Code.org vs. Blackbird Code – Which One Should You Use?
In the last month I’ve replied to a few Tweets from people asking for my opinion about whether they should use Code.org or Blackbird to help them teach their students how to code. As you might expect, there isn’t a one-size-fits all answer to that question. In this post I’ll share my experience using both […]
Blackbird Provides a Great Environment for Teaching Coding
Disclosure: Blackbird is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Last week I wrote a lengthy blog post about how Blackbird can be used by anyone to teach coding. That post focused on how you can use Blackbird to teach coding even if you don’t have much or any coding experience and your students are new to […]
Blackbird Provides an Innovative Way for Anyone to Teach Coding
Disclosure: Blackbird is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Around this time every year I get emails that go something like this, “Hi Richard, I have a new job this fall and I’ll be teaching coding for the first time. Do you have any resources you can share with me?” Usually these emails come from folks […]
Seven Sites and Apps to Help Students Learn Coding and Programming
The other day I was in a Zoom meeting with someone who is relatively new to field of educational technology. I was asked about any “must read” books or sites. The first thing that came to mind was Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms. Mentioning Mindstorms then took me down the path of talking about Logo and its […]
Blackbird Code – One of My New Favorites in 2021
I’m taking this week to recharge and get ready for the next session of the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. For the next few days I’m going to highlight some of my favorite new and new-to-me tools so far this year. Blackbird is a new platform for teaching programming to middle school and high school […]
Blackbird Code – Overview and First Impressions from My Students
Last week I published a written overview of a new learn-to-code platform called Blackbird. In short, Blackbird is a platform that is trying to bridge the gap between using block editors like Scratch and making students jump into a full-fledged IDE without any built-in support resources. Blackbird teaches students how to write code (specifically, JavaScript) […]