Learn how to prepare and run an Hour of Code and Hour of AI session with CodeHS and CodeHop. Get practical tips and classroom-ready resources for your students.
Full Transcript
Read the complete transcript of this webinar
Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon or maybe maybe it's still earlier for you. my name is Stephanie Bennett and I am a professional development specialist with codes and I'm very excited to be here with you today to talk about hour of code and hour of AI with code hop. So we are here today to talk about what hour of code can look like in elementary school, what hour of AI can look like in elementary school to get your students excited about computer science.
Hopefully not just during computer science education week, but hopefully we can spark their interest to learn about computer science all throughout the school year.
So, we welcome you here today. Looks like we've got a good group of attendees. So, if you would like to say hi in the chat, you are welcome to. If you would like to share your experiences with leading hour of code or hour of AI sessions in the past, we would love to hear you hear from you in the chat. We also will have opened the Q&A. So I let's let's run it this way. If you are participating, if you are sharing a story, an anecdote, something like that that you want the group to see, you can throw those kind of comments in the chat. If you have a question about Hour of Code or Hour of AI, let's put our questions in the Q&A.
So you can find that at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And I did see somebody's hand go up, but I'm not sure how to let you talk. So, if you see see if you can drop a a message in the chat, if you do have a specific request now, early on, I did get give everybody access to be able to post in the chat.
All right. So, like I said, if you have specific questions about CodeHS or CodeHop or Hour of Code or Hour of AI or any of our lessons, make sure you put your questions in the Q&A. If you just want to make a comment and share a story, go ahead and put that in the chat. That way, we won't lose anybody's questions. [clears throat] So today we are here to talk about like I said hour of code and hour of AI for those who are joining just a smidge late. And so by the end of our quick session here today we hope that you will be able to access and prepare hour of code and hour of AI activity materials that are available for free on the code hop website. We hope you will be able to describe the purpose of CSED week and we hope that you will feel confident about leading an hour of code or hour of AI activity.
So I'm going to introduce code hop, but I'm delighted to be joined by one of our codes teacher trainers, Danielle Carr.
She has lots of years of experience in the CS classroom and she was also an elementary school teacher. So, she's the perfect person to be leading this session and sharing her stories and sharing her advice on how to get your students excited about computer science during computer science education week.
So, at CodeHop, our mission is to empower all students to meaningfully impact the future. We provide elementary lessons that are designed to introduce K through5 students to computer science and to reinforce concepts taught in ELA, science, math, and social studies. And we do that via coding and projects and hands-on activities for your students.
So, the code hop curriculum includes lots of great resources for elementary school teachers. we know that, adding another subject area to a elementary teacher's plate is a is a tough cell. It's a hard ask because you're already responsible for reading and writing and math and science and social studies. And so, how in the world are we going to fit computer science into our students day also? Well, we provide lesson plans, vertically aligned pathways, interdisciplinary connections for your students, all packaged in what we call ready to go lessons. So, that means that prep time is very minimal for you. We encourage you to scan the lesson plan which will take some look we'll take a look at some examples here today and then to teach the lesson if if you like to we provide all the videos all the coding guidance resources like handouts etc to just make it really easy to hopefully like I said help introduce your elementary school students to computer science concepts and making it a an easy lift for educators even those who who don't have any prior experience with computer science or coding. we really do our curriculum team has done an amazing job to provide everything you need to learn right alongside your students as you dive into computer science. So, I did mention that we have two different pathways of curriculum on our code hop platform. You can teach lessons that are geared toward your state standards in computer science at the elementary level. these would be things like digital literacy, typing, coding, algorithms, really everything that might you you might encounter in your computer science standards, we've got it covered in our computer science pathways. Now if you're if you are searching for time in in your classroom and you need to make sure that you know students are connecting this learning supporting other subject matter learning we also provide our interdisciplinary pathway and what we've done with that pathway is taken common standards at various grade levels and said okay in ma in third grade students are learning fractions so let's do some math and computer science interdisciplinary lessons that support students learning fractions. Right. and so great great lessons, great great curriculum, like I said, to to really help elementary school teachers find the time for and effectively teach computer science.
I talked a little bit about our pathways and and just a brief note here. sequence and alignment is very important. We know that, you know, your students are going to be coming in in elementary school with a probably a wide variety of experience with computer science. And so do know that our curriculum designers have done a lot of hard work to make sure that our curriculum is vertically aligned and students build on knowledge in yeartoear, but also that every student can be successful at any grade level. So they will be introduced and gradually to computer science concepts and and nobody will be left behind if they don't come in with a previous year's learning in computer science. So fantastic curriculum. I hope you enjoy this tour today of what we have available for computer science education week.
All right. So, I will hand it off to Danielle who's going to talk to us a little bit just about the background of Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week.
