App of the Week

Lightbot 

I recently stumbled upon this app and thought it a great tool for teaching code in the PYP. 

Programming, or Coding, is simply the way people tell a computer what to do using instructions that the computer understands.

Lightbot offers an easy way for kids to learn coding concepts such as Loops, If then statements, and the like without typing or coding.

In Lightbot players program a robot using icons to move round a grid and light up colored squares within the grid.

It doesnt matter whether instructions are icons or words, students are actually programming when they are playing Lightbot.

The game is additive and becomes more challenging as you move onto the next puzzle. I trialed it out with a few students and they seemed to love it.

Lightbot teaches a few specific coding constructs as well, common to many programming languages. The technical terms for those are: 

Sequential Control Flow: Commands get executed one after the other. 

Procedures: Blocks of code for taking advantage of re-usable patterns. 

Loops: Blocks of code specifically used for patterns that repeat, or 'loop'. 

Debugging: Running and re-running a program, testing solutions, fixing mistakes. 

Have a go and see what you think.