To celebrate National Computer Science Week, 3 third graders at Clarks Creek Elementary presented their project, “Learning Fun” in the finals of the NexTech CSforGood competition. This project, which they had to work on outside of class time because they’re not in the same class, combines programs that they use in class every day with activities and games. Their sponsor, Mrs. Erin Bangel, helped the students when they needed it, but their website idea, design, and building was all theirs.
These students said that sometimes when a teacher puts up a link to a program on the board, they can’t always spell the link correctly. This solves that problem and keeps them in compliance with the technology department, while also giving students access to educational fun and resources.
When discussing their problem and solution, the students said, " We are lucky to have a Chrome Book for each student in our school and we really enjoy using them. We have had to learn about ways to be safe on the computer. As a student, it can be really hard to find websites that we are able to use that don’t have lots of ads, distracting videos, or confusing links that take you to other websites. Our teachers work hard to show us websites that we are allowed to use, but sometimes they are not websites that kids want to use or enjoy using. After talking to other third grade students in our classrooms, we knew we were not the only ones who had this problem. We decided that we would make our own learning website that students could use. It would be a meant for students to use and it would have games, videos, and other activities that would help students get excited for learning! We wanted a website for students that would be safe and also educational so that our teachers will want us to use it at home or at school."
To check out “Learning Fun”, click here: https://sites.google.com/plainfield.k12.in.us/cslearningfun/home
Once their site was created, they submitted it to NexTech’s CSforGood competition. CSforGood was founded with the intention that students from elementary, middle and high schools will submit a technology project that they created to demonstrate how computer science can be used for good when applied to real problems that affect their schools and communities. In the Elementary Division, our Clarks Creek students faced 3 other teams in the competition finals.
Judges from the computer science and tech world spoke to all competitors, asking question about their design-thinking process.
While our students didn’t win the competition, they created life-long skillsets that will continue to be utilized. Additionally, they hadn’t even completed their project for this year before they were talking about what they want to do for next year!
We’re constantly “Bringing Joy to Learning” and these students certainly enJOYed this exciting competition!