Code Week and remote teaching
- Coding@Home: this is a collection of short videos, do-it-yourself materials, puzzles, games, and coding challenges for everyday use in the family as well as at school.
- Coding Unplugged: here you will find different activities you can easily do at home to learn or to teach coding with everyday materials.
- Codeweek Learning Bits : here you will find “Learning Bits” or tutorials on Sustainable Development and Artificial Intelligence which include remote teaching sections in their Lesson Plans.
- Repository of resources: many of the resources in the repository can also be used in remote teaching scenarios. You can find resources to teach coding, or to learn coding.
- Coding from home webinars: did you know that Code Week organised several webinars on how to learn and teach coding from home? Check them out!
7 tips to teach coding remotely
- Become familiar with the concepts, programming language, and software while students can learn coding and programming semi-autonomously by trial-and-error, you will need to guide them and help them find errors in their syntax. Be ready to change and adapt if a digital tool or a programming language does not bear the learning results you had expected
- Empower students help your students reach their full potential by providing motivating and meaningful lessons. Let them explore their skills and creativity by allowing them to choose their own projects and outputs. In addition, we recommend you to be realistic and to set goals achievable by your students.
- Encourage students to work in groups coding in groups is not only more fun, but it would also help students achieve more complex and creative projects. Furthermore, remote learning can be isolating for some students, and group work can prevent this. For instance, you could create online meeting rooms for your students to gather in groups, or you could set up a peer assessment by inviting students to give and receive constructive feedback on each other’s projects.
- Explore open software and free online platforms for learning how to code there are many good-quality resources to learn and teach coding, which are advanced while still easy to use. These are free tools which you can let your students use without having to purchase licenses or download software. You can find most of them on the Code Week repository e.g. Scratch, App Inventor, Code.org, EarSketch, Sonic Pi, and so on. As we have seen with the Code Week Learning Bits you can apply these tools to any subject!
- Keep it playful your first steps into coding should be engaging and fun, and while you may not have the chance to share this enjoyment in person this time, there are ways to play and have fun together! For instance, you can propose your students to take a break from the lesson to connect and play together CodyColor an educational multiplayer game designed to learning computational thinking while playing.
- Simulate real classroom interaction technology allows us to replicate at least partially, the kind of interaction that would take place in the classroom. You can encourage your students to turn on their cameras at given times, raise their hands virtually, ask questions in person or in the chat, respond to digital polls and quizzes, and so on. Some free digital tools you might use for this purpose are Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, or Jitsi, for live classroom sessions, and Kahoot, Mentimeter, Google Forms, for quizzes and classroom interaction. This would help students feel like they are in class and feel connect to their peers.
- Ensure the availability and affordability of materials make sure your coding lessons are realistic and inclusive by ensuring that the materials required are easy to find in any household, and that either all students can achieve them or that you provide adaptations to those who might not. For instance, unplugged coding activities require inexpensive materials such as scissors, paper, or makers. When working with online coding exercises, make sure that all students have access at home to a tablet or computer and a reliable internet connection.