I found this week to be very interesting. I am not someone who will be heavily using tech in the class, but i find the use of coding to be a really great cross-curricular tool. I chose to use the website that helps you learn to code with Python called Compute It. I really enjoyed this learning tool because it starts at a simple level and adds more coding language as you progress. As you can see in my screencast (please mute as I was in a coffee shop, and did not turn off the sound haha), I got stuck at the end as the coding language became more complex.
I believe this type of tool can help learners become better problem solvers as I feel it makes you think similarly to Wordle in that you have to try different combinations to see which will allow you to move on to the next level, or row in the context of Wordle. It is a low pressure way to help students work on their computational and problem solving skills to help foster and teach growth mindset during the process.
When considering coding in a non mathematical way, one application comes to mind that Rich showed me yesterday in class. It is the open source tool called Twinery. Rich described how his daughter used it to create a choose your own adventure story for school. I believe this would be a very useful tool for social studies for older grades. Twinery also includes some simple coding and computational skills, so it is for great cross curricular teaching.
I appreciate the copious amounts of coding websites that have become available for young learners. I wish I had this in school!
