Code.org

I finished the accelerated  Code.org course this week and I am so glad this was a part of the course requirements.  I learned a lot about the language of programming and became so much more familiar with the learning behind the different Code.org  activities.  This organization offers so many different avenues for learning about code for students and teachers. I am definitely going to use this site for introducing code to students.

I think the unplugged activities are important in teaching and reinforcing the different programming concepts and the videos help illustrate and demonstrate a concept before setting students off to do it on their own.
I would want students working in pairs to promote the collaborative and connected idea of coding and to provide support and motivation when trying to debug or figure out the code for each coding challenge.

I really learned a lot about functions, if else statements and parameters.  I liked troubleshooting and figuring out the bugs in my code.  For me, going through the coding challenges required me to break down the challenge into steps, which for me, a big picture thinker is sometimes challenging. It also reminded me that most problems can be approached from a "debugging" perspective and by doing so it forces you to examine your steps and process more closely to figure out what is not working.  I will definitely recommend this site to teachers looking to incorporate coding with their students and plan to include it as a resource in my vision of coding for my school.