Our class has been using the Bee Bots as a part of developing our ‘coding’ skills. We have a set of Bee bots that can be programmed to follow a sequence of steps to move along a set path. This is a very simple but highly effective way to start teaching children to code.
Our iPads also have the Bee bot coding apps and we also use Scratch for students to further engage in coding activities. Some of the older students in our classes like to use Python, Raspberry PI to code as well. Many of these students come along to our weekly Coding Club sessions on Fridays. Of course, one of the most popular coding programmes is Minecraft – we all LOVE to use Minecraft!
We use coding as just 1 way of developing many different skills. Coding develops:
- procedural steps planning – sequencing
- creative
- collaborative
- communication
- critical thinking
- problem solving
- perseverance
- counting
- planning
- testing and re-testing strategies
- ways to work safely on the Internet.
There are many other skills that could also be listed. There are also many different ways student can continue to develop these coding skills that will lead to many jobs for in the future.
These photos and clips are from Friday’s session – we had a great time trying to programme and test our instructions for the Bee bots. We used the masking tape to set a path for our Bee bots to follow (hopefully).
*** Please note some of the wheels on our Bee bots aren’t tracking properly and wander a little off the path.
What was your favourite part of our Bee bot coding session? What do would you plan for our next session?