Coding is, of course, a hugely important area of 21st century education. Whether they're as young as Pre-K or ready to enter college, coding is extremely relevant to almost every student's future. Thankfully, millions of educators and administrators realize the importance of teaching kids to code. Whether it's a curricular requirement or part of an informal school club, programming experiences are amazingly valuable for students. There's also plenty of options, so educators can find something without complicated or pricey features. In this section, you'll see a lot of different topics related to K-12 coding. These include features on particular STEM tools, insights on coding integration, skills students can develop and more. There's also something for teachers of all grade levels. Whether you teach the early grades or have students with the foundation to take the next step, you'll find helpful resources for teaching coding in the classroom.
Coding is truly an experience that all K-12 students can have. Starting in the early grades, students can code screen-free with a tool like the Cubetto Robot. Then, they can start to increase their coding skills and explore Blockly environments using tools like the Dash Robot, Ozobot Evo, and many others. From there, students can explore a bunch of different languages, like Snap!, Scratch, MakeCode, and more and, eventually, expand their skill sets by exploring text-based languages, like JavaScript and Python. All the while, the STEM solutions we advocate for also allow students to learn the most important coding concepts, like loops, variables, inputs, conditionals, and syntax. With a natural progression that leads to increased computer science competencies and enhanced future readiness, it's tough to understate the relevance of coding experiences in the classroom.
Our team of innovators has created a one-stop online store for teachers to research and purchase the STEM and MakerEd technologies that will work best in their classrooms. By providing almost any EdTech tool a teacher might need in one place, we have come to think of ourselves as the ‘Amazon of EdTech.’
It can be hard to convince teachers (let alone students) to use some of their summer vacation to improve their academic skills. This is, of course, understandable since they spend the rest of the year doing just that. Making summer learning fun, however, is a fairly reasonable compromise so that both educators and their students aren’t wasting time.
You know us. No project is too big for our team. We’re in the process of discovering just how true this is and how far this kind of attitude can take us. Recently, we teamed up with a midwestern chapter of the Boys & Girls Club to help them secure STEM tools for launching a brand-new makerspace this coming fall.
Collaboration and coding…two of the most critical skills for students to develop and two of the most crucial challenges teachers face when building curricula. But, don’t worry, there’s an app for that. And a robot. And a few fully stocked classroom kits. Using the Ozobot Bit or Evo Classroom Kits, educators can empower up to 36 students to code.
With this charismatic robot and accompanying app, students can play games, chat, control, and program the Cue in Blockly or JavaScript. They can even pick one of four avatars to represent and track their progress: Charge, Zest, Smirk, and Pep! Each avatar is preprogrammed with unique personalities, expressions, and interactions.
It pays to have a friend with a makerspace and, using this connection, we put on a day of PD for 30 teachers at Pinky Inc. in Marlborough, MA. At the day-long workshop, the teachers worked together and designed some creative classroom activities centered on STEM tools, like Sphero, E-Blox, Cubetto, and more!
As the summer ends, you probably don’t need us to tell you all this but it’s buying time for classroom teachers, STEM professionals, and many school technology directors. To help move this process along and make it as easy and affordable as possible for you, we’ve created a bit of our own EdTech glossary to help you find what you
If you’ve heard of the Dash Robot from Wonder Workshop, you’ve most likely heard of the Dot! Small but mighty, the Dot is a responsive and interactive robot designed for students aged six and up. Though it may not be quite as popular as the Dash because it lacks its own motors, the Dot is still a great tool for
You may have heard from the source itself (or maybe from our social media) that there was a new Raspberry Pi board launched on that very day. The Pi 3 is now the newest version of the powerful microcomputer and got us thinking about how schools can use each version of the Raspberry Pi in STEM education. Read on to
Cubelets and STEM education just kind of go together. Already awesome at exposing super young students to engineering and programming, the addition of the Cubelets Classroom Packs have added a renewed focus on collaboration! All their kits allow educators to combine coding and engineering in the classroom.
