"I am convinced that the best learning takes place when the learner takes charge…" –Seymour Papert
“I wanted to make it play the theme from Star Wars.” So began a Grade 5 student’s response this week when I asked her what she was working on with her micro:bit program. It was her very first session with it but she, and the rest of class, did have several other experiences in recent... Continue Reading →
[Updated July 2017] I want to share my set of "coding to learn" outcomes. These are the things that I am looking for in children who are coding in educational contexts. These are the targets in my mind. To me, these represent the powerful learning potential in coding to learn. "Coding to Learn" Outcomes Students... Continue Reading →
Coding in education is once again gaining more and more popularity in education. There are now too many coding tools, online and device-based, to keep up with. There are so many choices now for students, teachers, or for anyone looking at using coding in education. Choice is great but it creates a new challenge for... Continue Reading →
Dear Apple, Google & Microsoft: I am a teacher and I like it when technology empowers my students, gives them voice, and helps them to create, design, share, and discuss. Your tools are great and they are used in education to do all of these things. Thank you. Sometimes the tools are free and sometimes... Continue Reading →
I am always asking and thinking about three questions regarding the use of computer programming as a tool for (co)learning, (co)thinking, (co)designing, and self-expression in schools. Within educational contexts, my questions are: What is the promise of coding to learn? What is the promise of learning to code? How can the promise of each be be... Continue Reading →
I did a little research because I didn't want to assume... But, as far as I can tell, many school districts in Canada and in the United States call a group of educators writing together a "writing team." They assemble writing teams to write curriculum resources for teachers, documents that promote best practices in assessment,... Continue Reading →
This the third update about our year-long game design project in grade 4/5. The game designers have one goal: Design and code a game in Scratch that makes learning about fractions fun and easy for younger students. The target game-playing audience for this project are grade 2 students. You can check out the progress of... Continue Reading →
This is my second post about a project called Learning Design by Making Games and is directly modeled after the research of Yasmin Kafai. An overview of that research and this project is in the initial post. Other resources and links about this project can be found at the end of this post. This update... Continue Reading →
Once again, I was inspired and prompted by my friend Matt Oldridge into thinking and writing. This time, I found myself considering flow again. I wrote about this a few years ago but, since then, I have learned more about constructionism and more about learning in general. I've still so much to learn but Matt's prompt... Continue Reading →
At this point in the information age, our personal digitals tools, data and valuable resources are often protected by a username and password combination. Maybe this will change in the future but currently, the task of remembering dozens or hundreds of passwords is a challenge. Many people I know use one, or just a few,... Continue Reading →
Making things... Learning Things 