The month of April will be my final ECSES Tech Item Contest. This contest is around coding, so I decided to have two items to win. One for the younger students and one for the older students. Although not all our students will grow up to be programmers, coding helps foster life skills such as learning how-to problem solve, overcome obstacles and collaborate with their peers which are lasting skills all people need to succeed in life. Coding builds important life skills that are challenging to cultivate in students with learning needs such as, organization, higher order thinking, self-esteem, socialization and teamwork, as well as sequencing, problem solving, math concepts, along with perseverance, so that they will become better readers, writers, and mathematicians. Most students with disabilities struggle with low self-esteem, and coding is an avenue that builds confidence in one’s ability to learn and create, and cultivate a sense of pride from producing their own original work. The first item for the younger students, the Learning Resources Code & Go Robot Mouse Activity turns coding into a hands-on analog activity for tactile and visual learners. The robot mouse is similar to the Bee Bot that was given away before. As the students learn to program they build key skills that include critical thinking, problem solving, sequencing, and programming fundamentals. This is geared to students abilities of 5 years old and up. The second item is called Snap Circuits Jr and you can create over 100 STEM projects using this Electronics Exploration Kit. This kit is geared for students abilities of 8+ with hands-on experience of building models of working electrical circuits. This kit has a color manual with visual pictures of creating different electronic projects. There is no soldering, no tools, it just snaps together to create items like a flashing light, adjustable-volume siren. This item has received the following awards: the National Parenting Center-Seal of Approval, Dr. Toy 100 best children's products, Dr. Toy best educational products, and is STEM approved for education. So check these items out and enter the final contest for the 2018-2019 school year. Thanks for all your work with our students.

Coding! Learning to code has become increasingly prevalent in school curricula. From after-school clubs to dedicated class periods, coding and computer science curriculum are popping up in schools worldwide. There are many benefits of coding for students in Special Education. Coding builds important life skills such as organization, higher order thinking, self-esteem, socialization and teamwork. These skills are intrinsically hard for many children with disabilities such as Attention Deficit Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Autism. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention these disabilities can affect 1 in 68 school aged children. Many students in our classrooms suffer from low self esteem. Coding builds confidence in one’s ability to learn and create, as well as pride from actually creating something. Many learn-to-code platforms are accessible and easy to get started for everyone. Below are some coding programs to implement in your classroom. This summer I will be offering a session that is entirely dedicated to coding resources to use in your room. If you have any questions about implementing coding in your classroom contact me.

This was in a recent email from Code.org founder, Hadi Partovi.

Wow- I am not sure where the time went. We are through a marking period already. I am pretty far behind in my blogging as I haven’t created one in 2 months. Ok this blog is focused on a very exciting event that occurs globally, reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. Why shouldn’t students at Lancaster Lebanon IU13 be in that group as well! This movement is called THE HOUR OF CODE. What is the Hour of Code you might say, this is a time during with week of Dec 4-10, where you have your students participate in some form of computer coding. But know, you can do the Hour of Code all year round. There are so many tools you could use to do this for students of preschool to high school level. Check out this short video to get you and your students excited Watch: Hour of Code I am going to share with you several tools you can try to incorporate the Hour of Code in your classroom. Likewise, if you check out the SPOTLIGHT section over on your right, you can try to win either an OSMO Coding Aubie game or OSMO Coding Jam game. There are three opportunities to win.