The Hour of Code: 3 Student Driven Activities for your School in 2017

In this episode of the TechEducator Podcast, we take a look at three ways you can prepare your students for this years HOUR of CODE.  Why are Coding and Programming skills important?  Teaching students computer science skills not only can help provide important non-linear thinking skills into a student's vocabulary, but it is becoming more and more essential for students to be able to use logical thinking when planning projects and other daily activities.  After listening to this podcast, we hope you take a moment to think about and try out these three simple activities that can be implemented by teachers of all subjects and age levels. If you do have a chance to try any of these, please stop by soon and leave us a comment below sharing your story.Edtech in the NewsGoogle Calendar gets a refresh with updated features.Learn OneNote Conference – Nov 7-13 – Online Conference

In this episode, you will learn:How to use Minecraft EDU as a teaching tool through their Make Code website.Make code is a website supported by Microsoft. It supports several different projects and platforms. In this demo we will explore the Minecraft coding tools on the Make code site.How to animate your name using Scratch.This simple activity developed by the scholars at Scratch is a great introduction for students and teachers. Consider the potential of animating letters to spell keywords from anything you are studying.How to win your school’s Instagram Activity Coding with Robots, put a grid on itLooking for an easy way to get kids excited about computational thinking? Make a giant tape grid on the floor. You are gonna need 4 rolls of masking tape, a yardstick, and some kneepads.

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