Vermont Hour of Code 2015 Day 1 Summary

As our Bluebird bus drove by mesas, cacti and other desert landscape on our way from New Mexico to Tucson, I spent the day gazing outside my  the passenger window (my mobile office)  while pursuing one of my passions- fueling innovation and creativity in our schools. 

My day was filled with opportunities to encourage students and teachers to participate in Hour of Code week. The day started by helping Peter Drescher from the Agency of Education facilitate a guest speaker through video conference with the fourth grade students at Chamberlin School.

Megan Harney from Midas Education explained to the class that computer programming was all about conditionals and loops.  She helped the students think about different things in their lives that used conditionals and loops ranging from deciding on whether to use an umbrella to shoveling snow. 

The students chimed in with their own question. One student asked for advice on getting more girls to like coding, explaining that she herself LOVED programming.   Megan’s advice was spot on -  Just do it, and the more you do it, the more confidence you will feel. The advice was encouraging!  However, Megan did go on to say that all the programmers she works with are male.

You can watch Megan Harney's complete guest visit to Chamberlin School here. 

After their video conference with their guest speaker, the fourth graders from Chamberlin school  ran off to do some of their own coding using Scratch.  Their goal was to complete Google’s CS-First’s Hour of Code Lesson - Sailing the High Seas to learn how to code using Scratch and then to use a Makey Makey  to control the action of the waves and to trigger some suspicion noises in their storyline.

I was fortunate enough to collaborate with Cali Flickinger on her Hour of Code plans, which lead to my creating this Hour of Code Mash-up of three of my favorite resources:  Makey Makey, Scratch, and CS-First. 

The rest of the day I watched new photos emerged on  Vermont’s Hour of Code site - http://thinkaboutcode.blogspot.com         

See Larger Versions of the Day 1 Stream here

and updates on Twitter.  So proud of my Vermont colleagues for participating in this event and being part of the Vermont school presence in this fantastic event.   Go Vermont