Thank you, Stephanie. Hi, everyone. My name is Danielle Carr. I'm a current high school computer science teacher, but like Stephanie mentioned at the beginning, I started off in elementary and really focused in on computer science and it just brought me all the way up to the high school. but I I have taught elementary. I've taught fifth grade. Six. I know six kind of goes into the middle school, but I have taught fifth grade. I'm really truly an elementary teacher. so I'm really excited to talk to you about how to incorporate computer science concepts, into your elementary classroom. so basically if you've never heard of Hour of Code before, it is a global initiative around the world, to introduce students to computer science, through one-hour coding experiences. it's not supposed to create computer scientists or anything like that. It's just supposed to introduce them to the idea of computer science and expose them to the career field etc. and it happens annually as a tribute to Grace Hopper and that's who that is right there at the bottom of the screen. she was the first woman in computer science. She helped develop the first compiler and she helped write the Cobalt language and she was the one who termed the vocabulary word debugging. So anytime your students are coding and it's not working and they have to find out why and they find the little bug. she's the one who came up with that term debugging. Sorry I clicked off my screen. all right. So, I'm really excited to talk about the Hour of AI. Usually, we talk about Hour of Code, but Hour of AI is something new and exciting. it's a new global initiative since AI is becoming so popular. we're we're trying to expose students to AI, not just as a user, but as a creator of AI and understanding more how it works. even if you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with AI yourself, these lessons are all self-guided. you know, it's really truly plug-andplay and all you have to do is, you know, show the presentation and some, paper activities and your kids are on the off to the races. so they're just designed to show that computer science, AI, coding, all of that is just fun and open to everyone and they're not it's not supposed to be intimidating. It's supposed to be a lot of fun. So, we have CSED week, which is Stephanie, it's December I have pregnancy brain. Help me. December 8th to the 14th.
Thank you. 8th through the 14th. That's typically when schools try to do schoolwide activities regarding coding. So I know some schools like to decorate their hallways. they have prizes and activities and you know other schools show pictures from previous years etc. a really great way to get your kids excited is to, contact home and let them know. they have a countdown in CS, ed week. You can also highlight, our school does for morning announcements. They'll highlight a, computer science pioneer and what they did to help in the creation of computer science, things like that. So, just things that you can do around the school to make it, you know, exciting for the kids that were talking about it. And then some things that I've done in my elementary classroom, to get kids excited for the hour of code, whenever we needed a brain break, we had some fun computer science related games that they didn't even know were computer science. so I had program your teacher. So I used to tell the kids that they had to, you know, make a program that would walk me through the classroom and they have to be very specific like you need to rotate left and rotate right and walk forward and things like that, but they would tell me to rotate left, but it would be my left and they meant my right, you know. So we would giggle and things like that. then I would have the kids play with each other. So they would have to, you know, one person was a robot, one person was the programmer. and then for a little bit higher grade level, if you're in maybe fourth, fifth, sixth grade, you can bring in if then statements. So, if I'm wearing, like Simon says, so if I'm wearing blue, then clap twice. So, we'll we'll be talking about if else statements. That's a computer science concept. but these are just like really fun, easy ways, like I said, brain break activities that you could do during that prep week or during that week. just to get the kids excited about computer science. So now we're gonna go ahead and take a look at the actual hour of AI lessons first and then we'll look at the hour of code lessons next. if you wanted to you could navigate to our codes hour of AI link and when you click on it it should take you straight to the page. or not.
While we're waiting on that, I did put the link in the chat for everybody. So,
that is available. Oh, good. Yeah, mine worked right. I'm glad yours Sorry. And then, we're specifically looking at code hop. and so I'm going to, you know, give you a brief description of each of these three activities and then we're going to spend some, you're going to have a couple of minutes to look through and pick one and see if there's any questions that you have about them. and we can kind of talk through those. So the first one, sorting with decision trees. This is geared for preschool to kindergarten students. so they are supposed to explain how AI uses data to learn and make decisions. So if you're unfamiliar with how AI works, basically it's a big learning language model. they are pro this AI is provided tons of data and it learns based on trends and things like that. So, I know that's like a big prek through kindergarten is sorting and putting things in different categories. And so the students are given some objects. They get to work together and identify patterns and create those categories. And then they actually have a handout where they create a decision tree. And so they become the AI where they are sorting these objects into their categories. So cute little activity there. for grades 1 through two. this one's fun just because I think the name is silly. A borg. You know, the kids will be excited just because it's something goofy. I mean, we're all excited about what is that? The six seven. yes, I believe it is free, right, Stephanie? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, these lessons, our CSN week lessons are free for anybody to use. And so I'm dropping those links in the chat. Feel free to check them out.
