As coding and programming are becoming increasingly important skills in the working world more and more countries are adding these skills to their curricula. Let’s have a look how apps can make coding & programming entertaining.
1. Box Island: One Hour Coding
As the Gold Award winner of Parents’ Choice Spring 2016 Mobile Apps, Box Island: One Hour Coding is a great app of engaging pupils into computer science and programming. The idea of the game is to help the character Hiro collect all the clocks in various fascinating 3D settings. Through engaging puzzles pupils are introduced to the basics of coding including algorithmic thinking, sequencing, pattern recognition, loops, etc. The app also offers lesson plans, solution guides and curricula for the tutorial.
Download: Apple Android (Update 16 Jun 2016: this app appears to be updated right now and it’s not currently available to download)
Watch the video here
2. The Foos Coding 5+
As the winner of the 2016 KAPi Awards – Best App or Product for Younger Children and 2015 Parents’ Choice – Gold Medal, The Foos turns programming into play – kids can learn to code via a series of exciting adventures. It provides over 40 puzzle levels. To solve these puzzles, kids must accomplish challenges including “determine the actions needed to solve each Foo’s problem”, “use those patterns to make their code more efficient”, “test solutions”, etc.
The Foos is friendly to all age groups above 5. You can play the game together with the kids!
“Most appealing to me as a parent was seeing how my children enjoyed working together on the puzzles. Even my teenager was completely engaged!”
–Parents’ Choice Awards
Watch the video here
3. Hopscotch
Featured in The New York Times, this Parents’ Choice Gold Award winner is an app that enables children to make their own games and publish them immediately for others to play. It also has a school version so teachers can easily manage pupils’ projects.
Download: Apple
Watch the videos here
4. Scratch
Scratch has a long history in the field of kids’ programming since 2003. It’s a platform which is easy to operate – you just need to snap blocks together to create projects. Since Scratch is a turing-complete computer programming language, kids can create their own animations, games, stories, music, etc. with ease. They can also upload and share their projects with the community.
What is unique about Scratch is that it doesn’t offer tasks for kids to accomplish. No matter what functionalities kids want to realise, they have to create them on their own. It is a great challenge for their creativity and imagination.
Download: Apple
ScratchJr (Free) Download: Apple Android
Website: https://scratch.mit.edu/
You can also find great teaching & learning materials about coding&programming on TeachPitch e.g. Coding and games development andIntro to programming. To access to the above resources and other resources about coding or programming, please log in to TeachPitch, and search “coding” or “programming”. Have fun searching!