(Half) Hour of Code

Couple of weeks ago my library twitter chat (#txlchat) was on Hour of Code.  A few people posted articles that I emailed to myself to read later.  Everyone who did Hour of Code talked about how wonderful it is and how much fun they had doing it.  I'm almost always willing to try new things so I thought I'd dive in and try it.

First I read all the articles that were posted.  Then I played with coding myself.  Annnddddd then I fell in love!  I had so much fun playing with coding!  

Then I wondered why I had waited so long to try it!

In my library I already have LEGO Clubs and Book Clubs.  So I decided to add (Half) Hour of Code.  It's half an hour because there's just not enough time in the day!

I got with teachers and students and came up with a list of students.  I took 15 students out of each upper grade (3rd-5th).

The first (Half) Hour of Code Club meeting was two Monday's ago.  It didn’t go as I had planned.  I thought we’d get logged into email real quick then create an account on the coding website, go back to email & verify our accounts then have 5-10 min to play with code.

It took the whole 30 minutes to get logged into email.  They had no idea how to even get to gmail.  I was shocked!  So we took it step by step. 

Literally.  

Like, "If you're on an iPad, open Safari.", "Oh, you don't know where Safari is?", "Oh. Ok.  Lets step back a minute."  I hadn't expected this.  I thought they'd know how to open Safari and type in a webaddress.  They did not. So between that and just the simple act of typing in an email address and password, the entire 30 minutes we had was blown.

I called my lead librarian at the high school when it was over and she reminded me that kids do not email.  They text/snapchat/kick (sp?) etc.  So I really did teach a skill today even though it didn’t feel like it.  Ha!

So I’m backing up like 10 steps and taking baby steps when we get back from break.

I did ask them to practice logging in to their email accounts over the break so maybe it won't take so long when we get back in January.