At the start of the year, I remember receiving our course outline and seeing each week’s task and guest speakers. When I saw that we were going to be learning about coding and gamification, I was excited because it was something that I never got to do at an elementary age. I was interested to see what this guest speaker would share with us. One thing I thought was interesting is how everyone can sign up for her class, then on the first day, they get to pick which course they would like to take in coding or gamification. I liked this idea because many computer courses are getting removed from course selection sheets due to a few kids signing up. Having a variety of options under one class gives students the opportunity to try something new or something they already love to do. One other thing that piqued my interest was all the lovely resources she provided us with such as Nitro-Type, Scratch, Micro Bits, Unplugged Coding Activities and of course Hour of Code. I already knew about scratch as it is something my L2P kids are allowed to do when they finish their work early. There is this one student who has autism and loves computers and coding. Anytime something goes wrong in class tech-wise they immediately fix it with no issue. When I found this out, I made sure to talk to them about computers or coding as much as possible to build a connection. That being said, in one of our conversations they brought up Scratch and told me how they make games all the time and I believe a music video I could be wrong on that last one there but they love this resource. 

As for Hour of Code, I found two great games for grade 2’s and up. Both of these games are for beginners as well. The first one I found is called code monkey and it is based on a monkey in space that is all about computer science. It is also accessible to speech to text, has a different language setting and has self-directed instructions. One of the reasons I like this game is because it helps those students who are still learning to spell with the speech to text and it also helps students still learn lefts and rights. Overall it was a fun game that I think many kids would enjoy playing. The second game I played was Hello World. The game’s topics were Language Arts, Math and Science, this game also has speech-to-text options and can be played in twenty-five languages. This game would be great for some ELL students because they can pick their first language and use that in the game which would give them a better understanding of the topic. 

Here is a screen recording from author

This week we also got to read The Five R’s for Indigenizing Online Learning: A Case Study of the First Nations Schools’ Principals Course by the University of Toronto. As the title says it goes over the Five R’s, these R’s Relevance, Respect, Reciprocity, Responsibility and Relationship. When I was reading this article I saw a few things that stood out to me. One that I found interesting was in the Relevance subheading. They were talking about how some of their courses are online and they do not get that face-to-face lectures so when it came to assignments they were more hands-on, one of their examples was to bring in someone who does not attend the school and to show them around. When they are touring the person who is not familiar gets to make comments and or thoughts on the school’s diversity. I liked this. After all, you can listen to someone else’s perspective and maybe notice something that you did not think of because you are so familiar with the school. Overall the article had a lot of interesting topics and suggestions to help incorporate Indigenous aspects and how they would support instructors and students.