COURSE DESCRIPTION

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Computer Concepts

Computers play a huge role in our everyday lives, and now more than ever, it's important that kids have a basic understanding of how computers work, what computers can do and how technology can be helpful. From learning how to type to creating programs from scratch by writing code, the possibilities are endless. Learning computer skills can be a lot of fun for kids, too.

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Getting Started with Coding

It's never been more important that kids have a basic understanding of computers and how technology can be helpful. From learning to type to learning coding, computers can open a fun world of endless possibilities.

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Coding Fundamentals

Technology makes it possible for you to write code that allows the computer to do different things. Using coding, you can have the computer add up a bunch of numbers, make a game to play or even animate characters on the screen. The possibilities are endless. But to get the computer to understand what you want, you need to use a language that the computer understands. There are several different coding languages that computers can use. Many kids start small with programs like Scratch and then move onto more complicated coding languages as they get older and gain more experience.

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Advanced Topics

We all use coding concepts on a regular basis without even thinking about it! You would be surprised how almost anything you do in your daily life can be used as an example when explaining the concepts of computer programming to kids. Brushing your teeth? Getting dressed? Making pancakes? All of these are examples of real-life algorithms we use daily. Students with learn how to use these examples below to learn the important aspects of Coding.

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Projects

If you don’t know what Scratch is, it’s quite simple. It’s an environment where you can code with blocks (instead of writing words) and the environment is graphical (with backgrounds, characters, etc.) while you code each character (called sprites in Scratch). But it does have some complex options (including all kinds of operations, variables and you can even build your own blocks).

This course involves dragging and dropping code blocks instead of writing code while children learn coding logic and how to develop the mind for algorithms. Blocks are puzzle-piece shapes that are used to create code in Scratch. There are ten categories of blocks: Motion, Looks, Sound, Event, Control, Sensing, Operators, Variables, List, and My Blocks.