Computer Science Education Week is always one of our favorite times of year at Codesters. It’s wonderful to see computer science education take the spotlight and to see showcased all the great work teachers and schools are doing!

One of the signature activities during Computer Science Education Week is Hour of Code. Hour of Code is an awareness activity, usually lasting a period or two, in which students are exposed to coding and computer science, often for the first time. It’s been instrumental to raising the profile of computer science in school communities. Codesters offers a variety of activities for teacher and schools to use in their classrooms. These include:

• Dance Moves – Design your own dance routine and program a sprite to perform it!
• Turtle Drawing – Guide the turtle out of a maze and create spiral art!
• Winter Greetings – Create your own greeting card to celebrate winter!

We’re also proud to announce that Codesters has also been added to the curriculum list of Code.org, one of the key organizations behind the Hour of Code nationwide. We have a lot of respect for the amazing advocacy work Code.org has done and are excited to be included on their list.

School funding is often far too tight, even for programs that teach invaluable 21st century skills like coding and computer science. Donors Choose is an innovative platform that addresses critical gaps in funding by enabling teachers and administrators to start crowdfunding campaigns to raise money for worthwhile programs without having to go through the school budget rigmarole.

Codesters always strives to be affordable – starting at just $10 per student – and now teachers can bring coding to their classrooms with the help of Donors Choose. And, for the first 20 Donors Choose projects that fundraise for a classroom set of Codesters curriculum, Codesters will match dollar-for-dollar any funds that are raised. A classroom set of 30 licenses to Intro to Coding in Python part 1 is $250 on Donors Choose, which means that the first 20 teachers who raise $125 can start teaching coding right away.

We are proud to be on Donors Choose, a platform that has been filling in the budgetary gaps for educators for years. Learn more about Donors Choose, or get started with your Codesters Donors Choose project, here. (Note: when you are creating your Donors Choose project you will find Codesters in the AKJ Education catalog.)

And please support Donors Choose projects to bring Codesters to schools by going to our Donors Choose Giving Page.

Also, check out our great Codesters’ activities for Hour of Code, happening in schools and homes globally during Computer Science Week December 5-11, 2016.

I love teaching girls to code. In 2014, I started a local Girls Who Code Club chapter in my hometown and have been a volunteer instructor ever since. It has been so rewarding to see my students’ “light bulb” moments and the pride in their eyes when they share the projects they have created with code.

The majority of my students come to our club with no coding experience and little idea of what computer science involves. This, unfortunately, is typical for most middle and high school students, girls in particular. I started the club with no previous experience working with high school girls and only limited education experience. It was intimidating. I was more than a little scared of high schoolers and how the club would turn out.

So for me as well as my girls, it was the beginning of a journey together into the unknown. To my great relief, the first few classes went great. The girls were genuinely excited to be learning to code. For a while, classes went along fairly smoothly — a credit to the great organization of Girls Who Code. Soon enough though, an issue surfaced.

Eight weeks into our Scratch programming curriculum, our chapter’s student ambassador asked, “When are we going to write real code?”

“What? We are writing code!” I responded.

“Blocks are for kids!” another girl exclaimed.

Why did they think this?    

The high school girls in my chapter had recently volunteered at a Scratch programming workshop for elementary school girls. As I asked more about what they meant, it came out that seeing third and fourth graders learning block programming framed Scratch as something just for kids in their minds. They also had friends — all boys —  writing text-based programs. The girls wanted to share their projects with these friends, but they wanted to share “real code.”

Scratch is an incredible platform. I reiterated to them that the coding they were doing in Scratch with blocks was every bit as “real” as the coding their other friends were doing with lines of text. But the more I insisted this was the case, the more they pushed back. I was worried many of the girls would stop coming if I didn’t come up with solution. My girls were unrelenting.

Just in time, though, Girls Who Code came to the rescue! We were invited to pilot Codesters, a learn-to-code Python platform. My girls were so excited! Not only did they love finally getting to write “real” (i.e. text based) code, but they loved learning how Python was used in the real world.

