Code Haven

Code Haven Newsletter 3rd Issue • Winter 2019 In this issue: Code Haven Board Updates Curriculum Updates TeachTech Recap Project Fair 2019 Code Haven Board Updates As Code Haven reaches more classrooms, we are expanding the board to accommodate the growth! Congratulations to our new board members who are working to enrich our curriculum and events! Presidents: Stephanie Bang and Daniel Urke Lead Events Director: Darwin Leuba Events Directors: Gabriel Buchdahl and Bernardo Trevisan Curriculum Advisor: Caitlin Westerfield Curriculum Directors: Sara Lewis and David Gold Treasurer: Amanda Lee Mentor Manager: Taylor Harris Outreach Director: Rachel Sterneck Senior Advisors: Sanya Nijhawan and Omid Rooholfada Curriculum Updates Week 8-11 The second semester of Code Haven is focused on project design and app building. By the end of April, each student will have built their own app to showcase at our Project Fair! For the past few weeks, the students have been working with MIT App Inventor, the platform they will use to make their own apps. The students have built a variety of apps with MIT App Inventor, and have had the chance to demo them on Android phones!   Week 8: Intro to App Inventor Mentors demonstrated that students can create mobile apps with MIT App Inventor and then demo the apps on a mobile device Students built HelloPurr, an app that plays a "meow" sound when a photo of a cat is pressed Students began a "scavenger hunt" of MIT App Inventor, where they completed a series of tasks that exposed them to MIT App Inventor's exciting variety of tools for making apps Week 9: Continuing App Inventor Students completed their MIT App Inventor "scavenger hunts" and improved their HelloPurr apps based on what they learned from exploring MIT App Inventor Students built a translator app that allowed them to type a sentence or phrase to be translated between nearly 50 languages! Additionally, the students programmed the translator app to include text-to-speech and play the translations out loud Week 10: Review After a few weeks off from Code Haven, the students and mentors worked together to review concepts from last semester We reviewed conditionals, loops, variables, and events, and played Kahoot with the students to give them the chance to check-in with their progress The students built TalkToMe, an app that uses text-to-speech to play a message of their choice out loud when a button is pressed! Week 11: Intro to Project Building In preparation for the Project Fair, we introduced to students to the projects they will be working on  Mentors introduced the three app ideas that the students can choose to build upon Fortune Cookie App: Students may create an app that gives many different fortunes. They will write their own fortunes and pieces of advice for the app Painting App: Students may create a painting app, just like Snapchat’s drawing feature! They will choose pictures and colors to customize the app with Mario App: Students may create a game where Mario chases mushrooms! They will add additional features of their choice, including scoring and levels Students completed a project design worksheet to brainstorm what they want to build and how they will go about doing so! Curriculum Overview: Code Haven is a 16-week program that focuses on increasing middle school students' access to computer science. Our lessons emphasize unplugged activities and hands-on coding to ensure that students develop a strong understanding of CS concepts. For the past few months, we've been teaching core CS and programming concepts with Scratch. For more detailed information about the first seven lessons, check out the previous issues of our newsletter here and here!  TeachTech 2018 Recap! Code Haven hosted its second TeachTech on Saturday, December 8th! TeachTech is a free conference that aims to help K-8 teachers incorporate computer science into their curriculum. The event focused on teaching fundamental CS concepts in an exciting and engaging way, featuring workshops about using MIT App Inventor, Scratch, and robots in the classroom. Our Opening Keynote Speaker, Nathaniel Granor, is a Yale alum and Lead Program Manager of TEALS East Region at Microsoft. TEALS is a Microsoft Philanthropies program that helps high schools develop sustainable CS programs, and Nathaniel spoke about the importance of increasing students' access to CS education. Sanya Nijhawan, Caitlin Westerfield, and Amanda Lee demonstrated their "Hello, World! Coding Fundamentals and How to Teach Them" presentation that they had the opportunity to share at the Society of Women Engineers conference! We then featured a variety of talks in two different hour-long workshop sessions. Jason Ward, a teacher at Strong 21st Century Communications Magnet School who has designed a STEM lab in his school from the ground up, led a workshop that introduced a model of teaching, demonstrating how computer science and robotics are being used in K-4 classes. Kate Fractal, a computer science teacher, former electrical engineer, and computer science education program developer, provided insights on how to introduce data structures to middle school students. Rachel Smith, a Computer Integration Teacher at Newton Middle School, as well as a member of Connecticut's SDE CS Advisory Council, CECA Board, and CoSN's Emerging Technology Committee, spoke about CS integration decisions in the classroom. Additionally, Code Haven members Amanda Lee, Sanya Nijhawan, Rachel Sterneck, Taylor Harris, Caitlin Westerfield, and Omid Rooholfada led workshops on using Code.org, Scratch, MIT App Inventor, and unplugged activities in middle school classrooms. Finally, we concluded the event with a Q&A panel of CS educators, closing presentations, and raffles for attendees! Educators left TeachTech with an understanding of how to integrate CS into the classroom in an exciting and pedagogical way! Thank you to all the wonderful speakers and volunteers who helped to make TeachTech a success, including our sponsors Makey Makey, Sphero, Makeblock, and Yale School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. We hope to see you all at next year's TeachTech! You can find more photos and information from TeachTech on our Facebook page! Project Fair 2019 Description: Join us for Code Haven's annual Project Fair to take a look at what our students have made! Code Haven is a Yale undergraduate student organization that brings weekly computer science lessons to New Haven middle school students. Over the past two semesters, Code Haven mentors have been using MIT App Inventor and Scratch to introduce middle schoolers to computer science concepts. The curriculum culminates in a final project where students built their own apps! Students from Bishop Woods School, Fair Haven School, Wexler-Grant Community School, East Rock Community Magnet School, Celentano Biotech, Health, and Medical Magnet School, and Lincoln-Bassett School will showcase their apps at the project fair. We will also have several computer science booths run by Yale students to feature exciting applications of computer science, as well as demos and raffles of various educational technologies. The Project Fair will be at Bishop Woods Magnet School on Friday, April 26th from 10:30am to 1:30pm. Educators, guardians, relatives, siblings, and friends of students in participating schools are encouraged to attend! If you don't fit into any of the above categories and have already talked to Code Haven about attending, you are welcome to join us. Anyone else interested in attending should reach out to us at codehavenyale@gmail.com. Schedule: 10:30am - 10:40am: Attendee Arrival 10:40am - 11:30am: Presentations Session 1 11:30am - 12:20pm: Lunch (provided) 12:20pm - 1:10pm: Presentations Session 2 1:10pm - 1:30pm: Closing Ceremony and Raffle WHO ARE WE Code Haven is a Yale student run organization that focuses on increasing access to computer science among middle school students. We currently teach introductory computer science in seven classrooms across New Haven. Learn More