CUE 2015 and the Growing Emphasis of Code

Let me just start with this: I have been eager to attend the CUE conference since my days of filing PO's for all the district employees who attended, so like 2010! This year, my employer decided to send me and I can't be thankful enough!

Aside from running into amazing former colleagues from El Rancho Unified School District, I also ran into some friends from CSULB's EDTECH program. One of which is doing a brave thesis using Zebra Zapps, an app maker we learned in our program. Personally, it was my least favorite program, but hey, like I said, he's brave.

My primary focus with this conference was to attend as many coding sessions as possible. It is something I am not proficient at, yet realize the value of in classrooms. I am making it a personal goal to spend time learning to code using Code Academy, a free online course, and Hopscotch, a game builder that teaches you the basics of "If this, then that". Many of the sessions focused on the program Scratch, which is aimed at K-5th grade (they offer a Junior version for the littlest ones). However, it's flash based, which means it won't work on an iPad, but it is web based which means anyone can access it from a PC or Mac. It is basically the same kind of idea as Hopscotch. Students build a game/maze by telling the pieces what to do, but the code is contained in these nice drag and drop bubbles instead of something that looks like this:

It's pretty important these days, learning to code. Adam Bellow, our final Keynote Speaker, discussed how he had learned to code as a young tyke through the fascination of 80's games like Oregon Trail. However, somewhere along the boom of the internet, it was lost amongst No Child Left Behind, that left lots of children behind (but we won't go into that). It's nice to see a resurgence in something that kids can create see a real time product. Through these apps and educational tools wrapped cleverly as games, kids are learning critical thinking skills in a more tangible way. They can see the robot move if they tell him. It's amazing and I am looking forward to taking a more active role in my own learning of code. I will be participating in a coding club at my school through the use of Google's Made with Code, focusing on getting girls involved. 

Did you go to CUE? See anything you'd like to discuss? Or are you already infusing Made with code into your class and school? I'd love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment.

I'm just going to leave this here...