They also loved the block-like interface Codesters includes. Known as the “Drag-to-Type” toolkit, it bridges the gap from blocks to the rigor of Python. With the toolkit, the girls were able to get going right way and write a program on the first day. From there, we — And I really mean we; I was learning along with them! — gradually learned Python syntax and debugging as part of each lesson.

Codesters combines self-directed learning with teacher driven lessons. As a Codesters instructor, this blended learning environment meant my students could learn foundational coding skills regardless of my own coding experience. If one of my students missed a class, she could catch up on her own. Fast learners could also be challenged with more complex and creative projects without forcing other students to skip ahead.

The Codesters teacher dashboard gave me the ability to monitor lesson progress, too. I could see immediately if a student was struggling and offer guidance before they became too lost. Each of my twenty girls was learning to code at the optimum pace for herself. My job became simply to support however they each learned best. The dashboard freed me to focus more on helping them with their projects, celebrating their accomplishments, and building lasting mentorships with each of them. Our club was transformed!

As I’d soon learn, our club wasn’t the only one that saw the power of Codesters. Codesters is now a curriculum provider for over 400 GWC Clubs across the country and I couldn’t be happier about that! In fact, I am so passionate about the Codesters solution that I accepted an offer to become their School Relationship Manager in January. In this role, I work with schools to bring Python education to students in 5th to 10th grades. It is absolutely my dream job!

In addition to my 20 girls, I can now empower any district, school, or teacher with the Codesters solution. As the School Relationship Manager, I get to see the same kind of “light bulb” moments I saw in my girls’ eyes in teachers’ eyes now, too, and for every new Codesters teacher, there are another 30-150+ students who will get to proudly share what they create with code! Bringing coding into the school day also means that all students will have the opportunity to learn to code, not just those that self select for a club.

We are starting to see more of a commitment to teaching coding at the local, state, and national levels. Arkansas’s commitment to teaching text-based coding to all seventh and eighth grade students by the 2017 – 2018 school year is just one example. New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and other cities have made varying commitments as well. The question before us now is, “How?”

I believe Codesters is already helping to answer this crucial question.

If you’d like see what my girls and I especially love about Codesters, including why it’s the perfect tool to bring coding into your school classroom, visit www.codesters.com. Create a free teacher account and I will get you started with a free, three-lesson pilot for you and your students.

I look forward to connecting, and empowering you to teach code!

All the best,

Kimberly Sauter
School Relationship Manager
kimberly@codesters.com

Three members of the Codesters team presented at PyGotham, an NYC-based conference for Python developers. In our talk, we discussed the process we used to develop a simplified API tool for younger students just learning to code. We focused on two questions that drive our thinking about developing tools for students:

1. What is the right way to teach younger students to code, particularly in professional text-based languages?  

2. Should we modify CS 101 courses to be accessible to young learners or should we do something else?

At Codesters we believe that students can and should move from block-based coding to text-based coding around middle school (fifth or sixth grade). However, this doesn’t mean that we should teach young students to code the same way we teach high school or college students, and teaching differently requires different tools. For example, while we believe Python is the best language for getting students started with text programming, we teach Python in two ways that may be unfamiliar to a Python veteran. 

First, we teach Python in an online learning environment, instead of teaching them to use an IDE and run their programs from the command line. We do this because we believe an online professional programming language is made more accessible when taught using tools specifically designed for learning.

Second, we teach standard Python, but we sometimes modify or extend the Python libraries to be effective for teaching a sixth grade classroom with 20 or 30 students. Our team has created a development process for determining  when the Python standard library should be taught and when it is more appropriate to create simplified Python modules. This process involves close collaboration between our curriculum and development teams. This way, we can focus on writing clear curriculums that work for each grade level, while still staying true to teaching the fundamentals of Python and computer science.

