Look back on the Deep Dive MOOC – Module 1 Icebreaker – Why Coding?
Publication date: February 28, 2020
Back in October, over 4200 teachers enrolled in Code Week’s Deep Dive MOOC. This free online course offered teachers the opportunity to get familiarized with coding and coding related principles and gain the knowledge and confidence to organize fun, interactive and educational coding activities with their students. The course was organized into 5 modules, with each focusing on a particular aspect of coding, such as computational thinking, unplugged activities, and the endless possibilities of robotics, tinkering and making, visual programming languages, app creation and so much more. It allowed teachers to discover how easy and fun it can be to bring coding to their classroom, as coding is for everyone and can be incorporated into any subject or curriculum. Most importantly, teachers were given the knowledge, resources, and encouragement needed to get them coding with their students.
Module 1 Icebreaker – Why Coding, Computational Thinking and the EU Code Week initiative
The course began with an Icebreaker, introducing teachers to what coding is and getting them acquainted with coding related concepts like computational thinking. In this module, participants
learned what Code Week is and discovered just how easy it is to get involved in the initiative, which brought together over 4.2 million participants last year. In this module, teachers discovered all the information they needed to get started, from registering their activity and reporting back to practical information on setting up their first activity. Most importantly they learned about the huge
amount of resources, information and support available on the EU Code Week Website.
Keep reading to see some outstanding examples of activities done by some of our participants.
BBC micro:bit – Virtual Pet by Iva, IT teacher in Croatia
Iva, a teacher in Croatia, was one of the many teachers who participated in Code Week with her students. Their activity included creating a virtual pet that would show its feelings depending
on whether they would feed him or play with him. They used BBC micro: bit to build their pet cat, and the students also made paper masks for micro: bit!
If you understand Croatian, you can read more about this wonderful activity.
Il codice binario by Elisa in Italy
For Code Week 2017, Elisa’s pupils worked on a binary code activity where children had to raise or lower cards with numbers to create numbers in binary code.
Treasure Hunt with QR codes and algorithms by Sophia kindergarten teacher in Greece
In the framework of an eTwinning project, Sophia and her students created an outdoor activity called “Treasure Hunt”, where students had to exchange QR codes with the algorithm to ultimately
reach the treasure, or help other students to reach the museum by creating the right algorithm with the help of a Beebot.
You can watch other examples of activities here.
After taking this course, 97% of teachers agreed the course made them more confident to implement coding activities in the classroom, and they have gained practical ideas on how they can improve their professional expertise. If you want to do the same, you are still on time! Even though the course is no longer moderated, you can still access all the different modules of the course, watch the recordings of the live events and improve your teaching practice by having a look at the different ideas and advice thousands of teachers have shared throughout the course. If
you have any question about the course, you can contact Naír Carrera, the course coordinator, here.
Do you want to see more innovative activities and get plenty of ideas for your classroom? Join our Facebook group, where teachers share ideas and material every day, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
Be sure to check out our website https://codeweek.eu/training to get access to free training material and lesson plans that you can already use to register your activity in the map and participate in Code Week 2020!
