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Get Ready for the Hour of Code 2018!

Oct 31, 2018

It’s November, so it’s the perfect time to get ready for the Hour of Code, coming up December 3-9. This year’s theme from Code.org is the ever-appealing notion of CREATIVITY. Thus far, the Hour of Code has reached over 600,000,000 participants, but let’s help reach over 1 BILLION this year!

We have several ways to help you get prepared for this year’s event:

Take an online Teach Wonder course

First, you may have missed it — but at the beginning of this school year, we released our second online professional learning Teach Wonder course, Introduction to Coding & Robotics with Cue, designed for middle school teachers. Both of our Teach Wonder online 12-hour courses have been designed for the classroom teacher who is new to the idea of teaching coding and robotics. We tried to illustrate why computer science skills are crucial for the future of work and how many of the instructional strategies align to what you already are doing in the classroom.

From learning theory to classroom setup, from project-based learning to formative assessment, we have curated some robust articles and engaging videos to help you establish a solid foundation of understanding to bring coding and robotics into your classroom successfully. We provide many opportunities for application and reflection via FlipGrid videos and an online Teach Wonder community.

We have talked with educators near and far who say that they are either working through the course on their own — you have 6 months to complete it — or that they have formed a cohort in their school and are taking time to host a group discussion after each of the six modules.

Check out each course’s syllabus at www.teachwonder.com. You can purchase the course alone or bundle it with a robot for special savings. And check to see if we’re working with a partner in your state for extra special savings.

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Then, participate in one of five ways

Whether you are new to coding and robotics or a fearless veteran at this point, the Hour of Code week is a great time to introduce it to your whole school community and challenge everyone to get more involved in computer science. We like to say that Dash, Dot, and Cue provide opportunities for “parallel learning.” Kids and adults alike can learn side by side.

Last year, we posted activities for grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8 on our site’s Hour of Code pages. This year, we have added brand new activity packets for Dash and Cue. Go ahead and review them before the Hour of Code. Consider downloading and using our free printable resources in one of the five following ways:

  1. Host a coding or robotics themed lunch or after-school workshop for your teachers. Serve some delicious “bytes” while they try their hands at some of our activities to get themselves more comfortable and familiar before they introduce the ideas in their classes.
  2. Then, designate an official hour of code at your school, where all classes across all grades and subjects are focused on coding and robotics for 60 solid minutes. Better yet, carve out an hour a day in all classrooms during the week of December 3rd. Start Monday morning with an unplugged activity and then move to more hands-on, creative problem-solving challenges over the following four days.
  3. Create a buddy event between an older grade and a younger grade one day. Have pairs of kids buddy up to learn from one another. Peer-to-peer learning can be so powerful and rewarding!
  4. Encourage families to get involved! Send some of the activity packets home for family members to tackle together. Have students share out the next morning about what their families did.
  5. Organize a culminating family-friend event and invite your whole school community — teachers, students, siblings, and parents — to participate in some STEM-rich fun. Set up stations and empower students to be the leaders to demonstrate all they’ve learned while helping others to learn something new.

Win a Dash Mirrorball Trophy (what!?!)

It’s true! In celebration of Hour of Code, we are hosting a Dancing with the Robots video contest. Simply post a video of your robot dancing (or you all dancing with the robots) on Twitter @WonderWorkshop with the hashtags #FunWithWonder and #HourOfCode now through December 31. We will choose a winner to receive a one-of-a-kind Dash mirrorball trophy.

Finally, level up with our Cue robot

Each year, we offer special promotions in honor of the Hour of Code. And this year is no exception. From November 5 to December 14, you will receive one or more free Cue robots when you purchase one of the following school packs. While designed with middle schoolers in mind, Cue is the next robot for kids familiar with Dash and looking for even more of a coding and robotics challenge.

Elementary packs:

Middle school packs:

Let us know how your Hour of Code activities go! Share your successes @WonderWorkshop with the hashtags #HourOfCode and #FunWithWonder.

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Wonder League Robotics Competition FAQ | Year 8

Hello, robotics enthusiasts! If you’re here, you’re probably as excited as we are about the 8th Annual Wonder League Robotics Competition! To help you and your teams have the best possible experience competing this year, we wanted to share answers to some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

Who Can Compete:

Any kid, anywhere in the world, ages 6-8 (Innovator Cup) and 9-12 (Pioneer Cup). There are two age brackets: 6-8 and 9-12 and team members have to fall within the age category at some point during the competition. Participants must be the qualifying age for their bracket on the last day of the competition, but if they gain a year during the competition, that’s OK. They won’t age out! 

Competition Brackets:

  • Innovator Cup (Age 6-8)
  • Pioneer Cup (Age 9-12)

What Makes a Team:

A team is made up of a supervising adult coach, and one or more children (up to 5). That’s right, kids can compete solo, but a coach who is 18+ is needed to help with the submission process. For multi-kid teams, each member must be in the same age bracket. Coaches may have multiple teams and can register all their teams after registering as a coach. Please keep in mind that each team will need a separate Class Connect registration.

