This July, teachers across NYC met for three days to find ways to integrate coding into their classrooms across every grade and subject area. Vidcode joined the NYC Department of Education's STEM Institute, working with enthusiastic educators to help them integrate coding into their classrooms.
The STEM Institute participants
Most of these educators had no prior programming experience, but after three days of learning and creating projects they left excited about the possibilities of teaching their students to code. During the STEM Institute, educators shared their fears, excitement and curiosities about code. On the first day, they met for a Post-It party, where they wrote their thoughts on post-its and place them around the room to facilitate discussion. They answered the questions: what are you proud of, what questions do you have and what do you want to learn in the next two days?
While learning the fundamentals of JavaScript, the STEM Institute participants created incredible video projects, from a role model video where they talked about their own coding journey to animations about vocabulary words to animated book covers.
On the second day everyone learned about arrays with a Rey Array lesson and a pixel art Post-it project, and used arrays in their projects to make rainbow videos.
On the final day of the STEM Institute, every educator brought in an old lesson plan for a curriculum workshop. They updated their old lesson plans to include a project that gives their students a chance to learn to code.
Educators left the STEM Institute full of energy and the confidence to take what they had learned back into their classrooms.
Shanti Crawford, an NYC teacher, said about the Institute “I am writing to thank you for one of the best professional development courses I’ve ever taken. It was substantial, social, fun, and inspiring. A great combo for busy teachers!
With regards to the Vidcode experience—the tutorials are great. It’s all the best of parts from Hour of Code. I like having that sidebar with encouragement and quizzes. Also the built-in projects and curriculum are terrific.
Again thanks. I am one exhausted teacher at this point in the year so to feel this amount of excitement and inspiration is just amazing.”
Learn more about Vidcode professional development and webinars.
