Remote Learning Feedback

Teachers' Lounge
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What do you think are the best ways to support teachers and students who are trying to learn coding and programming remotely at the moment?

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Our CompSci teacher has us doing assignments using Repl.it and we get these notifications via Google Classroom.

Repl.it allows the teachers to create the assignment, writing step by step instructions (notes) and inputting starter code in the IDE. Students can then click submit. You can work with loads of programming languages, make use of file upload and more. You can even import a repo from GitHub.

This is all online.

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4

Honestly, my biggest problem with remote learning will be helping them when they have questions. That’s why I am happy you have the “Share” option. I am not that concerned about my Thunkable curriculum because I have materials created already.

Something that will probably be difficult for my students while working at home is using Chromebooks at home to create the code because of the tiny screen. In class, they have large monitors. The design aspect will be harder for them so I will probably cut out some assignments that have a lot of rows and columns or modify them. Or maybe I will share a file with them that has the complicated set up.

Thank you so much for asking this question! It was really considerate of you to do. I’m sure we’ll be using the community or the help feature for questions too. Keep doing what you’re doing Thunkers!

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5

Thanks for your feedback @debbie - much appreciated!

Hadn’t considered this actually - we can definitely do a couple of tutorials for changing the zoom settings on different operating systems.

We can definitely facilitate something like this is the community. You could use a PM for each assignment, Ss can post related questions and that way you could have an element of peer-learning too perhaps!

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I really like repl.it, great platform. I used to use Google Classroom too - pretty sure it’s confined to one school/organisation.

Are there many folks here using other platforms like Padlet etc?

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In our case, the challenge is to have a collaborative learning session, real-time, online.
Plus, as a facilitator/trainer, I wanted to be bale to share not only my Desktop screen, but my device screen as well.
The solution I opted for is zoom (zoom.us).
What I did was to open a meeting session, with my device sharing its screen (Preview Station). On my desktop, I logged into the meeting as well (Dev Station). So now, I can share both screens with my students (almost) concurrently.
In addition, sharing projects (design and code blocks) gave us the “after-party” features as well.

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8

How do I create a private message for my students? I am assuming that’s what your PM acronym was. I didn’t find any info by doing a search in Thunkable community and didn’t see it in the Community Guidelines. I am not visually seeing a way to do it in a post. Thanks for your help.

Debbie

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I also heard that Discord has upped it’s Go Live streaming limit from 10 to 50 people during covid-19. Perfect for a classroom of students.

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10

Zoom is great. I am a fully online graduate student and Zoom is where I live out my virtual School Life. That and Canvas, but google classroom is probably much cheaper and easier to use for this short term purpose.

Particularly it’s the screen sharing feature and the fact that it can be free for 40 minutes at a time. and then immediately restarted which isn’t super convenient but not the worst. It’s also generally working well and streaming smoothly

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11

First I’ll tell you how I teach my students remotely now and some things I would try out with Thunkable.

  • I use google suite, I have a personal account and an education one.

  • When I’m teaching python I use repl.it since my student just need a browser to work.

  • I do meetings in both hangouts and meet to teach my students.

  • I have also an open contact policy with them. They can text me, call me, contact me at any time to ask me questions. So sometimes I get videos/pictures in whatssapp, mail, hangouts,etc.

To teach them how to build apps in Thunkable I’ve tried the following:

  • Guides explaining step by step on how to use a component like my doughnut video tutorial. Documentation is great but I like going a little more deep on subjects and explain them the logic behind it.

  • I record videos with my phone and send them through whatssapp.

  • Screen sharing so they see my screen while I explain and I can see theirs so I see what’s the issue.

  • My lessons are structured with different techniques like design thinking and project based learning based on my prior experience in Fab Learning. My lessons are planed in google slides and they can submit their shared link to me by mail or google classroom.

Some of the things I would consider about remote education and Thunkable:

  • Making teachers proficient at Thunkable before teaching others :slight_smile: This can be done by done by just going in and doing apps or maybe a course? you guys could consider a certification?

  • Maybe there is an issue with teachers not knowing how to incorporate Thunkable into their lesson plans or how to make a lesson plan out of Thunkable?

  • I know it’s hard to have real time project with a lot of collaborators, but you could consider it. I don’t know if I should suggest this because it’s pretty darn hard. I sometimes feel that people ask for features in Thunkable like if it just a couple hrs of coding here and there… is not hahaha

  • Maybe as a teacher you could create like a tutorial in your Thunkable tutorial tab, so the student can follow the teacher’s steps and advice. ( I think this is more easy to develop rather than making projects collaborative) Also maybe a raise hand button on a specific step, so maybe I made a mistake I could be notified and change it or offer my students more help on that specific step.

I hope this helps you :slight_smile:

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12

I find your Hour of Code tutorials in the left panel very helpful. The more the merrier as far as I am concerned. they really get the students off to a positive start. I would like to see one for almost every feature.

Documentation could include example code. Code.org with App Lab is a good example of this. It really helps students try new things. This is especially needed for the harder features.

I don’t know if you saw the Donut Shop tutorial in Medium, but more of these would be very helpful.

I also use X Thunkable videos from YouTube and found many of those to be helpful.

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13

Hi @domhnallohanlon

First of all, please DO NOT CLOSE Thunkable Classic. Second, if possible, could you please re-active your " Microsoft Emotion Recognizer by Thunkable " and " Microsoft Image Recognizer by Thunkable " ( see point 4 on this page: https://puravidaapps.com/extensions.php ).

Third, could you please improve your BLE features?

Thanks

Paolo Tealdi (Italy)

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14

Google slides is very handy, indeed, I use it quite often. Also, I use https://www.movavi.com/photo-to-dvd-slideshow/ from time to time, when I need to make some non-educational slideshows (I’m a school teacher and sometimes I take my students to various museums etc). So maybe it will be useful too.

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