We are happy to announce the release of three more hour of code activities. These are: 1. Planetoids & Lunar Descent (which are clones of the classic games Asteroids and Lunar Lander)  2. Pong & Bonk.io and 3. Pi day!

These activities have been submitted to the review process at hourofcode.com so they can be included alongside dozens of other activities on https://hourofcode.com/us/learn which is the world’s most visited website for K12 computer science education. This includes “The Physics of Video Games” activity that we submitted last year that is currently listed on https://hourofcode.com/us/learn After this activity was posted to hourofcode.com in November 2017 we received e-mails from educators from around the world who found it and wanted to know about other activities we created.

We are also happy to announce that all our new (and old) activities are now compatible with iPads! With some help from OSU’s ASC Tech and an iPad we obtained for testing from OSU’s Digital Flagship initiative, we were able to figure out a workaround for some issues related to the iPad external keyboard.

We are offering a mostly-online summer professional development course through Ohio State this July 2018. Thanks to grant funds we can offer 1 or 2 graduate credit hours for FREE to high school physics or physical science teachers who need graduate credits for their accreditation. The course will be administered through regular video chats and an online system for completing the coding activities. Ideally there would be one face-to-face meeting in Columbus or OSU’s Marion campus with each participant in the course. If you have never taken classes at OSU before there will be a $60 registration fee. The grant would cover the remaining tuition costs.

Please fill out our contact form for more information about the opportunity. Teachers can also participate for CEU credits. We will try to accommodate teachers from non-physics disciplines as well.

We will post weekly updates on upcoming events, teacher professional development opportunities and works in progress on the newly created STEMcoding twitter account! Follow us there!

If you would prefer to get monthly updates on the STEMcoding project, please sign up for our e-mail list

Following the success of the STEMcoding hour of code activity, we are continuing to record coding tutorial videos and posting them to the STEMcoding YouTube Channel (go.osu.edu/STEMtube)    Importantly, this youtube channel features a high percentage of underrepresented groups in STEM.

Throughout 2018, we plan to regularly record new STEM-focused coding tutorial videos aimed at the high school level. Please subscribe to the STEMcoding YouTube channel or follow us on twitter to get updates on new videos!

Computer Science Education Week was December 4-10 this year, which was marked by events across the globe. As a result, many more teachers and students than usual went searching for coding activities on hourofcode.com/learn  According to the site data (see below) this increased the traffic to the STEMcoding “Physics of Video Games!” activity by about 7 times! We also got e-mails every day from educators asking for access to the lesson guides. It was a great week for the STEMcoding project!

It’s official! the STEMcoding hour of code submission has been approved by code.org and posted to hourofcode.com where students and teachers across the country (and even the world!) will more easily find it. It joins a handful of other science-focused activities and it is essentially the first physics-focused coding activity on hourofcode.com which is the most popular computer science education page on the internet!

Recently, the STEMcoding project recorded videos to accompany the first few exercises in order to submit to hourofcode.com which is a national website for computer science education. The tutorials explain the physics of video games and how to code simple but fun games for high school aged students (9-12th grade). If approved, our tutorial will be the first physics-focused set of activities on the hour of code.

Undergraduates from OSU and the University of Mt. Union star in the recordings. Try it out at go.osu.edu/hourofcode

Funding from an OSU connect & collaborate grant very much helped in creating our hour of code submission.

Thanks to the hard work of former Reynoldsburg STEM high school teacher Joe Griffith, we now have detailed solutions and teacher guides for all of our physics exercises (currently there are 15!).

The link to the teacher guides is available near the top of go.osu.edu/physics_coding but you’ll have to e-mail Prof. Chris Orban for the password.

An important aspect of the teacher guides is that many of the exercises can be used without having the students code. For example, students can just change the parameters in the program and see the effect in order to strengthen their conceptual knowledge.

Another important detail of the teacher guides is that Joe Griffith comes from a “modeling instruction” background, which means that he is an expert in developing classroom activities that are active learning and participatory.

This is a big landmark in our effort to provide well-thought out coding resources to teachers. Thanks again to Joe Griffith for putting this together!

In June 2017 and again in August 2017, STEMcoding partnered with the ASPIRE physics camp for high school girls led by OSU Prof. Amy Connolly. As one of the main tasks of the camp, participants worked through the first few programming activities from the STEMcoding project. Many of the students chose to spend more time on the programming activities when given extra project time!