TASK 7. "COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AND CODING" - Journalist

JOURNALIST: Lidia Peñalver Martínez

Friday (18/03/22)

On Friday we attended the first lesson regarding this seventh task.

The teacher Linda explained to us what the task was about. Indeed, it is about computational thinking and programming. 

We reviewed the presentation of the task, which is uploaded in the Aula Virtual, and we, as a group, started to talk and plan how we would do it.

We decided which role each member of the group would have and the organization we would have during the development of this task. The roles for this week are:

Sofía: facilitator

Emilio: curator

Sandra: analyst

Noelia: star

Eloy: translator

Lidia: journalist

Lastly, we started to view the three coding activities, and we played them while recording the evidence.

At first, we were quite lost because we didn’t really understand the purpose of the task, but once we started looking in the web of Hour of Code, we got used to it and stared completing the assignment.

Tuesday (22/03/22)

On our practice day, Tuesday the 22nd, Linda talked to us about the blog and how we could improve it, as there are certain roles and activities that need to be polished. After that, she presented to us, as expected, how the podcast which was supposed to be done on the following day, needed to be done and the instructions to develop. So, we read them and we started to think how we would do it. Later at home, we finished the questions regarding each one of the coding activities, and we prepared the written part of the podcast, so that when we arrived to class on Wednesday, we could have it all prepared.

Wednesday (23/03/22)

That Wednesday, we recorded our podcast in class. The star of Wildcats, Paula, came with us in order to answer the questions we prepared for her in the interview. At the same time, Noelia, our star, went with another group to answer their answers. We finished recording that day. We used an app called Anchor, which we had never used before, so we had to test it before recording in case we didn’t understand anything.

We recorded the podcast in sections. During the evening, we edited the podcast and finished it.

We actually really liked recording the podcast as it was a funny and entertaining activity, and, moreover, we discovered a new tool, which we found very useful: Anchor.

Friday (24/03/22)

The last day, the facilitator uploaded everything to the blog.

This week we learned a lot new different things with these task about programming and coding. For some of us, it was very unusual the term coding, but other were more used to it. It has been very enriching to discover this activity and the way to develop it with in a classroom with children, since thanks to Hour of Code, programming goes form being a complex and dull thing to a funny and entertaining children’s activity. Here, in this like we found on the Internet, https://www.idtech.com/blog/5-reasons-your-child-should-learn-to-code , we looked for some more information about programming and its benefits in children. We were pretty shocked as we were not aware of the long variety of advantages and benefits coding could have for children, but now we are more informed and we know for sure we are going to implement these kinds of activities in our future job.

Regarding the work of other groups, I talked to several groups about their podcasts and the task in order to share points of view and results, and I, as a journalist, would like to highlight here in this blog the group Puzzle Team, because they did a great job and we, Potential Teachers, liked it a lot. As many other times, we learn quite a lot from them. Here is the link of their blog: https://sites.google.com/view/blog-puzzle-team/home

Summing up, we enjoyed and learned new things in this task this week. We are glad that now we are familiar with the terms “coding” and “programming”, because we are aware of how important they are for primary students and their future.