Hour of Code

Last week, our school participated in a worldwide initiative called The Hour of Code. This project is designed to help promote computer sciences in all classrooms and to spark the curiosity of children while they are young.  It also helps to show children that computer programming can be as simple as playing games.

Our Pre-K students worked with the members of our technology department from the city campus and discussed how robots need instructions or commands in order to do a job. Some robots react to buttons or joysticks, while others use voice and face recognition. When you write code, you need the same ingredients.

We then played a game where one teacher pretended to be a robot that needed instructions from the students on how to build a tower of blocks. Instructions like “build the floor” were not specific enough for the robot to know what to do. The students had to really think about what words they needed to use for the robot to understand. Directions such as “pick up the rectangle block and put it on the floor” gave enough detail for the robot to do his job.

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After our discussion, we broke up into small groups and played an app called Daisy the Dinosaur. The students had to choose different actions for Daisy to do. At first, the students just picked one action at a time, then they began making long lists for Daisy to accomplish. When they felt that the list was complete, the students hit play and watch Daisy perform her silly dance of flips and turn, growing and shrinking.

The students loved the idea that they were in charge of that happened to Daisy, and more importantly, that they were able to do it independently. We encourage you to look into some of the activities that promote computer sciences at home as well http://csedweek.org/learn . Perhaps someday your little one could be the next computer engineer!