iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

The Darnit kids write out "exact" instructions for their Dad on how to make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.

It's all in the details!!

Three middle school projects—in English, math, and history—use computational thinking skills to address social justice topics.

When I first started writing books about technology for kids, I knew almost nothing about pedagogy. For me, computing was magical, charming and imaginative — but the materials teaching it often dull and uninspiring. I enjoyed programming, but mixed Piaget to Papert, didn’t recognise computational thinking from constructivism.

Thinking about starting a coding class? Not sure if you know enough about computer science to host your own coding class? The folks at Pythonroom have created a fantastic online platform for teachers who want to bring coding into the classroom but… don’t know how to code. Hiring a computer science teacher or training teachers on computer science might be a challenge for your school. Pythonroom was designed for teachers with no prior coding experience and it’s easy to get started.

Every year students all over the world celebrate the Hour of Code. The goal is to set aside one hour to give everyone a chance to learn about coding and its fun aspects. On code.org, organizers release a themed game to help build excitement. There have been Frozen, Star Wars and Moana coding themes, all to build students’ knowledge base but also to show them that coding really isn’t that difficult.

Coding helps to develop not only computer skills, but also logic, math, problem solving, design and more. Coding can happen in any classroom and touches every ­subject area. The skills that children acquire while learning to code can impact them far beyond the devices they program with.

Understanding the steps it takes to make a character move from one side of a maze to the other teaches students to analyze their thinking. If they fail, the code provides feedback to show them that they don’t have to be right every time — they just need to find out where they went wrong and try again.

The Hour of Code is a popular event. Just this past year, more than 164,000 individual coding events were held in classrooms around the world. However, in many of those classrooms, coding happens for just that hour, and then things get back to the normal routine. Coding doesn’t have to be a one-hour or one-time event, though. It can last all year long.

Here are five ways to make the Hour of Code last all year: