easy middle school curriculum

Hi everyone,

I just ordered 9 Sparkis and am getting ready to develop a curriculum for my 7th and 8th graders. To be honest, the “true” code looks a bit difficult for them. I know this is a drag and drop option, but do we have to purchase that?

Anyone have any real experience with doing Sparki at Middle School? Thank you :smiley:

Hi,
i am interested in using the Sparki for K5 as well. I am building a curriculum around software, sensors and tinkering with design. i am hoping that the people at Arcbotics will share what they did with students while developing the product. Maybe we can work together to build the learning.

Bill

@suereagin:
We have the drag-and-drop block programming test available here for windows:

@Bill:
We don’t have specific curriculum, but what we did for the pilot classes was focus on a new part each class, building up their capabilities part by part, introducing programming concepts as needed.

We started the course by introducing how to get code uploaded, then how to make changes to code. After that, at the the start of each class we would give them a basic piece of code to start with that they would modify and expand to do ever more complex things. One example of a class would be, we start off displaying the amount of light, then beeping when the light was over a certain value, then moving forward if it was bright, then following the light. By the end of the class they have a pretty good grasp of what light sensors are, how they work and what you can do with them.

A new technology curriculum is due for implementation in Australia next year. I think Sparki could form a good basis for the upper primary. Thoughts?