Delighting students with Microsoft Hour of Code and Minecraft
This post is provided by Senior ADM, Cissy Ho, who spotlights an “Hour of Code” to inspire others through technology and shares information on how you can too.
As a part of working in Premier Developers and Microsoft Canada, I am honored to share my technology expertise with Enterprise developers, and even broader communities with students and young in-college settings.
Last November I taught an “Hour of Code” in two schools and coded Minecraft tutorials in 3 classes.
My goals were to bring awareness that “Coding can be a part of Everything we do”. I have related to the students how coding is all about solving problems, working with friends and using your own creativities!
We used the Microsoft Minecraft tutorial (https://code.org/minecraft). The tutorial contains block programming techniques to conduct adventures such as coding the Iron Golem to chase out and hit zombies!
At the beginning of session, a student came and told me that Minecraft is his favorite game. I told him that it is fun to play in Minecraft, but it is even cooler to program your characters and ‘code’ your own adventures. His face lit up and he was ready to learn.
I worked with a Grade 9 after school boys program, a Grade 2 English class and a Grade 2 French Immersion class. Despite age and language differences, all the common experience was that students loves to learn, and collaborate ‘organically’ to solve challenges.
My hope was to show them that logic programming is not difficult and provide experience at creating with technologies–not being an end user of technologies.
For more information about Hour of code: Please visit https://hourofcode.com. Anyone can participate and give back to the community through a self-organized event or work. The tutorials are from age 4-104.
For more information on Microsoft participation in the Hour of code event listed here: https://news.microsoft.com/2016/11/15/microsoft-and-code-org-announce-free-minecraft-hour-of-code-tutorial-for-computer-science-education-week-dec-5-11/#SCXlyuIXG50oh1p2.97
On a related topic, here is a great resource to turn S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) passion into actions for everyone. http://makewhatsnext.com/careers/
Premier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essential services to help teams optimize development lifecycles and improve software quality. Contact your Application Development Manager (ADM) or email us to learn more about what we can do for you.
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