Coding for Kids
This Texas Teacher’s Students Created 15,004 Tynker Projects!
Tynker is popular in Texas – a handful of our Tynker teachers there are even what we call “power users”! In San Antonio, Brooks Academy students have been prolific Tynker users over the years and have created some amazing projects. Richard Howard is their Gateway to Technology teacher, and his excitement for Tynker is hard to contain. Here’s a guest post from Richard on his experience using Tynker with his students:
I am a retired Army NCO and a first-year teacher, so I am just learning the ropes. I’ve been writing computer programs since the 1980s. I started with BASIC, moved to C++ and then to HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Our school purchased Tynker in October. The students love it. They come in, log on their laptops and get to work. I help them when they get stuck and I make them modify their projects to reflect proficiency with whatever concept we are learning that day.
I’ve seen great reactions from my students when they complete a difficult project. The greatest treat for me is when I hear one student teaching another student. I overheard one student in 7th period telling another, “No, the X-axis is left and right. Y is up and down!” It really made my day!
The name of our school is Brooks Academy of Science and Engineering (BASE), so you can imagine the importance that learning technology plays. In a very short time, Tynker has become an integral part of teaching our students the fundamentals of computer programming. Tynker is helping us prepare them for more in-depth Computer Programming to come when they get to High School.
There are many ways that Tynker has made my job easier, but the biggest would be differentiated teaching. Some kids learn really fast and some need more time, but all of them can learn it. Tynker’s software allows the students to learn at their own pace. It also frees me up to provide one-on-one instruction to those students that need it. That is a neat trick in a class with 32 students!
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