Free computer science resources for teaching coding to elementary and middle school students.

Teaching computer science in elementary or middle school? In today’s episode of Inspiring Ideas for the Classroom, Ryan Bean introduces us to a couple of programs: Scratch and Tinkercad. He also addresses accessibility issues that his school faced and plans that his school is making for the coming academic year. Ryan begins by showing us how to set up a free teacher account with Scratch. Once your teacher account is approved, you will be able to set up an online classroom with students. The Studio feature of Scratch facilitates student collaboration by giving students a space to test and play each other’s games. Ryan highly suggests that new users begin with the Scratch tutorials. Math teachers may like to implement Scratch when they cover a concept like the coordinate plane as the Scratch program provides a concrete context for how the coordinate plane is used in the real world. Next, Ryan covers how to build 3D models with Tinkercad. Again, teacher accounts can import students into a classroom on this program. Students do not need an email or google account to use Tinkercad. Ryan has used this program with 1st grade students and they have been able to login with only a username. The models that you build on Tinkercad can be 3D printed if you have access to a 3D printer. We finish out the interview discussing how to help students with remote instruction when they have limited resources.

Links:
https://scratch.mit.edu/
https://www.tinkercad.com/