Creative Coding

I’m always looking for fun “absolutely first experience with code” activities - things that feel satisfying without requiring too much background. These kinds of activities aren’t about teaching specific skills as much as they are about getting kids excited about what’s possible with programming. I’ve often used drawing with shapes as this onramp, but laying out shapes requires an understanding of and comfort with the coordinate plane that might turn off students who are math-phobic. [Read More]

I’m going to try something new here, so bear with me as we see how this works. When I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed I sometimes like to relax with a little creative coding; I just try to get something on the screen and poke around with the code until I find something that soothes me. I’m rarely building towards something specific in these moments, but I do like to explore functions and techniques that I haven’t used before, sometimes just picking a function at random from the documentation and seeing where it gets me. [Read More]

Shortly after I finished my first book I was chatting with one of my closest teacher friends, a drama teacher, about a student play we were going to collaborate on. The set was a spaceship, and so we wanted lots of blinkly lights and space-age computer effects everywhere. As we talked through the plan, and how we’d work with students in the CS and tech ed classes to get it all done, I knew that this was another book in the making. [Read More]