Code spark how to#

Code spark how to#

Since there's no in-app help or directions by design (which does make it accessible to more students), kids have to figure out what to do and how to do it on their own. Students use visual and audio cues to complete all of the challenges.ĬodeSpark Academy is a fun game for young students to see loops, conditionals, events, and so forth in action, and it can easily be integrated into an elementary classroom. Kids won't actually see any of the language of programming or write actual code, but they'll drag and drop commands into place to control the game, giving them a picture of what's involved behind the scenes, so to speak, in the video games they play. For older students who may struggle with literacy or for English language learners (ELLs), a benefit of this app is that there is almost no reading required. Teachers can easily track their students' progress via the dashboard. Once a class is created, teachers can set up the app on classroom devices so that students can play the game without any complicated login procedures or passwords. Important coding concepts like loops, conditionals, sequences, and events are introduced with multiple challenges that build in complexity. In the Create/Design and Code section, challenges are more open-ended, with students combining the concepts they learned in more original ways.įor teachers, codeSpark Academy allows for the creation of classes and the tracking of student progress in key coding skill areas. Kids must complete one level to advance to the next, and they receive one, two, or three stars based on how efficiently they use the commands levels can be replayed for a higher score. Kids drag and drop commands - represented by visual blocks of code from the Scratch programming language - into the correct order to animate a personalized character to collect coins or rescue lost pets by navigating around obstacles. CodeSpark Academy is a simple game-based app for learning about coding concepts.