Note: Younger students may participate in the 9-12 age category, but please be aware that the missions have been designed with older students and advanced coding skills in mind.

What a Team Needs to Compete:

Class Connect subscription

The team is made up of a supervising adult coach and one to five members

  1. Compatible device
  2. 5′ x 8′ mat of 30cm squares and basic prototyping materials
  3. Teams in 6-8 & 9-12 age brackets will need a Dash robot
  4. Internet access to download and upload materials

Teams will need one Dash robot: https://store.makewonder.com/products/dash

Check Device Compatibility here: https://www.makewonder.com/compatibility

We will be offering a mat image that you are welcome to use and print with your local printer, but teams are absolutely encouraged to make their own if they prefer. For more on how to make your own mat, check out this blog post.

Coaches will, of course, need internet access to download the apps and keep up with the competition as it progresses, and may want to print out some kid-facing materials that we will provide at each stage.

Class Connect Subscription:

To register for the 8th Wonder League Robotics Competition requires a subscription to Class Connect, providing additional resources like standards-aligned content assignable right inside a student’s Blockly app. Learn more about Class Connect here.

If you already have a Class Connect subscription, you have access to register a team, based on your student license amount. If you have more than one team of 5 students, you will need to purchase another Coach Success Pack or consider a larger subscription to accommodate more teams and students.

  1. A Coach Success Pack provides:
    Participation in the WLRC for up to 5 students
    Access to all Missions
    Full access to Class Connect, (including Math Activities and Dash’s Neighborhood), for 5 students and 1 teacher for 7 months
    A discount code for a Dash robot from our online store at https://store.makewonder.com

Please note: Teams will need a physical Dash robot to complete the Missions.
The Coaches’ Dashboard in Class Connect will help our coaches register and manage their team(s). The dashboard will be your one-stop shop for all Wonder League Robotics Competition management. You will be able to access the Coaches’ Corner–where all competition-related content and resources will be hosted–the Heartbeat community forum, and all the submission forms right there on the Dashboard.

Accessing Missions for the Innovator Cup and Pioneer Cup:

Once your purchase is completed for Class Connect, you will receive an email to activate your Class Connect license.

Once this license is activated, you will be able to register yourself as a coach and register your teams. This is done on your portal page under the Robotics Competition tab.

Once your team/teams are registered, you will get an additional email from CoAssemble, our partner hosting the missions this year. This email will state you have been registered for the “2022-2023 Coaches Corner Course”.

Click on the link to be redirected to the CoAssemble website, and you will see the course and can access the Coaches’ Corner Guide as well as the Missions (available November 3, 2022).

Still having trouble accessing all the resources in the Coaches’ Corner? If you have previously had a license to Class Connect and registered as a coach, and have not seen Coaches’ Corner added to your CoAssemble list of courses, please email us at support@makewonder.com, and we will provide assistance.

Last Year’s Missions:

Taking a peek at last year’s missions might help you get a sense of what the competition is like. Just sign in with your Class Connect subscription and register as a coach to take a peek at the previous years by going to the Coaches’ Corner and selecting the desired year.

2022-23 Wonder League Robotics Competition Milestone Dates:

Here are important milestone dates to keep in mind as coaches develop timelines for teams competing in the 2022-23 Wonder League Robotics Competition.

 

  1. October 21, 2022: Student Team Registration Opens
  2. November 3, 2022: Round One Opens + Five Mission Released
  3. January 13, 2023: Student Team Registration Closes
  4. January 27, 2023: Mission Evidence Submission Closes 
  5. January 28-March 5, 2023: Invitational Round Notification 
  6. February 6, 2023: Invitational Round Opens + Final Mission Released
  7. March 24, 2023: Invitational Round Submission Due 
  8. April 10, 2023: People’s Choice Voting Opens 
  9. April 21, 2023: People’s Choice Voting Closes 
  10. May 4, 2023: 2022-23 Wonder League Robotics Competition Winner Announcement

NEW Award Category: WLRC People’s Choice Award

Teams may opt in to participate in the WLRC People’s Choice Award category by creating a :30 second video explaining the Team’s Invitational Round Final Mission solution that will be shared with the community at www.makewonder.com/classroom/robotics-competition/ in an “online crowd vote” competition. The WLRC People’s Choice Award allows teams to share and celebrate their work in the WLRC and encourage community support in voting for their team. This is an optional category for teams to enter and will not impact scoring of the Invitational Round submission as they will be judged by STEM and Coding experts using a published rubric.

Children’s Privacy:

We take our participants’ privacy very seriously and comply with COPPA when collecting any information. In the invitational round we ask only for the students’ first names, and request parents’ permission. For those that make it into the Invitational Round, we ask for full names, again with permission. We are never marketing, selling to, or corresponding with children. All contact is through the proxy of the coach.