Hour of Code 2019: Dance Party!

It seems like “DaNcE pArTy” is the common theme to celebrate this year’s Computer Science Education Week (otherwise known as “Hour of Code”)!

December 9-15, 2019 is the official week that is designated as this year’s Computer Science Education Week, but of course you can host an “Hour of Code” ANY TIME with these free resources:

From Code.org:

Say hello to Dance Party 2019
With the Hour of Code only a few weeks away, we’re excited to unveil the latest additions to one of our most popular activities, Dance Party! You can look forward to new backgrounds, new coding blocks, and new music from artists like Lil Nas X, Nicki Minaj, Panic! At The Disco, Jonas Brothers, Pedro Capó, and Katy Perry. There’s even a brand-new Dance Party character designed by middle schooler Genevieve P from Edison, NJ! Read more on our blog.

From Apple’s Everyone Can Code:

Excerpt from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/11/apple-expands-everyone-can-code-to-bring-more-coding-resources-to-teachers-and-students/  

"New Everyone Can Code Curriculum

The new Everyone Can Code curriculum builds on existing interactive puzzles, guides and activities to make learning to code even more approachable and connected to students’ everyday lives. Everyone Can Code Puzzles is an all-new student guide to Swift Playgrounds where each chapter helps students build on what they already know, experiment with new coding concepts and creatively communicate how coding impacts their lives. A companion teacher guide supports educators in bringing coding into their classrooms with helpful ways to facilitate, deepen and assess student learning.”

This year’s Hour of Code Facilitator Guide features Dance as students program a virtual MeeBot character to dance and then make a video of it. The new Swift Playground activities to accompany this activity are featured in the Swift Playgrounds library. You could even purchase an actual robot that you could build and then program to interact with your code. Even without this purchase, students can have hours of coding fun with dance moves and the virtual robot inside of Swift Playgrounds. 

And so, Let’s Dance with Code!

Code, Create, and Connect with Community

Code, Create, and Connect with Community.

All powerful aims for today's classroom. Yet the first two without the third leaves learning in a void.

It is exciting to see a renewed interest in Challenge Based Learning​ following last week's Leadership & Learning event put on by Apple's Community Engagement Initiative team.

During the Academy, educators and school leaders used the CBL framework to guide their work as they developed an app prototype to address a community challenge. 

Participants ENGAGEd in the Challenges presented by expert guest speakers, they INVESTIGATEd the issues by asking Guiding Questions, participating in Guiding Activities, and analyzing the results, and they ACTed by creating a solution in the form of an app prototype and sharing their work in a massive app showcase to gain feedback.

Even more importantly, educators thought about how they could transform their learning communities through Challenge Based Learning. 

 "We spend time on engagement, but engagement is fleeting. Ownership of the learning should be the goal."

For a supporting workshop we created the attached resource and we'd love to share it with others as well. It is an interactive hyperlinked presentation that only runs by tapping the images and icons on the slides. Download from the dropbox link, open in Keynote, click PLAY, and "choose your own adventure" through the wealth of curated resources and examples it contains. 

Herbert Spencer said, "The great aim of education is not knowledge but action." CBL allows us all to take action and make a difference. Join us for new and greater challenges to come!

                                        http://bit.ly/cblconsiderations