so in this one, the students learn all about what a BORG is and what it is not. And that they learn that the more data an AI receives, the better it is as at identifying objects and things like that. So they are going to be trained themselves like they were the AI. about what a Borg is and a Borg is not. And they need to make observations very similar to the preK through kindergarten, just a little more advanced. and then they have to be able to identify Borgs on their own. So based on the information of what one is and is not, they get to sort them and make those decisions. Again, bringing in the decision trees from previous years. And then they extend it a little bit further and they get to create their own alien species. So they'll have like a handout and they'll do their own alien species and decide what those aliens have in common. And then they get to draw for aliens. So depending on how much time you have, etc. That could be a really fun activity. And then for the upper grades three through eight, they learn a little bit more in detail about how machines learn. so they'll learn about the three different ways that machines learn. So, supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement. And they will also do a decision tree. again, choosing patterns and things like that. It's a little more open-ended. but it gives even more detail. So, you can see as it gets higher and higher, the levels are changing. So, we had planned about five minutes for you to choose one of your one of these lessons. Stephanie was really kind in the chat. She has the lesson plan given for you. so you can kind of take a look. I'm going to choose the Borg one. So, when you choose the lesson plan, it's all written out for you. So, I don't know if you're in a school that requires you to write lesson plans, but this was always lovely. and then it has various things that the students would need. So there are slides that you can click on. all sorts of handouts that you can print. So everything is given to you. All you have to do is prepare it and then hand it to the kids. So we wanted to give you some time to go ahead and look through those resources. If you had any questions on the hour of AI activities, we're here to answer them. so yeah, I don't know if you want me to like set a timer or if we're just going to hang out.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can just say yeah, we'll come we'll we're here to answer questions for the next four or five minutes and let us know what you need. They're great lessons. I'm a terrible wait time teacher.
I do I do always want to like have music on or something, but I'm like people are trying to read. It's fine. We can just sit here and quiet.
I feel like I wait. So, one time I did a timer and I was like, "Okay, you have, you know, five minutes to work on it." And I caught myself probably three times going, "Okay, it's been 5 minutes. [laughter] It was not I think the alien's my favorite.
Yeah, it's super cute. So, I will point out, Danielle, if you want to go back to one of those lessons plan pages,
I'll do the plur one. to the this page.
Yes. So, here's how easy it is to teach with CodeHop. If you click on that big circle there. Yeah. Mhm. It's going to open a slide deck for you. You know, you'll have to improvise these first couple slides, get your students excited, but then everything is videoguided. So, if you want to play that video, Danielle.
Hi. In this lesson, we will explore how artificial intelligence can learn new information. Artificial intelligence is all around us. Another way to say artificial intelligence is by saying its initials, AI. Phones, virtual assistants, Google, and more use AI. Hey,
it's so cute. And like I said, our curriculum team has done such a great job getting all the content in here for you so that you, the teacher, can guide the lesson, help your students stay focused, and learn as much computer science as they can and of course while being creative and having fun, right? So, very easy to use. We hope that you'll find
cute. I think I like the alien one because I do with the high schoolers. They create their own potato heads.
Nice.
To teach about classes. So, it's a little higher up. But I think that's why I like the alien so much. Has it been five minutes? [laughter]
Yep. We can go on to the hour of code.
Okay. Okay. Now more traditionally the CS week has been about hour of coding. so there are lessons for hour of code. Again there's a diff there is a website link to go straight to hour of code with different categories. We're going to focus on elementary today but like Stephanie was saying earlier there's lots of interdisciplinary activities and things like that. So that's something that you could take a look at. for the hour of code lessons, there are two, one for lower elementary and one for upper elementary. I'll talk about the upper elementary one first. So in this one, they are going to be using Scratch. so if you have never used Scratch before, it's very easy to get your students on that website. if it's I know there's been some issues with them blocking it and things like that. Just talk to your tech department to see if they'll just open it up for that week of school so that you're still able to do these activities and then they can close it back after. but the students are going to be creating a drawing app by programming their keyboard. So their keyboard and their mouse will do various things. So, for example, the mouse pointer will draw the lines. When they click the up and down arrows, it will lift the pen off the screen and put it down on the screen. And then the left and right arrows will make the line thicker or thinner. and so they will be guided through that activity. That's always a lot of fun. for the lower elementary level, the students are going to be use something called Scratch Junior. So, it's just an even smaller version of Scratch, really geared toward lower elementary students. The blocks, it's all block coding in Scratch and Scratch Junior. And so, these blocks get even more basic for your elementary level students. they just are going to show you how living things survive in their environment. and so, they create a program that shows how lizards in different environments use their adaptations. and again, they will be walked through how to code that on Scratch Junior. So, again, we had some time to look through those two lessons. and if you had any questions, again, we were here for you. Let's see. So again, you can click right on there. Like Stephanie said, you can click this big blue button and it has all of those videos for you. This one has more coding. and so if you're not comfortable with the coding yourself, no worries. There's some samples that you can look at. and again, it's very self-guided, so the student should be able to figure that on the coding out on their own, but just in case they need guidance. There are some samples that you could take a look at. [clears throat] And again, this is what Scratch kind of looks like. and so again, it's block coding. And this is just an example. Go show you the difference. Cody just wants to use my microphone. Sure. So you can tell it's paired down much much much easier. my, you know, my color is green, so it makes me hard to see and so they camouflage, right? That's how lizards will use their adaptation in a green environment and it looks like we have a desert environment. So here's our lizard. My color is brown. It makes it hard to see. and then the lizard kind of disappears. So again, very paired down compared to the upper grades. So depending on what you're teaching, you have those. No one has questions. nope. Just a a request for additional resources and I was explaining the hour of AI is new this year. So what's available is our library for this year. But hopefully we will have additional resources in the coming years as we continue to build momentum for Hour of Code and now Hour of AI.
