If you’re concerned that young children won’t be able to grasp computing concepts, or are worried about how you’re going to teach it, have a look around the Literacy from Scratch website.
Managed – and, I think, written by – Lawrence Williams, the website contains examples of pupils’ work in Scratch, cross-curricular ideas and examples, and notes on pedagogy.
This application is designed to teach Computing at Key Stages 1 and 2 (a more sophisticated version for older pupils is being worked on).
What struck me immediately on using it is the amount of guidance available, both in verbal form and videos. There is quite a large range of modules to choose from, including “Starter” ones which take you through the basics and, where appropriate, recapitulate what has already been learnt.
Code Academy is an online tutorial-based website for teaching yourself how to code. You can select which programming language you wish to learn, from the following list
As usual, I gave this application a workout without seeking help from a manual or anything like that – which is just as well because there does not seem to be a comprehensive manual.
There are three applications in one: JIT5, LOGO and Visual. This is quite useful because if you are familiar with LOGO but not JavaScript, you can start pupils coding in an environment that is familiar to you. Also, if you teach very young children, JIT5 is highly visual and colourful.
An advantage of J2Code as a whole over 2Code is that it covers the age range from Key Stage 1 (5-6 year olds) to Key Stage 3 (13-14 year olds).
2Simple’s answer to the question “How can we teach coding to little ones?” is 2Code. The first thing that greets you when you go to the 2Code section of Purple Mash is the plethora of files to open.
Computer programming is the process of designing and writing computer programs. That is pretty straightforward, isn't it?
(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved