Dear Friends of Gefen and Tamar,
December 9-15, 2013 is Computer Science Education Week. To celebrate, MWJDS third and fourth graders are participating in Hour of Code, a nationwide campaign backed by President Obama and famous names in the Computer Science world, including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, dedicated to expanding student participation in computer science education.
Today, as part of Hour of Code, Gefen and Tamar students watched a short video about code writing. Then students actually wrote their first lines of code! They learned to do this through an interactive program that guided students to complete Angry Bird-themed puzzles. In order to make the angry bird move in each puzzle, students had to write code and then "run the program". The students had a ball. In fact, they loved it SO MUCH that many of them asked if they could write down the web address so that they could visit the site again from home. They were all disappointed when our Science period was over and we had to break for Spanish class.
To access introductory code writing tutorials for kids, or to learn more about Hour of Code, visit csedweek.org. To access the specific tutorial we did today, visit the direct link http://learn.code.org/hoc/1. I urge you to explore both sites further with your children. They each have a lot of valuable material!
Best,
Hamorah Eliza
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ReplyDeleteHi All. Hamorah Eliza here again. I just wanted to add that we did another cool code writing game for children today that the students LOVED. It can be accessed at http://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/. This one is a great site to visit at home as well!
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