I know Hour of AI is like really cool. Yeah. So I will answer this question live. So we had someone ask how does the Scratch Junior project relate to AI? And the Scratch and the Scratch Junior projects are for Hour of Code. So we still have those lessons available if that interests your students. we have added the hour of AI lessons. So, Scratch and Scratch Junior Hour of Code, the other lessons shared earlier, Hour of AI. Yeah, sorry if I wasn't clear on that one. Am I good? Okay. [laughter] I'm like terrible with wait time. If you all want me to slow down, I will. okay. So, how to run an hour of code or an hour of AI session in your classroom is like really easy. the prep time is very minimal. all you're going to need to do is make sure that if it has a worksheet or a handout that goes along with it, you print it out or provide it to your students via your learning management system. I know my school uses Canvas. So, if you're trying to save paper, you can always put those on Canvas or convert them to editable documents for your students, whether that be on Google Docs or whatever else you guys use. Now, make sure that you're familiar with the slide deck. There's not much to have to be familiar with because like Stephanie said and like you saw, they are there are videos embedded in and so it's very easy to just go through that. and then for the hour of code lessons, make sure that your students do have access to that Scratch Junior or Scratch depending on which one your which lesson you're choosing to do. And then the day of is you open the slides and you play the presentation and you walk through and demonstrate the activities just like codes has you do and then have your students have fun. it's a very laidback type of environment. It's very self-paced. A lot of students will get really into it and they're going to go off on their own tangent and that's perfectly fine. They do not have to just stick with the lesson plan. You may have kids who have been familiar with Scratch or Scratch Junior and they go adv way advanced and you're going to have some kids who just do the lesson and that's totally fine. That's the whole point of these hour of code lessons and hour of AI lessons is to let them explore and see how creative they can be. and then we had some more resources for you. coding the wild blogs specifically for elementary. There's a parent letter. and of course attend more PD with us. we'd love to see you again. So, I'm going to hand it back to Stephanie. Thank you so much, Danielle, for walking us through your experiences with Hour of Code and your excitement for Hour of AI is I can feel it. I'm excited for it. So, I did go ahead and put links to those Coding in the Wild blogs, the parent letter, other code hop lessons that we have available for you to check out, and our free PD. And the last thing we have to do before we leave here is we would love to get you a certificate of completion for hanging out with us today. So definitely click on this link. you you might need a code account, but I would encourage you to create a CodeHS account because the CodeHS account, middle school and high school accounts are free and you can check out our curriculum, see if it's anything you can use in your classrooms. so definitely let us know if you have any questions about that side of the platform. And then last up, just some additional resources for you. So we do have available help articles on Scratch Jr. and Scratch if you need them if you are not familiar with those two resources. So I will put these in the chat also and then we would love for you to join our Facebook group. connect with other educators who are teaching computer science in elementary school. Get some great ideas for your classroom. And then very last of all, we'll ask you to take our survey. Let us know how we did here today. Well, thank you so much for joining us here this afternoon and thank you Danielle for leading a fantastic presentation and we look forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks so much y'all. I'll stick around for a minute to answer any questions you might have. You've been fabulous group asking great questions to help your students. Yes, Laura is asking about a recording. we did record and you will get a follow-up email with the recording and the slide deck and we'll also try to link the lessons and everything in that email too. So it's all in your email easy access. Angelique, if you are having issues with the attendance link, make sure you're signed in. Yeah, that's the that's the hard part. let me let me try on my end here. [sighs] Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll fix it and then make sure everybody who attended the webinar today gets gets signed up gets marked attended and then it should it should send you the certificate in your email. And Laura, the recording usually will have it posted to YouTube and out in email within 48 hours.
And then please fill out the feedback. I love feedback. I love to know what I could do better. I think this is like my third second one. Third one.
