Ask a 7 year old, "What's a computer programmer? Do you want to be a computer programmer when you grow up?" More kids today than last week at least, can actually give you a pretty good answer to those questions. I had an eye-popping day in 2nd grade coding on the iPad last week. Candace invited her friend, Dom Lau, an IT Director at USC, with a knack for teaching kiddos to code, into her classroom. I was very fortunate and to observe the class. A-m-a-z-ing! Here are a few tips I picked up from Dom and turned around and applied in another 2nd grade classroom a half hour later. Tie programming to:
- Things kids enjoy doing (the hook to get them invested in learning)
- Math
- Simon Says
- Collaborating and 
- Celebrating

A little more detail...
1. Keep it simple, make the game and iPad lesson about showing how math applies to programming shapes. A square was the first shape kids tried out. 90 degrees times 4 is 360 degrees. We need 360 degrees to finish at the same spot we started in. So, set the rotate command to 90 in the Hopscotch program. Maybe one of your second graders can add 90 four times and maybe they can't. So, just help them and point it out. Simple. I think older students will grasp the idea very quickly.
2. Tie the idea of programming to Simon Says. Play Simon Says so the class contributes the steps to get you to walk in a square or to the door. 
3. Celebrate the class' first program (getting you to walk in a square). 
4. Let the kids explore the app. Trial and error is fantastic but don't let it get frustrating. It's ok to fail a couple times and then suggest students sake each other for help. Ask 3 before me, if someone gets stuck. Demonstrate the steps if you need to move more quickly but try not to. The class is not as chaotic as you would think. These little guys were so focused that they were hardly talking. Level 1 or 2 on the noise scale. 
5. Save and email the program to the teacher. I need to figure out how to share them out with the whole class and their families on a website or list of links that need to be opened on an iPad. I will work on that.

I would not have believed it unless I saw it. I wrote my first Fortran program in college. These kids ran circles around me using their iPad and the Hopscotch program. Everyone had a blast using Hopscotch and some kids showed just how much of a genius that they are by creating some wild programs. 

So, now I have to think about my strategy for the next classes coming up. I have quite a few free apps: Light-Bot, Kodable, Daisy the Dinosaur and Hopscotch. I've already seen a 1st grader and 3rd grader thoroughly enjoy both Light-Bot and Kodable and now 45 second graders using Hopscotch. Maybe I'll set a timer and give 5 minutes for each to introduce the app and then give them free choice for remaining time. I wonder what app they will stick with? Any guesses?

We are enjoying our Google Apps for Education, GAFE accounts and I couldn't resist taking the photo of my ed tech friend, Creighton, using his cool Google water bottle. I snapped a few other Google pics that I thought I'd share today. Here's one of two 3rd graders experiencing for the first time sharing documents with their teacher and classmates. I wish I had video of their giggles when they saw someone else typing in their document. It really is a magical moment! And my last picture is two phenomenal teachers using Google Docs during a staff meeting. Karla and Jenn are phenomenal teacher leaders not only because they go the extra mile for their students but because they are open to learning new tech tools and integrating tech when it makes the most sense to benefit their students. Brilliant teachers that I love learning with.

This video vocab lesson is probably the most fun I've ever had teaching a 2nd grade iPad lesson, after selfies for screensavers. Every lesson I present needs to have have a high degree of educational value and needs to work for a range of talented students where some students might struggle or be a bit more advanced. This video vocabulary lesson was a smash hit with the students! 

Thank you very much to Lisa Johnson, @TechChef4u, who shared 100+ App Task Cards and I quickly found Video Vocabulary. Oh yes a smashing success! Thank you Lisa, @TechChef4u, and Sandy Patterson, on Instagram @soaring_through_2nd, lesson and details at:
http://soaringthroughsecond.blogspot.com/2012/07/vocabulary-videos.html
I made a few minor changes and included the files to share in this blog post. 

A few planning tips:
1. Where do 2nd graders get cool images? 
Give students choice to draw it, snap it or save it. Students might draw an image using the free Doodle Buddy app. Another idea is for students to take a picture of something in the classroom using the Camera app. And finally, searching for an image to save to their camera roll from a shared folder in Google Drive or posted on a class website. You might let students use a safe search engine like this one:http://www.wikikids.ws/
or this one that Sandy recommends:http://www.kidrex.org/


For the topic we chose, school pride, taking a few campus snapshots is fun. Then you can post the images on a class or school website or even Padlet.com (and Chrip the link to the students for easy access).

2. One Session or Two?
If your students already know the words you want them to write about this lesson will take 1 session (~30 minutes or so). Take two sessions if you need to teach the vocabulary. 

3. The final product in this lesson can be each student recording all the words and creating their individual video or merging one sentence from each student for a video collage. Mrs. Barney's Class PRIDE video below is a video collage where each student contributed one sentence. In iMovie on an iPad, I merged the student videos and added text to the beginning and end for the video. Given more time even 2nd graders could add the text in iMovie. 

I really felt inspired by the whole event. I think the biggest thing that I learned was that people were eager to participate and share their own experiences, big and small ideas, to make everyone a little more empowered to make the changes they need or want to make to improve student learning in their classroom. Maybe better put is to help inspire students to love learning. Or even better yet, learn differently because these educators are passionate people. 

I couldn't resist taking a few pictures throughout the day. So here they are for you to check out. OMG! The decorations were brilliant weren't they? Leah hopefully won for creating the best treats. Amazing works of art from a rat in a palm tree to a mummy with googly eyes. I think she said she found some ideas on Pinterest. Love that!