In the past month, we continued to build more features to support our students and teachers. As always, if you have any suggestions on improvements you’d like to see, please email your ideas to support@code.org!
On “My Dashboard,” you can now click on the details in the “Login info” column to view instructions for how students in that section can sign in. This includes instructions for all login types and also links to the login cards that can be printed out for word/picture passwords.
We’ve created and posted several videos that walk through our tools. Look for this visual at the top of the Getting Started guides on our support site:
Teachers can now configure the sharing options for classrooms using App Lab, Game Lab, and Web Lab. This functionality is available on the bottom of the Manage Students’ tab - view this support article for more information.
We renamed the Project Gallery to “Projects,” and we also added a cool stat which shows that students have created over 20 million projects!
We’ve added a new filter on the Hour of Code activities page so that you can see all of the activities created by a particular organization.
Progress view tab should now load a lot faster when there are a lot of students in your section.
If you’re looking for the Code.org blog, please join us over at Medium. You’ll find all Code.org news, curriculum updates, stories and announcements there. Thanks for reading!
Code.org is looking for teachers who want to shape the future of computer science education.
Your feedback has always been invaluable to how we build our courses and curriculum, and we’re putting together two small cohorts of teachers from across the country to participate in a support and feedback community during fall 2018.
Each group will consist of roughly fifteen teachers who’ll gather on video calls nine times throughout the semester to discuss their experience with the CS Discoveries or CS Principles curriculum, build community with peers, and receive direct support from the Code.org curriculum team. This feedback will be critical in ensuring that our ongoing course revisions address the most pertinent needs of the community.
Participants commit to attending hour-long video calls on Tuesdays from 7-8pm ET (4-5pm PT).
CS Discoveries Schedule:
September 11th, 18th, 25th
October 9th, 23rd
November 6th, 20th
December 4th, 18th
CS Principles Schedule:
September 11th, 18th, 25th
October 2nd, 16th, 30th
November 13th, 27th
December 11th
These calls will be facilitated by Code.org curriculum team members. Before each call, the team will share guiding prompts for that week’s discussion on a shared private forum. Teachers in the cohorts will also be encouraged to use this forum to communicate with each other and Code.org staff throughout the semester.
The following are requirements for all members of the cohort:
Intend to teach the course for the entirety of the 2018-2019 school year
Teach CS Discoveries in a middle school setting or CS Principles in a high school setting
Intend to teach at least five units of the relevant course.
We are interested in the insights of teachers from a broad spectrum of experiences. We highly encourage you to apply if you are new to computer science, Code.org curricula, or have not attended a Code.org professional development program.
Teachers participating in this group can look forward to building a close-knit community with their peers while providing invaluable feedback that will shape the ongoing development of our courses.
To apply, please complete this form by August 24th, 2018.
We know it’s months away, but we’re starting to get ready (and excited) for CS Education Week 2018!
Each year, Code.org has kicked off CSEdWeek with a signature event – at the White House, at the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, with Canada’s prime minister, and with the leading women in tech.
Last year, we shared your incredible momentum on the national stage at this event. We had some phenomenal pledges, including many districts committing to bring CS to every student they serve. Having these pledges is often a first step to getting the district to commit to plans for professional development and CS pathways in their school.
These announcements represent an opportunity to celebrate a recent achievement or the launch of a new initiative. Pledges represent a clear and measurable goal to expand access and diversity in computer science that includes a specific number of teachers, schools, and/or students who will be engaged. By starting to collect these early, we want to give you plenty of time to begin work on your pledges for the event and also start thinking about the districts you want to work with on pledges. Announcements and pledges should be new and newsworthy. We won’t repeat information that has been previously shared publicly.
As the school year winds down and summer quickly approaches, we want to say thank you to all of the teachers who brought CS Fundamentals to their classrooms this year! Whether you tried just a few lessons or did an entire course, you are providing your students an incredible opportunity to experience how fun, creative, and empowering computer science can be.