Third webinar, I think. Yeah,
third one. So, please, please fill the feedback out and be brutally honest. I appreciate it. [laughter]
Danielle always does a fantastic job presenting.
All right, y'all. Well, thank you so much. Sorry about that attendance link. We'll get you the certificates. We'll get you the recordings. And thanks for hanging out with us. See you next time.
Hopefully not just during computer science education week, but hopefully we can spark their interest to learn about computer science all throughout the school year.
So, we welcome you here today. Looks like we've got a good group of attendees. So, if you would like to say hi in the chat, you are welcome to. If you would like to share your experiences with leading hour of code or hour of AI sessions in the past, we would love to hear you hear from you in the chat. We also will have opened the Q&A. So I let's let's run it this way. If you are participating, if you are sharing a story, an anecdote, something like that that you want the group to see, you can throw those kind of comments in the chat. If you have a question about Hour of Code or Hour of AI, let's put our questions in the Q&A.
So you can find that at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And I did see somebody's hand go up, but I'm not sure how to let you talk. So, if you see see if you can drop a a message in the chat, if you do have a specific request now, early on, I did get give everybody access to be able to post in the chat.
All right. So, like I said, if you have specific questions about CodeHS or CodeHop or Hour of Code or Hour of AI or any of our lessons, make sure you put your questions in the Q&A. If you just want to make a comment and share a story, go ahead and put that in the chat. That way, we won't lose anybody's questions. [clears throat] So today we are here to talk about like I said hour of code and hour of AI for those who are joining just a smidge late. And so by the end of our quick session here today we hope that you will be able to access and prepare hour of code and hour of AI activity materials that are available for free on the code hop website. We hope you will be able to describe the purpose of CSED week and we hope that you will feel confident about leading an hour of code or hour of AI activity.
So I'm going to introduce code hop, but I'm delighted to be joined by one of our codes teacher trainers, Danielle Carr.
She has lots of years of experience in the CS classroom and she was also an elementary school teacher. So, she's the perfect person to be leading this session and sharing her stories and sharing her advice on how to get your students excited about computer science during computer science education week.
So, at CodeHop, our mission is to empower all students to meaningfully impact the future. We provide elementary lessons that are designed to introduce K through5 students to computer science and to reinforce concepts taught in ELA, science, math, and social studies. And we do that via coding and projects and hands-on activities for your students.
So, the code hop curriculum includes lots of great resources for elementary school teachers. we know that, adding another subject area to a elementary teacher's plate is a is a tough cell. It's a hard ask because you're already responsible for reading and writing and math and science and social studies. And so, how in the world are we going to fit computer science into our students day also? Well, we provide lesson plans, vertically aligned pathways, interdisciplinary connections for your students, all packaged in what we call ready to go lessons. So, that means that prep time is very minimal for you. We encourage you to scan the lesson plan which will take some look we'll take a look at some examples here today and then to teach the lesson if if you like to we provide all the videos all the coding guidance resources like handouts etc to just make it really easy to hopefully like I said help introduce your elementary school students to computer science concepts and making it a an easy lift for educators even those who who don't have any prior experience with computer science or coding. we really do our curriculum team has done an amazing job to provide everything you need to learn right alongside your students as you dive into computer science. So, I did mention that we have two different pathways of curriculum on our code hop platform. You can teach lessons that are geared toward your state standards in computer science at the elementary level. these would be things like digital literacy, typing, coding, algorithms, really everything that might you you might encounter in your computer science standards, we've got it covered in our computer science pathways. Now if you're if you are searching for time in in your classroom and you need to make sure that you know students are connecting this learning supporting other subject matter learning we also provide our interdisciplinary pathway and what we've done with that pathway is taken common standards at various grade levels and said okay in ma in third grade students are learning fractions so let's do some math and computer science interdisciplinary lessons that support students learning fractions. Right. and so great great lessons, great great curriculum, like I said, to to really help elementary school teachers find the time for and effectively teach computer science.
I talked a little bit about our pathways and and just a brief note here. sequence and alignment is very important. We know that, you know, your students are going to be coming in in elementary school with a probably a wide variety of experience with computer science. And so do know that our curriculum designers have done a lot of hard work to make sure that our curriculum is vertically aligned and students build on knowledge in yeartoear, but also that every student can be successful at any grade level. So they will be introduced and gradually to computer science concepts and and nobody will be left behind if they don't come in with a previous year's learning in computer science. So fantastic curriculum. I hope you enjoy this tour today of what we have available for computer science education week.
All right. So, I will hand it off to Danielle who's going to talk to us a little bit just about the background of Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week.
