Students have completed their online Moodle Training Courses where they learned how to find course material and submit assignments. They are well underway working on the first unit: Computational Thinking.
Building a Classroom Community:
I wanted to start the semester off by building a strong sense of classroom community. To organize this, I created an interactive “Town Center” where students can go to discuss and vote on ideas for the class in the “Town Hall.” Buy items in a store and view each other’s profiles. We also discussed and voted upon a common set of classroom expectations. If students aren’t following expectations they need to go to the “Police Station” to reflect on their behavior. We also start most classes with a community circle activity in the center of the room. See below for pics:
Students practice pattern recognition and community skills using the game Simon. 
Students play a game of Black Hat vs White Hat Hacker. Where one student is the “Black Hat” hacker spreading a virus among the group and the “White Hat” hacker has to figure out who it is. 
The lab was reorganized into groups to all ow room for community circle activities.
Unit 1: Computational Thinking
In our first unit, student’s are working through a series of lessons that will help them to achieve the learning targets (and earn the corresponding badges) below.
Students are guided through the unit with a checklist of lessons and assignments. As they meet the requirements for each, they are checked off and the next activity is unlocked.
Unit activities are organized mirroring the way computers process data and in a way that guides students from lower to higher order thinking skills as they demonstrate mastery of the learning targets.
Class Discussions and Netiquette:
Below is an example of our first online discussion assignment. We have discussed how to be polite and provide constructive criticism to our peers. Students are required to post a paragraph and then grade another student’s work while providing a reply with something they did well and something they could do better. We also discuss our posts in our community circles.
Next up…
In my next post I will go over the final project for unit one. Which is to deconstruct a DIY video from Youtube, using computational thinking, to solve a problem. This will be due March 23rd.
I’ll also give instructions on how to download the Moodle app on your phones and view all course material that way.
Please email me: nfahey@pittsfield.net if you have any questions. And if you wish to login to the site. Click the picture below:
Please use the “Google” button and use your student’s ____@pittsfield.net account credentials.