Students have become very comfortable with analyzing apps, presentations and methods. Exposure to a variety of apps, widgets and tools has given them a lot to consider when they start working on programming and designing their own apps and programs.
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Exposure to different tools/apps gives students a glimpse of what is possible. When they begin to think about creating their own programs, they’ll have some ideas for features they would like to try to incorporate.
Excellent point! Also allowing them to decide what is appropriate for their presentation is a key factor in evaluating products/apps/widgets and gets them to really think! Administrators love this because it’s a 21st Century Skill and it falls inline with the new AP Computer Science Principles course that students are allowed to choose whatever programming language they want that makes sense with their final project. Also fits nicely within the CSTA Standards (5.2 Level 2: Computer Science and Community (L2) - Computing Practice & Programming (CPP) - The student will be able to:
- Select appropriate tools and technology resources to accomplish a variety of tasks and solve problems.) These are great resources in case your admins are looking for bigger picture standards based tie-ins AND helpful for us to think about as we are doing these activities with students.
Brad
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I have not had this discussion with my students with this lesson but we have discussed apps that can assist daily life as a students. Our school recently launched Office 365 and students have an easy way to contact me, keep a calendar, contact other students in a safe forum and cloud storage so they can access school documents from home.
When students are exposed to a variety of examples of how to program something it should ignite some new ideas of their own.
Using different tools allows all students to find something that they like and can engage with.
I didn’t incorporate this as a focus of this lesson, however, my students are very “tech-inspired” and are always showing me new widgets/tools on the internet that are “cool”. Incorporating tools and widgets may or may not better prepare the students because of the possibility of confusing them, but they may help get the students to be more involved in the lesson.
I don’t like to “pigeon-hole” my lessons. I like to let the students think of ways they learn best or what they like to use and share with all of us. This way we are all learning something and giving each student the ability to show mastery of something they enjoy.
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By using widgets and apps students begin to understand how things work. This will help the students become better programmers and start to understand algorithms when creating programs in scratch.