Coding and games for educational purposes

With a wide variety of coding programs available, students are able to be creative and use their problem-solving skills to create a functioning game or animation. These games can be extremely simple for young learners, and can also be quite complex. Students learn the importance of needing to be very specific and detail oriented, coding is the type of project that cannot be rushed. While this could lead to some frustrations, it’s a great challenge.

During class time, I began by working on the Frozen snowflake challenge. I was enjoying it at the beginning, but soon became frustrated when needing to repeat multiple actions and make different specifications at the same time. While I should have kept trying with this tutorial, I decided to move on to the Flappy Bird game, which I found much more engaging. I enjoyed having so many options for manipulating the game. For example, changing the scenery, changing the points system, or the speed.

Examples of educational games:

• Math
• Typing
• Language (Duolingo)
• Logic-based

There can be possible challenges that come with incorporating coding into the classroom. The main hurdle is getting access to enough technology (computers) for the whole class. This can be a difficulty for certain schools, and it is good to be aware of it.