Throughout the year, we receive lots of great feedback on how we can improve the CS Fundamentals courses. Our curriculum team at Code.org has been hard at work making improvements that will be broadly available on July 2nd in preparation for the 2018-2019 school year. The 2017-18 version of the course will still be available, but we will be recommending the new version of the course on the website and to new teachers. We have made some small changes to individual lessons, but want to give you an overview of larger changes to the course.
Course B updates
For our initial launch of Courses A-F for this school year, Courses A and B followed a very similar progression. While Course B took each concept deeper than Course A, we received feedback that teachers expected these to be more different from each other. This is important, especially as students move from Course A this year into Course B next school year – we want computer science to feel fresh and fun every time they do it!
So now, Course B has some new lessons at the start of the course. A teacher favorite from Course 1, Happy Maps, is now in Course B but with some important modifications to emphasize the role of persistence in solving problems. We’ve also added new programming lessons for teaching the concepts of sequencing and loops and integrated a new lesson from our partners at Copyright and Creativity to help students recognize when their work has been inspired by the work of others.
Course D updates - more loops!
In the 2018-19 version of Course D, there will be two new lessons focused on simple loops to help students more smoothly ramp up to the concept of nesting loops. This will be a great review for students who have already done Course C, and will also help students who are starting with Course D.
Introducing Sprite Lab for Courses E and F
Courses E and F both culminate in end-of-course projects where students can unleash their creativity and apply the skills they’ve learned throughout the course into a project of their own design. In the 2017-18 version of the course, students could choose to make a project in either Artist or Play Lab. Due to some technical limitations in Play Lab, it has been difficult and sometimes buggy for students in Course E and F to combine more advanced concepts such as variables, for loops, and conditionals. To address this, and create an environment with an even higher ceiling and more possibilities for students, we have designed a new environment called Sprite Lab!
Like Play Lab, Sprite Lab makes it easy and fun for students to create characters (called ‘sprites’), give them behaviors, and add interactions to make games and scenes come to life.
There will now be three lessons at the end of each course to get students familiar with creating their own projects in the Sprite Lab environment. We’re confident that both teachers and students will be able to quickly get started with Sprite Lab, and we can’t wait to see what students create!
We’re excited about all of these changes, and we couldn’t have done it without the feedback that teachers sent our way. Please keep sharing your feedback with us by writing to us at support@code.org or by posting on the forum!
We wish you a fantastic wrap up to your school year and a restful and fun summer!
Now that the AP exam is in the past and teachers hopefully have a moment to catch a breath, we wanted to celebrate all of the amazing work that our CS Principles teachers and students have done this year. We’ve loved hearing classroom stories, seeing student work, and getting so much great feedback throughout the year. We’re particularly excited to announce some of the updates that you’ll see in the upcoming 2018-2019 version of CS Principles.
Going forward, when we release curriculum updates, new versions of our courses will be available alongside past versions. This means that while the 2018-19 version of the CS Principles course will become recommended on June 4th, anyone still teaching the course will be able to continue using the 2017-18 version without interruption.
Performance Task Preparation
When we talked to teachers last year their single most requested update was more opportunities to prepare students for the performance tasks. We’ve added a number of features to do just that:
Updated PT Prep Units: Over the course of the 2017-2018 school year we released entirely updated PT prep materials. We split a single PT prep unit into separate Explore PT Prep and Create PT Prep units and entirely rewrote the materials within them. These refreshed units feature more robust resources to help students and teachers better understand task requirements and guide them through completing the task. In the 2018-2019 version, we’ve also formalized our recommendation that classrooms complete the Explore PT after Unit 4 and complete the Create PT after Unit 5.
Refreshed projects: Projects throughout the curriculum have been updated to match the latest performance task scoring guidelines better. In most cases, the project itself is largely unchanged, and only the language or rubrics have been updated.
