Category: JavaScript

Online coding clubs

Posted on by Gicela

Since March 2020 we have been offering learning opportuities online tailored to suit different ages and abilities.

Primary


Our Coding in Scratch courses are suitable for children in Years 3 – 6. Every week, they create new projects carefully designed to help them grasp the key principles of computer programming. Each term, the children are challenged with puzzles that nurture and build their computational thinking skills. Our Scratch courses are ideal for any child starting their coding journey or for the more advanced coder who needs to be challenged a little more.

This acedemic year we’ve added a new course to our offer – Coding in Minecraft – in which the children learn to code inside the Minecraft environment. This course does not teach Minecraft, but rather how to use code to automate builds and make modifications to a Minecraft World and change game play. The children use block programming to achieve this, making it ideal for beginners.

Secondary

Our courses for secondary school students are designed to provide opportunities to learn to program in different coding environments, and to expand their knowledge using Python and JavaScript – two of the most popular computer programming languages. The students develop an understanding of the language as well write lots of code to make games and small applications. They get to collaborate with each other and develop their problem-solving skills. A new Creative Coding course starts in January 2022.

We also offer block programming for secondary school students as part of our Make Arcade Games or Make Web Apps courses. These courses are suitable for students in Years 7 – 9 and designed to help them learn more about the principles of computer programming and how to design and prototype a game or App.

With all our courses our aim to help students develop their coding skills… and have an enjoyable time while learning.

JavaScript for Teens course

Posted on by Gicela

Over this Autumn term we offered our JavaScript for Teens course to secondary school students.

Coding in JavaScript can be challenging, and there aren’t any shortcuts to learning the language. Learning the principles of JavaScript will give the student the best start to coding for the web.

Neither is there a fast route to coding games if you don’t understand about data types, variables, conditionals, arrays, and so forth. This is precisely what JavaScript for Teens is about: understanding the JavaScript language from the ground up.

This term, the students learned to debug JavaScript in the console and wrote their first JavaScript programs using Codepen – a development environment for HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

JavaScript for Teens course

A big shout out to all the students who participated this term; they did themselves proud. Next term, a new course on Creative Coding will teach students how they can use the P5 JavaScript library to make a webpage more interactive. The course is suitable for anyone who wants to be creative with code.

Making JavaScript accessible to children

Posted on by Gicela

Over the last five weeks in one of our online coding clubs a group of Year 5 and 6 students have been making Apps using the JavaScript language.

Most of this particular group have been coding with Scratch for sometime and have a good understanding of basic computer programming principles. Most of them have also been learning online together since March 2020.

Learning to program in JavaScript is very different from making projects in Scratch. For a start, the children need to type in code and build an understanding of some of the issues that always come up when using text based programming – that is, bugs and how to debug.

The group have also learned about coordinates, variables and functions, and used the knowledge they have gained to make their own Apps and interact with them. I’m grateful to Bitsbox for creating a fantastic platform that provides fun characters and scenes for playing with.

It has been rewarding for me to witness how the children have understood the concepts quickly and applied them to their own projects.

There’s also little doubt that this group have developed their digital skills over many months of learning and collaborating together online. It’s great to see how comfortable they are using online chat and sharing their projects with their peers.

Well done to everyone that took part. Next term the children will be learning how to program the micro:bit.

Making retro arcade games

Posted on by Gicela

I always encourage my students to make games when learning to program. They have to think about the aim of the game, the characters, the controls, the visual effects, and so on. Once they know all the basics, they can create their own and experiment.

Our group of Year 7 & 8 students have learned how to make Arcade games with Microsoft Make Code Arcade. This is a step up from Scratch programming.

Using Make Code, the students create their own characters pixel by pixel – and then program it to control the game. Although the students use block programming, they can view their code in JavaScript or Python which helps them to understand how the code works under the hood.

We had a full term packed full of activities that led to a final ‘space shooter’ game where the students put everything they learned into practice. They created some fantastic games featuring some great characters.

We have two new coding clubs for Years 7 – 9 starting in November 2020:
Make Mobile Apps
Introduction to Python

Making Apps with JavaScript

Posted on by Gicela

JavaScript is the programming language that powers the web. It adds interactivity to a website and applications are written in JavaScript everyday – ranging from a single page application, games, apps, programming drones to the Internet of things.

At Coding Club, the children have been learning how to program apps with JavaScript using Bitsbox. Bitsbox is a paid online learning application, but anyone can sign up and start using the free tutorials or the hour of code. They also offer a monthly subscription with lost of goodies.

The Bitsbox interface consists of a phone simulator and a text editor, so the results can be seen straight away. A QR code can also be scanned so the apps can run on a phone or tablet. This is a great way to introduce text-based programming to young people.

Most children in Year 4 and above who are confident with Scratch should be able to write apps with JavaScript and understand the concepts. Bixtbox has definitely been a big hit with the kids.

Making apps with JavaScript