Today we got a chance to explore the website Code, which introduces coding to beginners. The website itself was very easy to use. There were step by step instructions which made coding seem simple. It was fun to see how different commands controlled the character. Although I enjoyed the website, I have a few stipulation with it. The first being that I didn’t really learn how to code. The website doesn’t have you writing the code, but instead has you simply plugging in blocks and changing very minor details. It doesn’t explain what code is or how to write it. I don’t feel like a learnt anything new about coding but rather had fun playing around with different settings. The other concern I have is that I am not sure there is much of an educational benefit to it. There is some math involved, but not enough to call it a math activity in my opinion. For these reasons, I’m not sure I would use this website in my classroom as an educational tool. Nevertheless, I enjoyed playing around with it. I was surprised to see so many celebrity cameos! I’m not sure what the significance of the website is to have had so many celebrity endorsements? Regardless, it was a fun way to spend 20 minutes, and maybe I would introduce this to the kids as a fun free time activity!
Here is what a created using the website: https://studio.code.org/c/619628811 and https://studio.code.org/c/618944225