A few more significant changes are noted below:
Unit 2 Lesson 5 “Encode an Experience” replaced with a “Format Showdown” research activity to more closely mirror Explore PT skills.
Unit 4 Lesson 9 “Practice PT Big Data and Cybersecurity Dilemmas” has been made optional in light of our updates to other projects in this unit as well as our addition of the Explore PT Prep unit.
Unit 5 Lesson 18 “Practice PT Create Your Own App” has also been made optional, since we updated other projects in this unit and added the Create PT Prep unit.
PT-style questions incorporated throughout the course: Units 3, 4, and 5 in particular now feature more frequent and explicit examples of the Performance Task language. Many lessons in these units now include at least one PT-style assessment question, as well as guidance for teachers on how to use them.
Pacing
Data analysis to post-AP: Based on feedback from teachers, we’ve moved some lessons that explicitly focus on learning data analysis skills with spreadsheets to the Post-AP unit of the curriculum. These lessons were previously part of Unit 2 Chapter 2 of the course. We estimate this shift will give teachers roughly 2 weeks of class time back prior to the AP exam.
Data visualization to Unit 4: Two lessons that focused on interpreting data visualizations (previously Unit 2 Lessons 8 and 9) were moved to Unit 4 of the curriculum.
Unit 1 clarified: We know that pacing can be particularly tricky early in the year, so we have made targeted improvements to lessons in Unit 1 to better highlight the goals of the lessons and when it’s appropriate to move on.
Tools Updates
Teacher feedback: One of our most common requests from teachers is to allow more effective teacher feedback on programming projects. All programming levels will now include a tab where teachers can provide feedback to their students!
The curriculum team at Code.org has been hard at work getting the next iteration of CS Discoveries ready for the 2018-2019 school year based on feedback from our first full year of implementation. We’ve been absolutely amazed to see all of the experiences teachers are creating for their students, and we hope you’re all as excited as we are about the year to come!
Going forward, when we release curriculum updates, new versions of our courses will be available alongside past versions. This means that while the 2018-19 version of the CS Discoveries course will become recommended on June 4th, anyone still teaching the course will be able to continue using the 2017-18 version without interruption.
More support for differentiation
We’re encouraged to see how many different ways teachers are using CS Discoveries, but we realize that we need to be more flexible about the needs of different classrooms and students. We’ve added a few things to the course that we think will help teachers better adapt the materials to their needs.
The “Help & Tips” tab: In many programming activities throughout the course, you’ll notice a new tab at the top of the instructions titled, “Help & Tips.” This new tab provides students with additional resources and tips that they can use to learn more about concepts addressed in the activities. This tab may include supporting videos, descriptions of how to use a given concept, or links to documentation for specific blocks. We’ve started by adding this tab to some key lessons in Units 2 and 3, but we’ll continue to add resources as we create them.
Lesson extras: When students reach the end of a programming lesson, we usually leave them in a “free play” area to continue working, but many of you have given us feedback that students want more direction to challenge them. Units 3 and 6 now include Lesson Extras, which allow a student to select from a number of additional specific challenges once they reach the end of a lesson. You can turn on Lesson Extras when assigning a new unit, or by clicking “Edit Section Details” from the teacher dashboard.
Unplugged differentiation: Many unplugged lessons now have additional teaching tips to point out specific alternate choices a teacher might make to best fit their students’ needs, whether for students who already have experience with a similar activity or those who may need some additional scaffolding to be successful.
Assessment and feedback
A big focus for us in the coming year will be improving our support for teachers to assess student learning. While you can expect more in this area in the future, we’ve already done some work to better support teachers.
Reworked rubrics: All of our rubrics have been updated to better align to the appropriate unit-wide goals and student outcomes.
Teacher feedback: One of our most common requests from teachers is to allow more effective teacher feedback on programming projects. All programming levels will now include a tab where teachers can provide feedback to their students!
