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App of the Week: Google’s great free coding app

Posted By Stephen Noonoo On In App of the Week,Featured App of the Week,IT Management,Teaching & Learning | Comments Disabled
cs first
Ed. note: App of the Week picks are now being curated by the editors of Common Sense Education [1], which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. Click here [2]to read the full app review.

Google CS First [3]

 

What’s It Like? Google CS First is an online platform for creating, managing, and teaching a middle school computer science (CS) program. There are currently 72 programming explorations and lessons across nine domains (such as arts, gaming, sports, storytelling, and social media). Each lesson is ready to go out of the box and includes a minute-by-minute teacher script, student instructions, example projects, materials (with solution guides), and more. The site also features comprehensive help guides for everything from setting up and maintaining a club to tips for classroom management and discipline issues.

Price: Free

Grades: 4-8

Rating: 4/5

Pros: Fantastic lesson plans, turnkey resources, and club-organization tools make it easy to build a great CS program with little work or prior experience.

Cons: Lessons still rely heavily on watching a video and replicating procedures rather than exploring, plus some tricky setup is required.

Bottom line: If your middle school doesn’t have a CS program, now you do! It’s really that easy, and available content will only grow as time goes on.