Coding from Home 4

Publication date: April 27, 2020

Tips for teaching coding online – activities and programs to use with your class.

Over 110 participants from many different countries gathered for the 4th Coding from Home webinar on 23rd April. They presented a variety of different methods to continue teaching coding remotely during the coronavirus restrictions.

Beginning the webinar, CodeWeek Coordinator Annika Östergren Pofantis presented a series of online videos called Coding@Home, which will provide activities to get students and their parents into coding without needing a computer. They will be made by Alessandro Bogliolo based on his Italian series “Coding in Famiglia” and launched at the end of April.

 

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The next speaker was Naír Carrera Martínez, Course Coordinator at European Schoolnet, who presented the EU Code Week Icebreaker Coding Course. This is a free online course is aimed at teachers to introduce them to programming. No previous experience is required for this 5-hour long course, which will be available to complete from 11th May till 15th June. Naír also reminded participants of the Learning Bits (tutorials) that are available for teachers to download and use both in the classroom and at home.

The webinar continued with Sophia Reyes Mury from the Lausanne Institute of Technology in Switzerland. She introduced Roteco – the Robotic Teacher Community – available in French, German and Italian. The aim of this initiative is to foster collaboration between institutions, teachers, and researchers. Teachers can register to the Roteco Project to publish their own activities, use existing ones provided by other teachers, and contact other teachers for advice and to discuss the activities used. Roteco also provides online courses to help with learning at home in the current situation.

Jakub Kajtman then presented a few questions to the group using Mentimeter. The first was to identify what is the most popular and useful for everyone when it comes to remote coding activities, and the second to determine what everyone still feels they really lack when it comes to teaching. You can check the results on Mentimeter.

 

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The next presentation came from Fatma Bouaziz, ICT teacher and EU Codeweek Ambassador Tunisia, who presented a variety of platforms she uses with her students. These included
Edmodo, which she uses to keep contact with her students throughout the year, to share with them lessons and activities, and to receive work from her students as well. She also uses Microsoft Teams to create virtual classes via video conference to help her students. One of the other programs she presented was CoSpacesEdu which enables students to learn by doing. It is perfect for
beginners to coding but also has content suitable for more experiences as well.

The final speaker was Katerina Glezou, Leading teacher from Greece, who presented her methods for online teaching. These included the use of Padlet which allows
students to upload completed exercises as well as Scratch, which she had used to demonstrate the spread of coronavirus by changing variables in the program.

You can watch again the whole webinar on the Europe Code Week Youtube Channel.

Join the next webinar on 6 May and in the meantime remember to share the CodeWeek MOOC Courses and that Coding@Home will launch next week!