Hour of Code and Beyond....

   My students love using Code.org to program the angry bird to get the piggy to move. This is simple coding and it's best. If you haven't discovered Code.org yet, you will be surprised at how easy it is for students to manipulate. Oh, and the collaboration is unfounded. Students can choose to work together or not and even if they don't, I am always hearing across the room, "hey can you help me code this?" I can't get the pig to jump correctly."

There are also plenty of unplugged activities you can do with your classroom without any technology. For example, the beading activity introduces students to binary coding with paper and beads. Here is a link to the lesson here:

We've all heard coding teaches collaboration, critical thinking, cooperation, independence so why not give it a try. Plain and simple, this is fun for students. As they become proficient in this, you can begin to design content where the students have to code their own sequence to something or even have them design a game.