Hour of Code 2016

This year I hosted an Hour of Code event at my school.  I used some of the resources from code.org to get organized.  When I host this event, I always like to start with an "unplugged" activity.  This is an activity that allows students to think about computer programming instructions without having to know any actual language.  I chose to do "Color by Pixel" which allowed students to read and write programming instructions to color a grid to make a picture.  All of the students who attended this event had some sort of programming experiences, so we kind of flew through this activity.  

Once we finished with this, I introduced some different activity options and the students got to work.  Students could choose from Google's Blockly Maze activity, working with Scratch, creating a program using MIT App Inventor, or building an iPhone game with Swift.  Since many of the students who attended the event were enrolling in my second semester Swift programming class, most of the students chose the last option.  Students were having a great time with this and were cruising along with their apps. Unfortunately, we ran into some network issues which brought their progress to a halt.  Even with this difficulty, I think the students enjoyed the Hour of Code and were encouraged to learn more.

2016 Hour of Code Participants