Skip to main content

The Hour of Code is Almost Here! Are you ready?


The Hour of Code 2015 is almost here! Last year several of our schools/classrooms participated...and I would love to see even more participate this year!

Computers are everywhere, but fewer schools teach computer science than 10 years ago. Good news is, we’re on our way to change this. If you've heard about the Hour of Code before, you might know it made history. More than 100 million students have tried an Hour of Code.

With the Hour of Code, computer science has been on homepages of Google, MSN, Yahoo! and Disney. Over 100 partners joined together to support this movement. Last year, every Apple Store in the world hosted an Hour of Code and even President Obama wrote his first line of code as part of the campaign.

This year, let's make it even bigger. I’m asking you to join in for the Hour of Code 2015. Please get involved with an Hour of Code event during Computer Science Education Week, December 7-13.

Get the word out. Host an event. Ask your school to sign up. You don't need to know ANYTHING about Computer Science to have your students participate. You can even try the Hour of Code yourself -- everyone can benefit from learning the basics.

Get started at http://hourofcode.com/us. Let's put PPS on the map!

Check out this great video on Hour of Code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC5FbmsH4fw

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Google Docs: Fonts for Early Elementary

Sample of search results from fonts.google.com A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in a training with a bunch of my favorite lower elementary teacher friends, and several of them were lamenting the fact that it is hard to find "good" Google fonts for the little people they work with on a daily basis.  Specifically, it is a challenge to find the single story lower case a and the open 4 .  This conversation, of course, sent me out on a mission to remedy this for these fantastic people.  So, the next day I put on my headphones, turned up the tunes on Spotify, and dived into the website fonts.google.com .  This website lists all the Google fonts available.  It also allows you to type in your own letters and numbers and see them in all the various fonts.  For my purpose, I typed in "abckgy 1234 This is the font."  From here I could see all 877 fonts, and look specifically for the a   and the 4.  It was quite an adventure, and I came across...

It's time to change your password!

There are several times a year when it is important to change your password.  Your password will expire every 90 days. When your windows computer informs you that your password will be expiring soon, CHANGE IT THEN! It is also always a good idea to change your password before going on break so that you do not get locked out of your computer, email or gradebook.  Here is how you change your password from the school windows computers. On your Windows desktop/TEC computer , press the Alt, Ctrl and Delete buttons at the same time. Click on "Change a Password" on the menu below: Enter your username, if needed, and follow the directions on screen. If you are off site or working solely on a Chromebook , you can use the VDI (Virtual Desktop) to change your password.   Simply go to vdi.portageps.org.  Click "VMware Horizon HTML Access."  Click "Accept."  Login with your portage username (leave off the @portageps.org) and password.  Click "Login." ...

Skyward Tech Tip: Student Birthday List

Would you like to get a list of your students' birthdays from Skyward? This can be done in just a few clicks. Step 1: Login to Skyward and select the blue gradebook for the class you want to print usernames and passwords for - elementary staff, you can just select any of your gradebooks. Step 2: Go to the reports menu at the top of the screen and select Class Roster. Step 3: Choose Student Name & Student Info, then select Clone Template. Step 4: Give your new template a name, such as Birthdays. Click Save. Step 5: Select how you want the Names to Display, then UNCHECK all the boxes. Now only check Birth Date. Click Save. Step 6: Now you can select the template you just created. Click Print. Step 7: A PDF preview will open. From here you can choose to save or print. You do this by placing your curser in the bottom right corner of the screen and clicking on the picture of the disc (save) or the printer (print). This is what the report would look like:...