Uni of Greenwich Professional Development Day

Tomorrow I'll be delivering a 'Professional Development Day' for a group of PGCE students from the University of Greenwich. I will be informing them about the new computing curriculum and showing examples of best practice through my school's use of technology.

I am very much looking forward to seeing what the new breed of teacher already knows about computing, particularly as they only know the new curriculum. It shouldn't surprise me to find that a generous number of them are more 'tech savvy' than myself...

The plan for tomorrow will be to spend about 20 minutes discussing the new curriculum and the future of education. I will then spend a generous amount of time on a range of resources that we use in school - approximately 15 minutes each.

Planned resources:

• iPad apps for coding: Bee-Bot, Daisy the Dinosaur, Kodable, Scratch Jr and Hopscotch
• Other iPad apps: Explain Everything and Book Creator
• MinecraftEDU
• Scratch (will probably go through my coordinates lesson)
• MaKey MaKey, Python and Raspberry Pi

Below is a copy of tomorrow's Prezi:

Using Hopscotch to Create Story Animations

I have been spending a huge amount of time with Hopscotch on the iPad in the last few days. It would seem that an obsession is growing...

As you can see from some of my earlier posts, I do like to play around with Scratch to create fun little games and projects, and if I'm honest, I hadn't really used Hopscotch much since hearing about it a couple of years ago now. Then I saw a link to one of their YouTube videos:

After watching it, I immediately wanted to give it a try! With my Scratch experience safely tucked under my belt, I ventured into the wonderful world of Hopscotch!

So obsessed am I, that I have created three YouTube videos so far! Each one has progressively become more and more elaborate. 'The Magic Minecraft Pencil' even became a full animation piece. Here are my three videos in a playlist:

This really is a great app, and perfectly introduces children of primary age to coding. It is very easy to create something, and that something may be a simple animation or even a hugely complex game. I would aim this app at children in key stage 2 as there are other apps like Scratch Jr and Kodable that I would give to key stage 1 and Early Years first. That's not to say Hopscotch couldn't be used at all in those phases, of course!

I always like to look for cross curricular links in all of my teaching, and creating animations in Hopscotch could very easily support children in the writing of short stories or even non-fiction writing (instructions perhaps!) Children could either create the Hopscotch story scene first and use that as a stimulus to write their story. Or, they couldn't create the story first and then try to bring it to life in Hopscotch.

Happy Hopscotching!