Resource: Hour of Code
15 Million Students worldwide have learned an Hour of Code.
Link: https://code.org/educate
Subject: Technologies
Year level: K-12 (This program offers a range of activities and you will choose activities based on the capabilities of your students)
Strand: Digital Technologies
Substrand:
- Knowledge and understanding (how data are represented and structured symbolically).
- Processes and Production skills (defining problems and specifying and implementing their solutions).
Content Descriptor:
- F-2: Recognise and explore patterns in data and represent data as pictures, symbols and diagrams (ACTDIK002).
- 3-4: Explore and use a range of digital systems with peripheral devices for different purposes, and transmit different types of data (ACTDIK007)
- 5-6: Investigate the main components of common digital systems, their basic functions and interactions, and how such digital systems may connect together to form networks to transmit data (ACTDIK014)
Cross curricular priorities:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Science
- Information and Communication Technology
- Critical and Creative Thinking
Description:
Hour of Code is a worldwide application that introduces students to coding. It has a wide range of hour long tutorials at various age and stage ranges. The activities range from creating an interactive greeting card to creating java script.
These hour long tutorials can be implemented on computers, tablet or smart phones and can be worked on either collaboratively or individually. There is also the opportunity to teach “unplugged” sessions where computers are not required but students’ engage in activities designed to develop their computational thinking.
This application comes with detailed instructions for teachers and requires no previous computer knowledge for either the teacher or the students. A short film is available to demonstrate how to implement the program in your school.
Activities:
There are a range of activities that can be implemented alongside the hour long tutorials, these include the “unplugged” sessions where students work on their critical thinking skills, and handout sheets are available from the website.