Category Archives: Hour of Code

December 16, 2015 · 10:54 pm

Fun with the Hour of Code!

Last week we took part in the Hour of Code! The Hour of Code program was created several years ago to encourage students to explore coding. During the week of December 7 – 13th students around the world took part in this initiative. You can check out the Hour of Code here by clicking on the highlighted link! We were one of the 4655 sites that took part this year in Canada! You can look up our school on the Hour of Code map!

Our Big Buddy class came and helped the students log in and start learning to code using the special site created to encourage students to learn to code. This year the theme of the hour was Star Wars. The children learned how to use computer code to move the little robot around the screen to do a variety of tasks.

There are three different tutorials to do on the site! Each one has a different theme! You can code with Anna and Elsa from Frozen, do Star Wars and build a galaxy, or try the Minecraft hour of code. Each one is a lot of fun and introduces you to coding in a fun way! Check them out at the Hour of Code tutorial site.

First, we watched a bit of the tutorial about learning to use Blockly to move BB-8 character from Star Wars around the screen. Then the big buddies worked on the iPads and in the computer lab with the children to work through the tasks. The Big Buddies did a fantastic job helping their little buddies figure out how to make BB-8 move around the screen and do the different actions. It was so much fun to watch!

It was fun to use our Promethean Board to demonstrate how to do the tutorial!

This is a screen shot from the Hour of Code website with Mountain View School highlighted! Too much fun!

More Hour of Code Fun with Elsa!

We have continued to learn about coding with the Hour of Code designed for this year! This is a great set of lessons about coding with Elsa from the Frozen movie. The students learned how to make Elsa make a snowflake design on the ice using coding. By putting a set of commands using Blockly the students made Elsa move on the ice.

We are so lucky because we can show this on our wonderful Promethean board so that everyone can see it clearly. The best part is that the students can come up to the board and move the pieces around themselves. You can bet that I have a lot of volunteers for that job!

We have also returned to the computer lab and worked on the Angry Birds Hour of Code and had a lot of fun trying to complete the Hour of Code by ourselves with just a little help from some wonderful students in our Grade Seven class who helped the students log on. It was really neat to see everyone helping each other out whenever someone got stumped!

It was really neat to see other classes in our school also try the Hour of Code. I think we had five classes at our school take part!

Hour of Code Fun!

Today we participated in the Hour of Code! This week is Hour of Code week around the world. The intent of the Hour of Code is to introduce the basics of coding in computer science. The students work through a set of lessons and learn the basics of coding. And it’s fun! Classes from around the world are signing on to learn to code. There are currently Hour of Code 77,189 events scheduled this week and we were one of them. If you look at the map on the Hour of Code website and zoom into Vancouver Island, you will find our school! We are one of 1853 events in Canada! Very cool!

Our big buddy class helped us take part in this event! They were absolutely awesome! We had a few glitches along the way because so many people in the world were working on the Hour of Code at the same time. That meant that sometimes it took a long time to sign on, or the program froze, or did a little hiccup. Considering how many students were signed on to the site around the world we did very well. I was super excited that we managed to get so many students signed on! The students were very patient and handled it very well. We used a combination of computers in the lab, the iPads, and the Promethean Board in our classroom to get as many students on the site as we could. Many students made it through a lot of the lessons. You can see from the pictures that everyone was really focused! Please take a moment and take a look at the tutorials that are available for the children to try. The tutorials are up on the site year round. We did the Angry Birds one. There is a new one with Elsa from the movie Frozen. It is a bit more difficult.

I tried out the tutorials a couple of weekends ago and got really hooked. I ended up staying up really late trying them! Lots of fun! They have added some new things to the Angry Bird tutorial this week so I will have to try it again!

There are lots of lessons and tutorials that we will be trying out. I have also found some simple coding apps that we will be introducing soon. This is going to be way too much fun!