The Hour of Code 2013

[Wendy Holladay]

http://csedweek.org/

Dec 9-15, 2013

[MamaSpoldi]

Is anyone else doing an Hour of Code event? This is a great opportunity for every FIRST team to reach out to their school or community. It appears to take very little preparation since they provide all the materials online. I personally have tried out a few of the beginning tutorials and they are fun and simple. They only took me a few minutes... however, as a software engineer I would not take that time as a guide for how long it would take students, especially the younger ones. But they were also entertaining and momentarily challenging even for me with almost 30 years of programming experience.

We are starting small this year to try it out. We have a small event planned with our FRC team at a regular meeting this week as well as an event for all 4 of our FLL teams along with their family and friends for Saturday morning before our FLL season end celebration. All it takes is a room and some computers. The activities and tutorials are all self guided and recommended to be done with kids in small groups where they can help each other through the challenges.

Looking forward to the fun! Hope everyone joins in to celebrate Computer Science Education week!
(See csedweek.org and code.org for more info)

[HighlandersFRC]

My FRC team, The Highlanders #4499, is participating in this program this week. We are working with a local elementary school to promote coding in their classrooms and doing a robot demo at the end of the week. It should be fun and my team is excited to be a part of it.

[MamaSpoldi]

Originally Posted by HighlandersFRC

My FRC team, The Highlanders #4499, is participating in this program this week. We are working with a local elementary school to promote coding in their classrooms and doing a robot demo at the end of the week. It should be fun and my team is excited to be a part of it.

That is awesome! I'd love to hear about how it goes. We wanted to do something similar but our local schools were hesitant without it being a known quantity. I am hoping that after doing a smaller event within our FIRST teams this year we can spread it bigger next year.

[Coach Norm]

The materials provided with the Hour of Code are very easy to implement as well as scalable for students who are more experienced programmers.

[HighlandersFRC]

I will gather some information, curriculum and other useful tips from the teachers and pass it along.

[Foster]

Cool stuff! It's exciting that they are using Scratch. The new VEX IQ language of Modkit is very Scratch like. So it will be neat to go from moving Angry Birds to moving Happy Robots

[Foster]

Just wrapped up some more of the lessons. The first hour was a good start on basic repeat / if then else. Like the animations to make it fun to watch.

If you have a spare hour, it's worth taking the class and doing the examples. If nothing else it will help you with new programmers in January.

Now I need to grab one of the beginners and now see if I can get them to make the Modkit VEXIQ robots move.