Digital Bytes – 12th December, 2016 – Holiday Edition

Santa Tracker Santa Tracker is a fantastic site by Google. In advent calendar style, each day a new activity gets uncovered. Present Bounce is a neat game, but there are also opportunities to learn about traditions and translations from other countries. Younger children will enjoy Santa Selfie, a Toca Boca style game where you give…

Hour of Code in Grade 1

The resources around Computer Science Education Week and Hour of Code are just begging to be used. There are so many developmentally appropriate entry points for every age level – it’s a no-brainer! In Grade 1, we began with an unplugged activity. As a class, we created a code to use, and in pairs, they…

Digital Bytes – 28th November, 2016

Coding apps available on iPads We already have a number of apps available to support coding on our iPads. Starting with Scratch Jr and Daisy the Dinosaur on Infant iPads and then Hopscotch there is something for everyone. If your iPads are updated to iOS 10, you can use Swift Playgrounds which is great for…

First Drones and Spheros Activity – What We Learned

(Written by Keri-Lee Beasley and Dave Caleb) As Digital Literacy Coaches at UWCSEA, we have always taken the opportunity to get our students coding whenever we can, given that it is not currently in our written curriculum. The Week of Code has been very successful in the past and we wanted to find a way…

Digital Bytes – Christmas Edition – December 7th, 2015

With Christmas just around the corner, here are some fantastic gifts for those kids on your Christmas list. Also, this week is Week of Code where students are challenged to spend an hour writing code. Check out the amazing activities on Code.org or Khan Academy. Technology Will Save Us I really love the options available…

Digital Bytes 18th May

In this week’s Digital Bytes, we learn why “How much screen time?” is the wrong question, how coding can help us learn how to learn, and how playing video games for 10 minutes a day can improve maths scores.

Coding with your kids: a guide for parents.

When we think about all the things that we recognize as “essentials” to our children’s learning, the list can get really long very quickly. Recently, several high-profile individuals are advocating to add another thing to that list, coding. Why? Coding is the set of skills and concepts used to modify or create software on a…