Help me spend my grant money

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We will be starting a coding class in the fall using code.org as our base. We have a $5000 grant available to us to purchase supplies. We have chromebooks for all our kids. What fun stuff should we buy?

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@becca AWESOME!!! Can you give us a bit of information about your context? What level do you teach? What CS courses are currently offered at your school? What do you hope to offer?

Have you looked into the CS Discoveries Physical Computing unit ? That uses Adafruit’s Circuit Playground - you could certainly use some money to purchase some of these.

I have also purchased Spark Fun Inventor Kits which are also big into physical computing and get a bit more into the circitry than the Playgrounds, but there is no code.org curriculum associated with them.

Here are some other ideas:

  • Build a CS library. There are lots of good books about computer science out there, perhaps getting some for students would be helpful
  • Suscriptions to review services. If you teach AP CSP, perhaps paying for a test-prep service like Albert.io could be worth your time.
  • Large monitors. I purchased some of these for my class to help with peer programming. It has been a game-changer.
  • Rubber ducks for rubber duck debugging.
  • Can you put on a Hack-a-thon type of event for students with this money? Money going toward food and resources for this event?
  • Consider using the money for PD, if possible. There is a lot of diverse options for PD out there to consider.

Those are some initial ideas, but give me a bit more info about your context (and parameters for what this money can be spent on) and then I might be able to direct you to more specific ideas!

How fun - it is not often that teachers are told they have money to go spend, what a gift!

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Thanks so much, our kids are 4th-12th grade special ed. All will be able to use the code.org curriculum. I just took my first PD, but am hoping for a spot in the summer program. we are planning on doing the unplugged activities as well as allowing the students to work at their own pace through the online programming. We’d like “toys” to supplement. We will have coding once a week for the entire year.