This is my first time teaching Unit 6. I feel so confused. As a class, we worked through Lesson 8. I referred to the exemplars to help us all.
I just assigned Lesson 9. I told the students that they could do their own game of that they do the “Grab a Bug” game as thier assignment.
Does anyone have a possible solution for the “Grab a Bug” I keep going over and over the previous lessons but don’t seem to be able to grasp any of it.
Teaching Units 1-3 previously, I know that I will eventually get it but we are all kind of struggling in class right now.
Hi, I just added in an example solution to the second bubble in the lesson (the app example). You should be able to see it in your teacher panel by mid next week. If we’re lucky, it might come in as early as tomorrow afternoon.
Some of my students like to look up how to create items in YouTube and there is one just like the Grab Bug where it shows all the code and how to make it just so you are aware. I had to tell my students they cannot create a game like that because they would just go and copy that tutorial and try to say they did it.
Here is one for Unit 6 Lesson 9 that I have found.
Here is one for Unit 3 Chapter 1’s project example. This is what I have caught students trying to submit for their projects.
I understand this man’s purpose but I do not like having to do google searches to see if my students are simply copying someone else’s work and not demonstrating their understanding of the lessons. He has a TON of videos! I just posted parts of ones explaining those projects.
No easy answers for this. What works best for me is if my students discover this kind of outside resource and I realize they have discovered it, I acknowledge it exists, but tell them I have seen it before and if they watch it, they can use it as a tutorial, but they can’t copy the code and do it the same way or they won’t get credit for it.
Since the code.org curriculum is free, popular and widely available, this kind of thing is likely to pop up and I’m not sure there’s a lot that can be done.
None of us have the time to watch them all and to know everything these guys cover. He’s probably not the only one out there doing it, but by recognizing stuff like this exists, we can let our students know that we know this stuff is out there and they’re not pulling one over our eyes.
Another option is to mix up the instructions a little. For example, on one level, students are supposed to resize petals to make a flower look better. Since I find that pretty easy to do, I also have them add a stem and a background color or change the color of the flower. They might find some of the answers online (which would take them longer than just learning it), but they won’t find anything that has exactly what I’m after.
Thank you. I have brought this up at a team meeting, and I think we will be able to take it down. I appreciate all the work that teachers do to create extra resources for their students, but there’s also the tradeoff of the context of how other students might use these freely available resources inappropriately and in a way that keeps them from learning. Luckily, with most of the summative assessments, they involve a large creative component and more self reflection, so it will be difficult for students to copy those from online. The problem I see is that if they’ve just copied for all of their skill building, they will not have a chance to be successful on the project, and middle school students may not be able to see that far ahead!
In a perfect world, students would value learning over just completing the activity, and would not want to cheat themselves out of the opportunity to learn, but I know that’s not realistic and we need to support them in engaging in these activities that promote learning.