Semester 2 (Units 4-6) updates
We rolled out large-scale updates to Units 4-6 earlier this year in response to our Spring 2017 pilot (you can find details about those updates on the forum). As those units are just now being used in the classroom, we’re still waiting on teacher feedback to make any necessary changes. We’re keeping an eye on how these units are working in classrooms through the end of the year, and we may incorporate small changes in the summer.
We can’t wait to see the amazing things you all do with CS Discoveries in your classrooms - please keep sharing your feedback by writing to us at support@code.org or by posting on the forum!
At Code.org, we love encouraging students to explore their creativity and create amazing projects using code. And at the same time, we’re big proponents of privacy, so we don’t give students access to the tools that allow them to upload their own content unless they are over the age of 13 or are inside a teacher’s classroom.
We’ve now added an additional privacy feature that teachers have been waiting for - the ability for teachers to control exactly which students can or cannot share App Lab, Game Lab, and Web Lab projects. We also made sure that students under the age of 13 default to not being able to share these projects with anyone but their Code.org teachers.
Teachers can manage which students can share these projects through the “Manage Students” section of your teacher dashboard. If you have CS Discoveries or CS Principles assigned to your section, you should see a “Sharing” column. If you don’t have these courses assigned, you will be able to show this column through the settings button in the “Actions” column.
To learn more about how to use this setting, check out our support article on this topic.
The US Department of Education just invited applications for the Supporting Effective Educator Development Program (SEED). The notice prioritizes support for K-12 computer science and gives members of the computer science community the opportunity to apply for this funding. It also means that the Department needs peer reviewers with CS knowledge to evaluate grant applications.
The Department has asked the computer science community to help them grow their pool of grant proposal reviewers to include individuals with expertise in computer science education. The Department has never had a focus on computer science before. Having members of the community become peer reviewers gives the field a unique opportunity to be part of the merit-based determination of winning applications.
What kind of people are they looking for? The Education Innovation Research grant program recently said they are looking for:
Persons who are school principals or other school leaders (such as curriculum coordinators or coaching specialists), teachers, district leaders, foundation officers, university faculty (who work with schools), researchers, evaluators, professional development providers, or other individuals who have significant and current K-12 education experience.
Ideally, persons who have administrative, project management, or some other leadership experience which helps them to bridge their understanding of what happens in the classroom with what it takes to implement, sustain, and grow new educational programs.
Persons who are interested in identifying what is new or innovative nationally in K-12 education, and in determining how those innovations can be successfully evaluated, scaled, and disseminated.
Persons who have direct K-12 experience and expertise in at least two of a number of content areas, including STEM, professional development, teacher preparation, vocational education, and program evaluation, among others.
Persons who are excellent writers, good critical thinkers, and committed to completing assigned tasks in a professional and timely manner.
Interested? Good!
The EIR program has asked those interested in reviewing proposals to send a copy of their resume to EIRpeerreview@ed.gov. You can also register and submit your resume in “G5” to be eligible to review EIR, SEED, and any other programs that need computer science expert reviewers. (It is recommended that you consult these PowerPoint instructions.) ED will compensate you for the time you spend reviewing applications.
One note of caution
You won’t be able to be a reviewer if you will be applying to the competition, if you’ll be involved in the preparation of a grant application, or if you would benefit from an application that would receive funding. The Department has safeguards to prevent these conflicts.
We hope you’ll consider this opportunity
ED will be announcing new grant competitions in coming weeks and months, and we want them to have the computer science experts they need to fund the best applications they receive.
This morning between 5:55 and 6:05am and 8:05 and 8:50am PST, part of Code.org’s site experienced a slowdown or outage. The root cause of this was an increased error rate in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 service which affected numerous other websites in addition to Code.org. AWS provides more details in their update below.
Students who were logged on before the outage were unable to save their work during the outage. We apologize for the inconvenience to our students and teachers, and we will continue to work hard to ensure Code.org is working great all the time for everyone. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to support@code.org.
