The most important compenent of codetoday's Python coding courses are the codetoday students. In this blog we'll have a look at some of the brilliant work our students do with their coding knowledge, through all the codetoday levels both during the courses and independently.
Two key factors that are central to teaching and learning Python coding for kids are creativity and independence: we want students to understand that coding is about allowing them to do whatever they want, almost, and that they can unleash their creativity. And we want them to be able to write code independently and not just follow tutorials.
Within the live teaching sessions, our students work on projects but each project is open-ended and we encourage students to take the projects in whichever direction they want to. Here are some examples of different takes on our flower project, which is one of the very early projects we work on to introduce loops among other fundamental topics in coding.
Once codetoday students get the basics covered, we spend a bit of time working on coding animations and games. These types of projects are great at both keeping students highly engaged but they also allow students to be creative. Here are some great animations created by our students.
It's not just about graphics and games however. Text-based programs are just as important and can also be just as much fun. Working on text based programs allows students to explore areas of coding that are not quite covered when only focusing on graphics-based programs. The fun here is in writing and running the code, but I'll paste a screenshot of one version of our famour Goblin Hunt text game that is often one of the first text-based programs we work on.
For older and more advanced students, another area we work on is on using coding for data analysis and scientific applications. This is bringing them much closer to one area in the real world where coding is becoming more important by the day. Here are a couple of simulations that show science being explored through coding.
In the summer of last year we launched the Codetoday Community. This is a forum exclusive for our students in which they can post the code they are working on in their free time, ask questions, get feedback from our team, and get ideas from other students too. This has proved to be a great place to see the students develop further in their coding and to see their great creative projects.
Enrol your children on a Live Online Coding in Python course this February half term to get them started on the journey
