students to be introduced to. Thanks Julie!
I couldn’t agree more! It was an inspiring day! 🙂
My kids loved this. We worked today and will continue tomorrow! The excitement was paletable and contagious. What a great day.
I agree and I loved it so much I am looking at ways to build it into my class more!
It is awesome that the kids liked it so much. You can do incredible math by programming. I committed to trying more programming in my 7th grade classroom this year, and I’ve been so pleased with what it’s done to my classroom. I blog about it from time to time. I listed some of my programming & troubleshooting tasks here if you’re interested in math tasks that use programming. http://wp.me/p1JlPf-64
I enjoy reading your blog, by the way. Thank you for maintaining it. 🙂
Wow! This will be incredibly helpful to me as I teach 7th as well and can’t wait to implement it into my class! Please blog as much as you can about it! 🙂
I’m creating lesson plans and resources at http://codinginmathclass.wordpress.com/ I would love feedback and comments, especially if you or any of your followers use any of the resources!
The tutorials aren’t going away any time soon. In fact, we’re going to keep improving them.
Thank you so much for stopping by and commenting. I am so excited to hear this.
Greetings,
The tutorials on Code.org, KhanAcademy, Codecademy, and others will not be removed. In fact these programs will be expanding in the coming year. It is wonderful to hear how excited your students are and how much progress they are making in their journey toward computational thinking.
If you would like additional materials for class lessons as well as mentoring opportunities I would recommend looking into the following organizations.
1. http://www.bootstrapworld.org/
2. http://www.programbydesign.org/
3. http://thinkersmith.org/about-us/
Best of luck to you and your students in the adventures ahead. Programming is a paradigm shift in thinking, there will be many challenges and successes along the way.
Don’t forget to reach out to your local programming experts for help and mentoring. There are many talented and experienced people who would love the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of young people.
Joshua,
Thank you so much for all of this information and your comments! The kids are still coming in daily to show me what they have created. We don’t have a class here at our school, but if i can implement it occasionally I can keep up their interest and support them learning code. Thank you also for your great ideas and suggestions. I do plan on following up with them.
What a great post! I’m so excited to hear it was a success. I would never think that my middle schoolers from last year would have been able to handle something like this. I definitely agree that video tutorials can be helpful.
You’re experiment is so inspiring. Kudos, Julie!
Jackie Shlecter
@SocraticOrg
Pingback: Our Code.Org Coding Success – A Summary | I Speak Math
That is so awesome! Programming is such a great thing for kids to learn, regardless of their future career. It definitely helps you think in a different way. And it’s not going anywhere!