Thank you, Stephanie. Hi, everyone. My name is Danielle Carr. I'm a current high school computer science teacher, but like Stephanie mentioned at the beginning, I started off in elementary and really focused in on computer science and it just brought me all the way up to the high school. but I I have taught elementary. I've taught fifth grade. Six. I know six kind of goes into the middle school, but I have taught fifth grade. I'm really truly an elementary teacher. so I'm really excited to talk to you about how to incorporate computer science concepts, into your elementary classroom. so basically if you've never heard of Hour of Code before, it is a global initiative around the world, to introduce students to computer science, through one-hour coding experiences. it's not supposed to create computer scientists or anything like that. It's just supposed to introduce them to the idea of computer science and expose them to the career field etc. and it happens annually as a tribute to Grace Hopper and that's who that is right there at the bottom of the screen. she was the first woman in computer science. She helped develop the first compiler and she helped write the Cobalt language and she was the one who termed the vocabulary word debugging. So anytime your students are coding and it's not working and they have to find out why and they find the little bug. she's the one who came up with that term debugging. Sorry I clicked off my screen. all right. So, I'm really excited to talk about the Hour of AI. Usually, we talk about Hour of Code, but Hour of AI is something new and exciting. it's a new global initiative since AI is becoming so popular. we're we're trying to expose students to AI, not just as a user, but as a creator of AI and understanding more how it works. even if you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with AI yourself, these lessons are all self-guided. you know, it's really truly plug-andplay and all you have to do is, you know, show the presentation and some, paper activities and your kids are on the off to the races. so they're just designed to show that computer science, AI, coding, all of that is just fun and open to everyone and they're not it's not supposed to be intimidating. It's supposed to be a lot of fun. So, we have CSED week, which is Stephanie, it's December I have pregnancy brain. Help me. December 8th to the 14th.
Thank you. 8th through the 14th. That's typically when schools try to do schoolwide activities regarding coding. So I know some schools like to decorate their hallways. they have prizes and activities and you know other schools show pictures from previous years etc. a really great way to get your kids excited is to, contact home and let them know. they have a countdown in CS, ed week. You can also highlight, our school does for morning announcements. They'll highlight a, computer science pioneer and what they did to help in the creation of computer science, things like that. So, just things that you can do around the school to make it, you know, exciting for the kids that were talking about it. And then some things that I've done in my elementary classroom, to get kids excited for the hour of code, whenever we needed a brain break, we had some fun computer science related games that they didn't even know were computer science. so I had program your teacher. So I used to tell the kids that they had to, you know, make a program that would walk me through the classroom and they have to be very specific like you need to rotate left and rotate right and walk forward and things like that, but they would tell me to rotate left, but it would be my left and they meant my right, you know. So we would giggle and things like that. then I would have the kids play with each other. So they would have to, you know, one person was a robot, one person was the programmer. and then for a little bit higher grade level, if you're in maybe fourth, fifth, sixth grade, you can bring in if then statements. So, if I'm wearing, like Simon says, so if I'm wearing blue, then clap twice. So, we'll we'll be talking about if else statements. That's a computer science concept. but these are just like really fun, easy ways, like I said, brain break activities that you could do during that prep week or during that week. just to get the kids excited about computer science. So now we're gonna go ahead and take a look at the actual hour of AI lessons first and then we'll look at the hour of code lessons next. if you wanted to you could navigate to our codes hour of AI link and when you click on it it should take you straight to the page. or not.
While we're waiting on that, I did put the link in the chat for everybody. So,
that is available. Oh, good. Yeah, mine worked right. I'm glad yours Sorry. And then, we're specifically looking at code hop. and so I'm going to, you know, give you a brief description of each of these three activities and then we're going to spend some, you're going to have a couple of minutes to look through and pick one and see if there's any questions that you have about them. and we can kind of talk through those. So the first one, sorting with decision trees. This is geared for preschool to kindergarten students. so they are supposed to explain how AI uses data to learn and make decisions. So if you're unfamiliar with how AI works, basically it's a big learning language model. they are pro this AI is provided tons of data and it learns based on trends and things like that. So, I know that's like a big prek through kindergarten is sorting and putting things in different categories. And so the students are given some objects. They get to work together and identify patterns and create those categories. And then they actually have a handout where they create a decision tree. And so they become the AI where they are sorting these objects into their categories. So cute little activity there. for grades 1 through two. this one's fun just because I think the name is silly. A borg. You know, the kids will be excited just because it's something goofy. I mean, we're all excited about what is that? The six seven. yes, I believe it is free, right, Stephanie? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, these lessons, our CSN week lessons are free for anybody to use. And so I'm dropping those links in the chat. Feel free to check them out.
