I tried something new last week with my Honors Programming students. I feel like they need more practice problem solving and writing short bits of code so I sent them to Code Hunt and had them go at it. Their interest perked up a bit more when they found out I like to do those puzzles for fun. At least one student told me he was going to do more when he got home. Long term we’ll see how it goes. I’m pretty sure at least one student found some answers on the Internet though. Not ideal but as long as most of them try most of the puzzles on their own it could work. On the other hand creating my own puzzles to match the curriculum and for which they likely could not find answers on the Internet might be even better. And it looks like that can be done.
I found the Code Hunt Designer manual and will give trying to create my own levels this week. I also want to try out Code Hunt with Office Mix. There are a couple of samples (
if statement lesson or this substring lesson) that look good. I see a lot of “flipped classroom” possibilities here but I also see these tools are making it easer to make accommodations to different learning styles and paces. For me it is not about technology for the sake of technology but using technology to teach differently and better. We’ll see how things work.
Oh and Microsoft is running a Code Hunt based contest as part of this year’s Imagine Cup. I need to tell my students about this. Read more at the Imagine Cup Code Hunt page.
- WHO CAN COMPETE? Students 16 and older worldwide
- WHAT'S THE TEAM SIZE? Individual Challenge
- WHEN? Challenge #2 Begins October 18th
- WHAT CAN YOU WIN? $1,000 for first place
I have a couple of Office Mixes that use Code Hunt now.
More coming soon.
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