Trillium Lakelands District School Board (TLDSB) and the Pinnguaq Association recently partnered to create a host of innovative student professional development opportunities for Grade 7-12 students across the Board.
Through 30 to 60 minute interactive workshops, instructors guided students through creating or editing existing games, animations, and/or interactive art projects using the popular online software platforms, Scratch and MakeCode Arcade. Through these sessions, both educators and their students learned the basics of coding, all while developing their own skill level.
“Many of the students learned to use a new coding tool or see how they can use one they are already familiar with in new ways. We regularly had students sharing code they’ve added to their projects after our lessons, which is always great to see them trying out new things,” said Pinnguaq digital skills educator, Steve Blair. “For the teachers, we hope they learned how code works, but also gained a bit of confidence in their ability to continue teaching their students how to create new things using technology.”
Coding is connected to the elementary and secondary mathematics curriculum, and is now a part of the new science curriculum. Having students learn how to code helps them develop critical and creative thinking skills.
To date, Pinnguaq has run 117 Scratch and MakeCode Arcade workshops across 22 elementary and secondary TLDSB schools this school year. In addition, they have also been in over 40 classrooms to deliver more basic coding programming using Dash n’ Dots and Scratch platforms.
“It was really fun and I liked that we were allowed to move ahead and try things before Steve taught them,” said Grade 8 student, Clark.
“I liked it a lot. Making the maze really hard so my friends couldn’t beat it was the best,” said Grade 7 student, Jack.
The partnership between TLDSB and Pinnguaq will continue throughout the 2023-2024 school year.
