Blog 6: Creating Coding Lesson Plans

 The beginning of this blog will be a brief reflection on my first five genius hours studying applications of mathematics through code. 

Takeaways:

1. I don't think my research into R and R Studio went very well. The code was tricky to learn for a newcomer and it's not intuitive, namely it doesn't connect well with traditional math found in the grade 9 curriculum, for example. 
2. My friend, Lucas, advised I should use Python instead. He's probably right and if I were to do this again I will use Python. 
3. I definitely feel like one of those coding teachers that students will hate or will turn them away from coding as a field of study because my technical knowledge right now isn't strong. 
4. The video below is a transcript of an RedditAMA where high school students talk about their experiences learning coding in high school, and an expert answering their questions. 
5. My takeaways from this video that there are some programs that work very well, like Scratch and Python that can build from blocking actions into real code. 

I've learned that students won't want to see the "real" coding stuff when they walk into Grade 9, and the feeling of play that comes from Scratch will be a lot better for them, especially if their teacher can't figure it out. 

As a result of all this, I will be making Lesson Plans that students can complete using Scratch (but also higher order coding softwares if they prefer), taking hints from the first five blogs I made on the topic, so they're not completely useless. This is a soft reset for my genius hour project because by this point I felt like I wouldn't have a product to show at the end of it. I have a few weeks left, I can still make the most of this project. 

Here is my first lesson!