My friend Kaylyn, a student at the Olean City School District, is just like every other 12-year-old girl. She says things like “that’s the bomb” and “Wait till my mom sees this.” Kaylyn says “awesome“ a lot and she loves to draw. Specifically, she loves to draw hearts. She also has the best handwriting I’ve ever seen from any 12-year-old. But there is something you should know about Kaylyn. She does not have use of her arms and legs. This causes her life to be different.

Unable to use her arms and legs creates difficulty for her getting around school independently. She also has difficulty doing assignments, because typically there is much handwriting involved.

​In September of this school year, since the Olean City School District subscribes to the Cattaraugus Allegheny BOCES Model Schools services, I went in to observe Kaylyn. This was an informal observation and I was just there to make suggestions. I was hoping these suggestions could possibly make Kaylyn’s life better.   When I initially visited Kaylyn I had absolutely no suggestions whatsoever. I had nothing. I was disappointed. I was unsatisfied with not coming up with anything but I continued work on it. Later, In October, I had an epiphany. I had used a software called eViacam and recorded a video of myself using it(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7NZXNa4qbw). [lg1] eViacam is a free open source software that anyone can download to their computer but it seems to only be available for the Windows operating system (http://sourceforge.net/projects/eviacam/).  I’m working on a Mac solution.  How does eViacam work? Well it uses the built-in camera or an external camera and ”locks onto your eyes and nose,” which allows you to operate the mouse with your head movement.

No one predicted that students would stay after school to learn math.  And no one predicted that students, in large numbers, would learn, in a hands way, how variables, functions and loops work.  This is exactly what happened on December 12, 2014.  About 77 middle school students stayed after school to try their hand at computer programming.  The students were very engaged and they seem to really be enjoying themselves.  They were also collaborating, discussing and problem-solving and some people would be surprised to see such a sight to see in a school library.  Maria Muhlbauer, a librarian at Pioneer Middle school, led a small teach and explained student expectations.  Students were asked to work together since there were not enough computing devices for everyone to work by themselves.  Along with Maria was Gio LoBianco, a special education teacher at Pioneer Middle School, who helped out by bouncing from student to student to answer questions.

Pioneer was very involved in teaching their students some coding skills.  Coding is the new word for computer programming and Pioneer, along with school districts all over the world, participated in the Hour of Code week.  This is the same week where President Obama learned to code and became the first U.S. President to computer program while in office.  The Hour of Code initiative started in 2013 by founder Hadi Partovi.  He started Code.org, which is a website designed to get kids to learn to code and participate in the Hour of Code week.  The Hour of Code week is typically the 2nd week in December.  So far, since the existence of Code.org, 100 million students have participated at sometime during this week.  

When you enter Jill Rickert’s room you quickly find out what is going on in the world of the 7 to 8 year old.  Some kids are wearing that bright green that many people wear to support a cause.  Many of the girls have chipped or chewed blue sparkly nail polish and the boys, some of them, just walk about with their shoes always untied.  I just tied some boy’s sneaker yesterday.  

Typically I enter Jill Rickert’s room around 9:30, which is right after snack time.  I know it is after snack time because the carpet I sit on is often littered with graham cracker crumbs or little pieces of granola bar wrappers.  I go to Mrs. Rickert’s room to teach her second graders the fundamentals of computer programing and math.  Second graders learning how to program computers, can that be true?  Well, yes...it is true.  With the help of iPads and the app, “Hopscotch”, students are learning things, interesting things--and they seem to enjoy it.  Students are learning how to make the avatar of their choosing draw a square, a rectangle and just yesterday, students drew circles.  To draw a square students need to know that squares have 4 equal sides and four equal angles.  The whole concept of a 90 degree angle is really not something they are taught until they are older.  My colleague, Mark Carls, and I have taught students how to draw a square and to draw a diagonal line in the square.  To do this, students had to learn about rotating a certain angle and specifically they had to figure out what half of 90 degrees is.  

Students have had some real “aha moments.”  I recall a day a couple weeks ago when a student created a square, which was the task or prompt I had given the students.  To keep the student learning, thinking and active, I asked her to “make the lines of her square thicker.  She made a mistake.  She changed the line thickness by moving over the “change line width” block to the end of her code.  She could not figure out why it would not work.  Eventually, after thinking it through, she realized that when you change your code at the end, nothing happens because nothing is being executed at the end of the code.  She realized that if she moved the “change line width” to the front of her code it worked.  I heard the student, who was asked to get ready to go to gym, get up, walk over to Mrs. Rickert and say, “I figured it out all by myself.”  You could just feel the confidence and self-esteem in this child grow. 

According to statistics at code.org, by the year 2020, there will be one million more computing jobs than there will be students to fill them.  We need to teach our students programming.  It will prepare them to get jobs that either don’t exist yet or already exist but are just unknown.  For many people just the words computer programming sends a chill of fear up and down their spine.  If we continue to teach students from a young age computer programming, that “chill of fear” will be a thing of the past.          

By: Rick Weinberg, CA BOCES Model Schools and Technology Integrator at Cattaraugus-Little Valley Central School

Jamie Edwards, the Spanish Teacher at Hinsdale, engages her 8th through 12th grade students in their own learning by utilizing a Voicethread account, a Voicethread App and ipads for each student.  Her project-based Learning approach allows each student to research and present their own project about a Spanish-speaking country.  Mrs. Edwards also puts her lessons, and other visual materials, on Voicethread...recording her voice as well as using the “ipevo” camera for capturing her instruction. She also uploads images and Powerpoint slides.  This enables differentiation of instruction and help for individual students as they list their concerns and questions on their “Pasaporte” exit slip at the end of the day.  The teacher can find the resource she needs at a moment’s notice and review any information the student was unsure of.

Some comments I heard from students were:

 “the ipad turns on quickly so there no waste of instruction time.”

“This research has expanded my Spanish vocabulary and showed me places I have never seen before.”

“This is more hands-on and a better study tactic.”

By:  Maggie Jensen, Staff Specialist Media