Dear Partner Community,
Throughout the week of December 6-12 2021, classrooms around the world will celebrate Computer Science Education (CSEd) Week, and millions of students and educators will participate in Hour of Code. This fun, global movement was designed as part of a worldwide push to demystify, democratize, and spark interest in coding and computer science. Anyone can code, and with just one hour, students and teachers can discover that they are coders too.
And thanks to Microsoft Education partners, you can explore some of the best digital solutions and apps for engaging your students in STEM and computer science—whether it’s during CSEd Week or any day of the year.
Here are just a few:
Soundtrap for Education by Spotify aligns with STEM and computer science education by offering students a space to create and collaborate on audio projects. While students use Soundtrap to create audio projects to express themselves, they learn to embrace design thinking, approach problems with an open mind, seek innovation, and nurture their curiosity. Students can also use their Soundtrap audio projects to enhance their coding projects by exporting their audio, giving students an opportunity to create complex computer science artifacts.
With BookWidgets, teachers can create interactive exercises (widgets) and automatically grade assignments with over 30 different question types. The variety of the widgets and question types allow teachers to transform any traditional lesson into a digital one, and integration with Microsoft Teams allows teachers to follow up on student progress in real time. STEM teachers can use the hotspot image to indicate how machines work and use various types of math questions so students can answer with math symbols, all without being limited by their keyboards.
With the planning functionality in Haldor Education, fully integrated with Microsoft Teams, educators can easily create structured lessons with connected assignments based on STEM curriculum and learning goals. The assignments can be solved in Minecraft but the assessments—both formative and summative—can be handled in Haldor, giving teachers a great overview of all assignments and assessments. This makes it easier for teachers to follow up on student work and saves time that can be invested in students instead.
Learning math is about seeing connections between things. With FluidMath, all your representations of the same problem stay in the same workspace, interactively connected to one another: handwritten and typed math expressions, symbolic and numeric calculations, graphs, hand-drawn animated simulations, drawings, rich text descriptions, quizzes and worksheets, and videos.
FluidMath is available as a Microsoft Teams app and demonstrates the power of digital inking on Microsoft Windows-based devices like Surface.
Mindsets is a CODIE Award winning inquiry and collaboration learning platform that teaches students the application of math through real-world challenges, which is the foundation for successful STEM/CS learning and future careers. All Mindsets challenges are aligned to state math standards and assessments. Mindsets goes beyond math by sparking students' entrepreneurial and creative spirit to build skills for future success in the classroom and in life.
Make Hour of Code last all year
At Microsoft, we’re committed to continuing to provide accessible, engaging, and equitable computer science education experiences that open opportunities for youth today and in the future. We’re so inspired by the global community of dedicated educators and volunteers who continue to lead coding tutorials in classrooms and communities around the world to support students on their first steps toward learning how to code. Every student should have the opportunity to learn computer science.
Find a Microsoft Education partner today and access new Hour of Code lessons from Microsoft Education to make Hour of Code last all year long.