so in this one, the students learn all about what a BORG is and what it is not. And that they learn that the more data an AI receives, the better it is as at identifying objects and things like that. So they are going to be trained themselves like they were the AI. about what a Borg is and a Borg is not. And they need to make observations very similar to the preK through kindergarten, just a little more advanced. and then they have to be able to identify Borgs on their own. So based on the information of what one is and is not, they get to sort them and make those decisions. Again, bringing in the decision trees from previous years. And then they extend it a little bit further and they get to create their own alien species. So they'll have like a handout and they'll do their own alien species and decide what those aliens have in common. And then they get to draw for aliens. So depending on how much time you have, etc. That could be a really fun activity. And then for the upper grades three through eight, they learn a little bit more in detail about how machines learn. so they'll learn about the three different ways that machines learn. So, supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement. And they will also do a decision tree. again, choosing patterns and things like that. It's a little more open-ended. but it gives even more detail. So, you can see as it gets higher and higher, the levels are changing. So, we had planned about five minutes for you to choose one of your one of these lessons. Stephanie was really kind in the chat. She has the lesson plan given for you. so you can kind of take a look. I'm going to choose the Borg one. So, when you choose the lesson plan, it's all written out for you. So, I don't know if you're in a school that requires you to write lesson plans, but this was always lovely. and then it has various things that the students would need. So there are slides that you can click on. all sorts of handouts that you can print. So everything is given to you. All you have to do is prepare it and then hand it to the kids. So we wanted to give you some time to go ahead and look through those resources. If you had any questions on the hour of AI activities, we're here to answer them. so yeah, I don't know if you want me to like set a timer or if we're just going to hang out.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can just say yeah, we'll come we'll we're here to answer questions for the next four or five minutes and let us know what you need. They're great lessons. I'm a terrible wait time teacher.
I do I do always want to like have music on or something, but I'm like people are trying to read. It's fine. We can just sit here and quiet.
I feel like I wait. So, one time I did a timer and I was like, "Okay, you have, you know, five minutes to work on it." And I caught myself probably three times going, "Okay, it's been 5 minutes. [laughter] It was not I think the alien's my favorite.
Yeah, it's super cute. So, I will point out, Danielle, if you want to go back to one of those lessons plan pages,
I'll do the plur one. to the this page.
Yes. So, here's how easy it is to teach with CodeHop. If you click on that big circle there. Yeah. Mhm. It's going to open a slide deck for you. You know, you'll have to improvise these first couple slides, get your students excited, but then everything is videoguided. So, if you want to play that video, Danielle.
Hi. In this lesson, we will explore how artificial intelligence can learn new information. Artificial intelligence is all around us. Another way to say artificial intelligence is by saying its initials, AI. Phones, virtual assistants, Google, and more use AI. Hey,
it's so cute. And like I said, our curriculum team has done such a great job getting all the content in here for you so that you, the teacher, can guide the lesson, help your students stay focused, and learn as much computer science as they can and of course while being creative and having fun, right? So, very easy to use. We hope that you'll find
cute. I think I like the alien one because I do with the high schoolers. They create their own potato heads.
Nice.
To teach about classes. So, it's a little higher up. But I think that's why I like the alien so much. Has it been five minutes? [laughter]
Yep. We can go on to the hour of code.
Okay. Okay. Now more traditionally the CS week has been about hour of coding. so there are lessons for hour of code. Again there's a diff there is a website link to go straight to hour of code with different categories. We're going to focus on elementary today but like Stephanie was saying earlier there's lots of interdisciplinary activities and things like that. So that's something that you could take a look at. for the hour of code lessons, there are two, one for lower elementary and one for upper elementary. I'll talk about the upper elementary one first. So in this one, they are going to be using Scratch. so if you have never used Scratch before, it's very easy to get your students on that website. if it's I know there's been some issues with them blocking it and things like that. Just talk to your tech department to see if they'll just open it up for that week of school so that you're still able to do these activities and then they can close it back after. but the students are going to be creating a drawing app by programming their keyboard. So their keyboard and their mouse will do various things. So, for example, the mouse pointer will draw the lines. When they click the up and down arrows, it will lift the pen off the screen and put it down on the screen. And then the left and right arrows will make the line thicker or thinner. and so they will be guided through that activity. That's always a lot of fun. for the lower elementary level, the students are going to be use something called Scratch Junior. So, it's just an even smaller version of Scratch, really geared toward lower elementary students. The blocks, it's all block coding in Scratch and Scratch Junior. And so, these blocks get even more basic for your elementary level students. they just are going to show you how living things survive in their environment. and so, they create a program that shows how lizards in different environments use their adaptations. and again, they will be walked through how to code that on Scratch Junior. So, again, we had some time to look through those two lessons. and if you had any questions, again, we were here for you. Let's see. So again, you can click right on there. Like Stephanie said, you can click this big blue button and it has all of those videos for you. This one has more coding. and so if you're not comfortable with the coding yourself, no worries. There's some samples that you can look at. and again, it's very self-guided, so the student should be able to figure that on the coding out on their own, but just in case they need guidance. There are some samples that you could take a look at. [clears throat] And again, this is what Scratch kind of looks like. and so again, it's block coding. And this is just an example. Go show you the difference. Cody just wants to use my microphone. Sure. So you can tell it's paired down much much much easier. my, you know, my color is green, so it makes me hard to see and so they camouflage, right? That's how lizards will use their adaptation in a green environment and it looks like we have a desert environment. So here's our lizard. My color is brown. It makes it hard to see. and then the lizard kind of disappears. So again, very paired down compared to the upper grades. So depending on what you're teaching, you have those. No one has questions. nope. Just a a request for additional resources and I was explaining the hour of AI is new this year. So what's available is our library for this year. But hopefully we will have additional resources in the coming years as we continue to build momentum for Hour of Code and now Hour of AI.
