Jessica is a high school information technology teacher in Meade County, KY. She teaches six different classes a day in computer science and informatics to 10th-12th graders. She first discovered Let’s Start Coding kits at a Kentucky Society for Technology in Education conference.
“At that time [the school district was] renovating/building the current building I teach out of, and it was the first year for the Information Technology pathway(s) at my school,” Jessica said. “I was given a significant budget since it was a new program/new building and I was looking for something that students could ‘hold’ and something that was not block [coding, like Scratch or Hour of Code] but easy enough for the students to learn.”
“I LOVED THE IDEA OF SEEING THE CODE OUTPUT ON ACTUAL HARDWARE.”
Jessica gives each of her seniors a Let’s Start Coding Ultimate Kit at the beginning of the school year. They’re responsible and accountable for the kits for the entire year. “By the time they reach this course they have had courses over JavaScript, Python, and HTML,” she said.
While Jessica initially purchased a combination of Ultimate Kits and Base Kits, she opted to use only the Ultimate Kits. She had purchased the Base Kits with her students who need special accommodations in mind. But then she decided that she wanted them to have experience with LED lights and sensors and all the additional components included with the Ultimate Kit, too.
“My classes meet every day for 55 minutes. My current students started using the kits around the second week of school, and we are just about finished with them (I try to stretch it out as much as I can). We use them almost daily. The students LOVE the kits,” she told us in mid-January.
How does Jessica get around five months of learning out of our Ultimate Kits?
Jessica’s students use the kits in their Project-Based Programming class. So, she has her students demonstrate what they learned from Let’s Start Coding to create their own programs.
“I use the lessons provided by LSC, and I created Google docs for them to document their work and observation for assessment/grading purposes,” she said. “Every 3-4 lessons I usually come up with some type of program idea that the students must create that incorporates the concepts covered in the lessons (these are typically 2-5 day projects).”
Let’s Start Coding’s Ultimate Kit isn’t the only technology that is introduced in Jessica’s project-based programming class, but she said that most of her students choose to focus on it,” she said.
“IT’S AMAZING WHAT THEY’LL CREATE.”
“In Computational Thinking, students use code.org, Little Bits, and Ozobots to learn the concepts of programming and CMU CS Academy as an introduction to Python,” Jessica said. “Senior year, in project based programming, we use all sorts of different things. CMU CS Academy, Let's Start Coding Kits, EV3 Legos, Raspberry Pi's, and Finch bot. By the end of the third term students will have used each of these (most focus on Let's Start Coding) and by 4th term will do projects chosen by the students for the rest of the year.”
