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Tynker: Computer programming for kids

November 22, 2013November 16, 2013Kelly Tenkely9 Comments7962 views

What it is: Tynker is about the coolest way for kids to learn how to computer program- absolutely NO prior programming experience is needed! Tynker leads kids through design thinking through interactive courses where kids can learn how to program at their own pace.

Anyone can teach kids how to program (no really!) because with Tynker, you don’t need any prior knowledge or understanding. Tynker provides teachers with tools, curriculum and project ideas that will have your kids programming in no time! The Tynker curriculum pack starts with 6 lessons. Each one is appropriate for a 45 minute work period. Through the teacher dashboard, you can assign lessons to your students. A built-in tutor provides step-by-step instructions that guides students toward creating a working project. The teacher dashboard also helps you track student progress as they learn and master concepts. No data entry is required, students login and the teacher dashboard auto-magically populates.

When students have completed projects, they can publish them to the class showcase and be shared with family and friends through email, Google+, Twitter or Facebook.

Happily, Tynker works entirely in your web browser. There is nothing to install or setup. It is good to go right away! Equally happily, Tynker is FREE for your school! Woot!

How to integrate Tynker into your classroom: Not only will students learn the basics of programming with Tynker, they can use it to demonstrate their learning through their creations. Students can compose stories and comics that retell a story, historical event, recent field trip, fiction or non-fiction. Using the physics features, students can learn some basics about physics and cause the games they create to be more realistic. They can also demonstrate understanding of physics principles through their creations.

Students can use Tynker to create their own apps to show off their understanding of new math/science/social studies vocabulary, math or science concepts, retell stories, character sketches, games, animations and more. In addition to being able to create stories, games, and slideshow- students can also program original music and create computer art.

Don’t think you have time in your curriculum? Take a look around Tynker and think about natural ways you could use it to enhance your curriculum. Instead of asking your students to create a book report, have them program a retell using Tynker. This will take some additional background knowledge (they will need to go through a Tynker tutorial or two) BUT the outcome is well worth it. You will have asked your students to learn something new semi-independently, beefed up logical/mathematical thinking skills through programming, and invited students to think critically about what they read to tell the story to others through a program. Worth the additional 45 min! Students could demonstrate a math concept, show the steps in a science experiment, retell an event in history, and even compose their own music through program. When you start thinking like a maker as you play with Tynker, you will realize there are infinite opportunities for including Tynker in your curriculum. If you are still convinced that you can’t find the time in your heavily scheduled (sometimes scripted-sad) day, why not start a before or after school program, summer camp, lunch club, etc.?

At Anastasis, we have Crave classes every Wednesday. These classes are offered by our teachers every 5 weeks. Teachers choose an area of learning that they crave and create a class based on that (we have everything from programming, to cooking, to forensic science, hockey history, junk orchestra, iPad rock band, to chess and da Vinci art). Students get a list of classes at the beginning of a new block, and get to choose a class that they crave. The result is a wonderful mixed age (k-8) class of passions colliding. The kids LOVE Wednesdays for this awesome hour of our day. I’m excited to offer a Tynker class for our next block of classes (along with playing with our new Romo robot!), I think this is going to be a popular class!

Tips: If your school uses Google apps for education like we do, your students can log in with their Google information.

What do you think of Tynker? How do you plan to use it in your classroom?

Science and Technology Office of Naval Research

April 2, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2348 views

What it is: The Office of Naval Research has a great interactive site filled with science and technology exploration for students. On the site, students can explore oceanography, space, and blow the ballast. Each section of the site has sub categories that let students narrow down their focus. The majority of the site is purely informational with accompanying images and short quizzes. My favorite portion of the site is the seasonal constellations. It really is the star of the site (no pun intended). The constellation interactive focuses on the constellations that can be viewed during each season. When students click on a season, they will see the constellations and options to show/hide the pictures, lines and names of the stars. The explanation of constellations and the seasonal impact on what students will see in the night sky is fantastic. In the Teacher’s Corner, you will find great animations for each topic (space, oceanography, and submarines). These are fantastic visualizations of complex concepts made simple for students.

How to integrate Science and Technology Office of Naval Research into the classroom: The Science and Technology Office of Naval Research isn’t the flashiest site I’ve seen. In fact, it looks a whole lot like a site that was created in 1995. I recommend it, in spite of the aged design, because of the wealth of information that it offers students and the student-friendly language and explanations it uses. This is a great site for students to conduct a research project in the early years. The information is concise, easy to understand, and offered in bite-size chunks. Students can approach the topic of oceanography, submarines and space independently.

As I said above, the constellations based on season is pretty neat. It shows students the constellation and allows them to overlay the image with additional information as they want it. If your students are studying seasons or constellations, this is a nice visual and description. Students could explore the constellations on classroom computers, or better yet, together as a class on a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Google Sky is amazing, but sometimes it can be overwhelming with detail before students understand the basics of what they are looking for in the night sky. The images on this site are a great first step that can lead to a next level of detail in sites like Google Sky. I love that technology lets us bring the whole universe into our classrooms as a smaller scale planetarium. As a side note, if you have an iPad…go download Go Skywatch now. You will thank me!

Be sure to check out the animation section, these are wonderful for introducing students to complex concepts. The animations would be great on classroom computers as part of a science center rotation. They are perfect for sharing with the whole class on an interactive whiteboard! At Anastasis, students keep a running vocabulary collection where they create a “glossary” that they can refer back to. They do this in Evernote, these animations are perfect for linking to within the glossaries so that they can refer back to an illustration of the word.

Tips: The Science and Technology Office of Naval Research includes a teacher resource section. This is where you will find the Animation Gallery I mentioned above.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Science and Technology Office of Naval Research in your classroom!

Get Smarter

October 10, 2008Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment1833 views

What it is: Get Smarter is an animated, interactive testing and learning site for science and math. Students can practice their science and math skills by working on the animated activities and compare their score with other students their age from around the world. Nothing like a little healthy competition to get your students studying voluntarily! Get Smarter is broken into levels, elementary, middle school, and high school to ensure that their scores are measured against other students at their level.

How to integrate Get Smarter into the classroom: Competition in the classroom is a great motivator. Since your students will be collectively ‘competing’ against students from around the world, they are working together as a class to help raise their countries average scores. Use Get Smarter in the computer lab setting as a place for students to practice and review the skills and concepts they are learning in math and science class. In the one or two computer classroom, students can work in teams or as a math or science center. Keep the competition going year round to see if your students can help raise the averages.

Tips: Be sure to visit the student page at each level to find some more great classroom sites.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Get Smarter in your classroom.