I know Hour of AI is like really cool. Yeah. So I will answer this question live. So we had someone ask how does the Scratch Junior project relate to AI? And the Scratch and the Scratch Junior projects are for Hour of Code. So we still have those lessons available if that interests your students. we have added the hour of AI lessons. So, Scratch and Scratch Junior Hour of Code, the other lessons shared earlier, Hour of AI. Yeah, sorry if I wasn't clear on that one. Am I good? Okay. [laughter] I'm like terrible with wait time. If you all want me to slow down, I will. okay. So, how to run an hour of code or an hour of AI session in your classroom is like really easy. the prep time is very minimal. all you're going to need to do is make sure that if it has a worksheet or a handout that goes along with it, you print it out or provide it to your students via your learning management system. I know my school uses Canvas. So, if you're trying to save paper, you can always put those on Canvas or convert them to editable documents for your students, whether that be on Google Docs or whatever else you guys use. Now, make sure that you're familiar with the slide deck. There's not much to have to be familiar with because like Stephanie said and like you saw, they are there are videos embedded in and so it's very easy to just go through that. and then for the hour of code lessons, make sure that your students do have access to that Scratch Junior or Scratch depending on which one your which lesson you're choosing to do. And then the day of is you open the slides and you play the presentation and you walk through and demonstrate the activities just like codes has you do and then have your students have fun. it's a very laidback type of environment. It's very self-paced. A lot of students will get really into it and they're going to go off on their own tangent and that's perfectly fine. They do not have to just stick with the lesson plan. You may have kids who have been familiar with Scratch or Scratch Junior and they go adv way advanced and you're going to have some kids who just do the lesson and that's totally fine. That's the whole point of these hour of code lessons and hour of AI lessons is to let them explore and see how creative they can be. and then we had some more resources for you. coding the wild blogs specifically for elementary. There's a parent letter. and of course attend more PD with us. we'd love to see you again. So, I'm going to hand it back to Stephanie. Thank you so much, Danielle, for walking us through your experiences with Hour of Code and your excitement for Hour of AI is I can feel it. I'm excited for it. So, I did go ahead and put links to those Coding in the Wild blogs, the parent letter, other code hop lessons that we have available for you to check out, and our free PD. And the last thing we have to do before we leave here is we would love to get you a certificate of completion for hanging out with us today. So definitely click on this link. you you might need a code account, but I would encourage you to create a CodeHS account because the CodeHS account, middle school and high school accounts are free and you can check out our curriculum, see if it's anything you can use in your classrooms. so definitely let us know if you have any questions about that side of the platform. And then last up, just some additional resources for you. So we do have available help articles on Scratch Jr. and Scratch if you need them if you are not familiar with those two resources. So I will put these in the chat also and then we would love for you to join our Facebook group. connect with other educators who are teaching computer science in elementary school. Get some great ideas for your classroom. And then very last of all, we'll ask you to take our survey. Let us know how we did here today. Well, thank you so much for joining us here this afternoon and thank you Danielle for leading a fantastic presentation and we look forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks so much y'all. I'll stick around for a minute to answer any questions you might have. You've been fabulous group asking great questions to help your students. Yes, Laura is asking about a recording. we did record and you will get a follow-up email with the recording and the slide deck and we'll also try to link the lessons and everything in that email too. So it's all in your email easy access. Angelique, if you are having issues with the attendance link, make sure you're signed in. Yeah, that's the that's the hard part. let me let me try on my end here. [sighs] Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll fix it and then make sure everybody who attended the webinar today gets gets signed up gets marked attended and then it should it should send you the certificate in your email. And Laura, the recording usually will have it posted to YouTube and out in email within 48 hours.
And then please fill out the feedback. I love feedback. I love to know what I could do better. I think this is like my third second one. Third one.
Third webinar, I think. Yeah,
third one. So, please, please fill the feedback out and be brutally honest. I appreciate it. [laughter]
Danielle always does a fantastic job presenting.
All right, y'all. Well, thank you so much. Sorry about that attendance link. We'll get you the certificates. We'll get you the recordings. And thanks for hanging out with us. See you next time.
