Basic information
The price is 80$ per month, or 200$ for the complete course
Interactive classes are held once a week
The groups are up to six children
The total duration is 12 weeks
What do you need
computer connected to the Internet
goodwill
How do we learn?
The online course is a mix of online and offline activities. Each week contains the following five phases:
At the beginning of the week you will receive an email with preparatory material.
The material contains:
- Introductory video
- Material describing the main activity
- Video where the main activity is described
- A lesson without a computer
Here we are counting on parental assistance. Show them an introductory video, print material if possible, and play a video of the main activities.
Every week is followed by a lesson without a computer. This is an optional activity, but definitely fun and rewarding.
Computer-free lessons are conceived as family board games, which connect programming concepts with real-life concepts.
We build a positive attitude towards new complex problems, mistakes and failures. One learns from mistakes, without failure there is no success.
Your assistance is needed to let them see a video of the main activities and encourage them to start even before the interactive class itself.
This is the online part where, through the platform, all the children who are part of the group talk to their lecturer. The interactive class does not last longer than 45 minutes. Within this part, the lecturer asks questions, gives answers, explains and gives additional challenges to students.
At the end of each interactive lesson, we review the project. We ask what was good, what else can be done and share the project to allow a little creative pride.
Online Programming Course for Children from 9 to 12 Years
The main goal of all our courses is for children to acquire skills and ways of thinking that will help them cope with the challenges of the 21st century with confidence.
Children learn programming concepts directly, but the way they apply that knowledge is what makes a huge difference. They use programming as an instrument of expression. They realize their own ideas within projects that are thematically predetermined (animations, music projects, interactive stories and games).
Projects defined in this way arouse different talents that encourage both logic and problem-solving techniques, but also creativity. We believe that the project of creating an interactive birthday card is far more interesting and applicable in relation to logical tasks that have only a correct or incorrect answer.
All age categories go through courses that last three months. After every three months, we declare a digi quarter, review everything we’ve done, hand out diplomas, and then move on, adding new thematic areas, new technologies, and more challenging projects.
The price is 80$ per month, or 200$ for the complete course.
You can read the details of the lesson method on the methodology page.
In short, each lesson is divided into phases that respect a couple of important principles. Every child is different, learns and adopts knowledge in their own way and has different interests. The first phase serves to interest them, through a game, performance, presentation or story, we try to win their attention.
This is followed by the research phase and the main activity. In this phase, they explore and actively create, program and engage both physically and mentally.
The phase of explanation and expansion follows. We help children who have coped more slowly, I give new challenges to children who have successfully performed the main activity.
Finally, the game phase follows. This phase is characterized by togetherness. They work, compete or have fun together. Everyone sees the works of others, inspires each other and gets new ideas. Since this phase happens at the end, parents often attend and contribute to the feeling of creative pride, which, along with togetherness, is the second basic goal of this phase.
What Are We Teaching
We do the visual programming language Scratch, but we develop a whole range of 21st century skills. We favor thematically diverse projects. Through the creation of animations, music projects, interactive stories and games, in addition to programming, we further develop talents for drawing, acting and music.
Lessons
Scratch Surprise
students will engage in an exploratory, hands-on experience with Scratch
10 Blocks
students will create a project with the constraint of only being able to use 10 blocks
About Me
students experiment with sprites, costumes, looks, backdrops, and sounds to create an interactive collage
Vernie Break Dance
student will create a program that makes a robot move and learn about the motors, timed turns and number turns
Going the Distance
students will program robot Vernie to start and stop before it hits something
The First Flight
students experiment with blocks to control the drone and create first program that controls a drone to fulfill a challenge
Drone Basketball
students will create a program that makes a drone score a basket and practice iterating in building up project creations
Build a Band
students will create a program that combines interactive sprites with interesting sounds
Square and Circle
students express their creativity by completing an arts-themed challenge
Music Video
students will create a project that combines animation and music by working on a self-directed music video project
The Ramp Challange
students will program Vernie to go up the ramp, stop at the top, then proceed down the other side without tipping over
The Moving Air Pad
We develop 21st Century Skills
We work on projects that are applicable and fun. We encourage experimentation and personal interests. As part of our robotics and programming course, we force a variety of topics, drawing, music, stories and games and a variety of technologies, tablets, lego robotics, blue bot floor robot. We connect with the physical world, test boundaries, and arouse interest in how the world around us works.
A programming mindset involves expressing an idea in a way that a computer can understand. This implies knowledge of basic programming concepts, but more importantly, knowledge of basic problem-solving techniques:
- break a big problem into several smaller ones (decomposition)
- notice similarities and differences (pattern recognition)
- separate the essential from the irrelevant (abstraction)
- organize precise order of instruction execution (algorithm)
Each class implies joint activity, creation in a team, sharing what has been done or a joint game. At every opportunity, we come up with stories that make the class more interesting and encourage mutual communication and socializing.
We always question everything. We look for cause-and-effect relationships, develop logic, and look for answers to questions such as why something doesn’t work, or why it works the way it does.
