Resources
All the latest updates, podcasts, tools, and online guides to help facilitate your computer science classroom experience, in-person or online.
dailySTEM with Chris Woods
In this week’s interview with Chris Woods (dailySTEM), we discuss the importance of contextualizing STEM through everyday connections, leveraging student interests, blurring boundaries between subject areas, the affordances and constraints of the acronym STEM, Chris’ new book Daily STEM: How to Create a STEM Culture in your Classrooms & Communities, continuing to learn by asking questions, and much more.
Let The Student Program The Computer, Not The Computer Program The Student
Seymour Papert, in his book Mindstorms, reminds us that the greatest benefit of integrating computers in the classroom is NOT as a tool for standardized assessment, repetitive skill reinforcement, or as Papert put it, “the computer programming the child.” Rather, he argued, “The child programs the computer. And in teaching the computer how to think, children embark on an exploration about how they think themselves”. This approach cultivates the soft skills identified as necessary in today’s workforce, including problem-solving, creativity, and cooperative learning. Further, Papert advocated that this benefit begins in pre-school. Yes...pre-school!
Coding at a crossroads
In this episode, Jared O'Leary unpacks Resnick and Rusk’s (2020) publication titled “Coding at a crossroads” which discusses challenges in CS and coding education, and summarizes the four guiding principles that educators can use when engaging in coding practices in their classroom.
Amplifying VOICES for Social Justice with Lien Diaz
In this interview with Lien Diaz, we discuss Lien’s work with Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Equity in Computing, what CS educators can do to learn more about and incorporate anti-racist practices, the importance of encouraging and developing both students and teachers as leaders, the shifts and pivots in education as a result of COVID, and much more.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Chapter 4
This episode is the final episode of a miniseries that unpacks Paulo Freire’s (1970) book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” This particular episode unpacks chapter 4, which synthesizes the concepts introduced in the previous chapters and discusses the difference between anti-dialogical and dialogical practices in education (and at large). This episode builds off the previous unpacking scholarship episodes on chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three so make sure you listen to those episodes before jumping in here.
Other Resources
Integration Studios
In addition to the integration suggestions in our lesson plans and our discussion forum, our Scratch account has several studios that demonstrate the potential for integrating projects with Scratch.
Complete List of Lesson Plans
Use this document to quickly access all of our ScratchJr and Scratch lesson plans and coder resources.
Unplugged Resources
This spreadsheet is a curated list of more than 100 unplugged lesson plans and resources for elementary coders.
Remote Learning Resources
We’ve compiled some resources to help districts, teachers, and families cope with the rise of school closures around the nation.