A good example of this is the simplified API tool we developed for Codesters. This tool allows students to import data from any publicly shared Google Sheet into their Codesters programs with a few simple lines of code. It also imports the data as a list of strings or integers, so students don’t need to have a deep understanding of objects or data types. It’s capabilities open up a door for newer students – even sixth graders just learning to code – to easily bring data into their Python programs, making their projects more interesting and connected to the world.

We were proud to be part of PyGotham and thrilled to see CS education gaining steam. It’s notable presence as a topic at a conference for professional developers was heartening. Most exciting, though, was seeing education so prominently featured as the topic of the closing keynote: Empathy & Teaching by Katie Cunningham. We also, of course, enjoyed other excellent education-themed talks including Young Coders by Barbara Shaurette of letslearnpython.com and Creating a Culture of Computation by Evan Misshula of CUNY – Queens college.

Take a look at the slides from our talk, Opening the Magic Box, and keep an eye out for the forthcoming video. We look forward to playing more of a role in PyGotham and the Python community for years to come.

“My students have been learning to code on Scratch, but now they want to move on to the next thing: text-based coding. We’re trying to get them learning Python, but they’re struggling.”

At Codesters, we often hear quotes like this from teachers we meet at conferences such as ISTE and CSTA. I hate to hear that kids are struggling to learn to code.

Transitioning from Scratch to Python might appear daunting at first, but it doesn’t have to be a painful experience. In fact, a big reason we built Codesters was to make the transition from block-based programing to text-based programming intuitive and straightforward. Codesters is as easy as Scratch, except with Python. Here are a few common challenges students and teachers face when advancing beyond Scratch and how we tackled each.

Problem 1: Scratch is Fun. Text-based coding can feel boring by comparison.

The reason students sometimes struggle to learn text-based languages like Python is that they don’t have a coding environment that makes learning Python easy and fun in the same way Scratch does. So when we built Codesters it was important to create an environment that allowed kids the ability to view, edit, and work with code in text form, while also employing a similar style of engagement, ease-of-use, and ability to rapidly create using familiar drag-and-drop.

Problem 2: Block-based platforms provide kids a constrained set of contextual options. Text-based programming removes these training wheels. 

When students code in text-based languages they can be overwhelmed by the syntax and what to type into the editor. Students working in Scratch by comparison have a defined set of choices in a set of menu items that well organize the “syntax” options. Codesters blends the best of both worlds. Our unique Drag-to-Text Toolkit allows students to drag and modify the code, while preserving the ability for students to write text-based code when they are ready (Click here to see a short video of how our toolkit works). We have found that this 3-step process – drag in code blocks; modify variables and operators; then type and edit directly in text – is the natural way for students to learn coding syntax.

Problem 3: Scratch lets kids make visually interesting projects they can share with classmates immediately. In text-based languages this is often harder than it need be. 

Part of the fun of coding is showing off what you built, and that’s just as true for kids as it is for adults. A transition from block languages like Scratch must take that ease of sharing into account. This is why we built the “Create” assignment at the end of our structured classroom lessons – a feature teachers tell us again and again they love. These “Create” activities allow students to share projects with others from the get-go. And it’s all done in Python, with direct access to the text-based code.

More than 50,000 students have started learning Python on Codesters. We’ve learned that it’s possible to give students and educators both the ease-of-use and immediate gratification of block-based languages while providing direct instruction in an industrial-grade, widely-used, programming language – Python.

We believe the Codesters learning platform to be the most engaging and effective way for students to learn coding generally and Python specifically. It’s great for both students coming from a block-based background as well as those coding for the first time. If you want to try out Codesters, go to www.codesters.com and click “SIGN UP FOR FREE”. And if you’re headed to CSTA, we hope you’ll stop by and check out our presentation, “Integrating Coding into Math and Science Lessons for Grades 5-9”, on Monday June 11 from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM.

If you have any questions about how to use Codesters to teach your students Python, send me an email. I’m at gordon(at)codesters.com.