Coding with Code.org and Scratch

I recently visited the code.org website and took part in their Hour of Code activities.  I was a little hesitant heading into the activity because my only coding experience before this was a Java coding class that I took way back in high school.  I remember having a hard time grasping the coding language and that it was one of my least favorite classes at the time.  However, I also know how powerful and useful coding can be so I wanted to give coding another try.  

The Hour of Code Activity that I chose to work on was Code Your Own Sports Game.  I chose this activity because it was listed as one of the coding activities for grades 2-5, which are the grades that I am targeting to teach, so I thought it would be helpful to see the kinds of activities that would be relevant for my students.  In addition, I saw that this activity used block coding which seems to make more sense to me as someone who didn't love my previous coding experience.

  

As part of the Code Your Own Sports game activity I first watched the tutorial that showed me how to complete the basic steps.  I was able to change the background depending on which sports I picked.  I was able to make the ball bounce off of the walls and make a noise when it hit things.  I learned how to control the movements of the player (moving left and right and at different speeds).  By the end, I was much more comfortable understanding how to move blocks of code around to achieve my desired outcome, though admittedly the games were still very simple.  

After completing the Hour of Code activity I moved on to Scratch, and an activity called Animations that Talk.  Even though I only had one hour of experience using block coding, I already felt way more confident as I created my animation on Scratch.  I found the tabs on the left panel to be pretty intuitive as far as finding the commands that I wanted to be able to use (in order to control how my characters moved "Motion" tab, what their voice sounded like/what they said "Text to Speech" tab, and how loud the various sounds were "Sounds" tab).  

Eventually, I was able to create a scene where the cat walked up to a cave and talked with a bear, before the bear chased the cat away from "his" cave.  Again, I know that my scene was pretty simple relative to what can be coded, but I felt like I made a lot of progress over a short period of time.  I definitely have a better feeling towards coding than I did before completing these two activities.  I look forward to revisiting these sites to try and continue to make progress and learn more about coding.  Hopefully, as I get more comfortable and knowledgeable I will be able to figure out how to best utilize these sites for introducing my future students to block coding.  I think that if I had been introduced to sites like these when I was younger I might feel very different about coding now as an adult.