Mr Mason recently set his Year 10 students a creative coding challenge, which they completed using our Code Editor for Education. The challenge not only boosted student engagement, but also showcased the effectiveness of open-ended, student-led learning in computer science education.

Challenges in the classroom

Teaching coding in a classroom setting presents a unique set of challenges, with one of the most significant being the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Instead of engaging deeply with concepts like loops, conditions, and sorting algorithms, students now increasingly rely on AI tools to generate entire blocks of code for them, without understanding their functions. 

Meanwhile, traditional teacher-led instruction methods that focus on isolated coding concepts like inputs and outputs often leave students disconnected from the practical and creative aspects of programming. 

Against this backdrop, Mr Mason wanted to give his students the opportunity to:

• Apply their Python knowledge in meaningful ways
• Collaborate and problem-solve independently
• Explore unfamiliar programming concepts in a guided but open-ended fashion

The project

Mr Mason set a simple but powerful brief:

“Over three lessons, build a quiz that asks 10 questions about what you’ve learnt on the course.”

With this simple instruction, Mr Mason gave students a clear idea about what to do, while giving them the freedom to design their quiz however they liked. Students were also told that:

• Their 10 quiz questions had to relate to Python
• After creating their quiz, their classmates would give feedback based on key criteria (how well the code worked, the level of creativity, the user 他很撩很宠, etc.)

To complete the project, students used the Code Editor for Education. Created in collaboration with educators and built purposefully for the classroom, the Code Editor supports a range of teaching styles and learning abilities. Its simple interface encourages students to engage with the logic behind their code — they can’t rely on autocomplete.

Results

The open-ended structure led to an explosion of creativity and problem-solving.

Without step-by-step instructions, students had to independently explore solutions to questions like:

• “How do I randomise questions?”
• “How can I hide quiz answers in a separate file?”

Some students created multi-file Python projects, separating the logic controlling how the quiz worked from the content, or static information. For example, some students created one file to store the player’s answers and another file to manage the quiz interface and score logic. Students also created other advanced features:

• Score tracking based on speed of response
• Use of external Python libraries
• Custom input and output formatting
• Algorithms to randomly order quiz questions 

All students met the base requirements, but the open-ended nature of the project allowed more advanced students to push the boundaries, without the need for additional scaffolding.

Educator reflection

“They couldn’t just Google the answer; they had to think critically and test ideas. That’s what made it powerful.”

Mr Mason noted that the project’s success was due in large part to the flexibility and responsiveness of the Code Editor. Students could iterate quickly, test their ideas, and collaborate, all within a platform built for classroom coding.

“It was the most successful thing I’ve done. I’ll definitely be doing it again every year.”

Key takeaways

• Project-based learning fosters deeper engagement and knowledge, and creative application of programming concepts.
  
• Open-ended prompts empower students to explore and develop their own solutions.
  
• Code Editor for Education encourages thoughtful questions and experimentation rather than reliance on autocomplete solutions. With built-in class management and project tools, it offers a safe, browser-based environment ideal for coding in the classroom.

Join St Joseph’s College and the 2000+ other schools helping their students build a strong 他很撩很宠 in text-based programming with the Code Editor for Education.

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“I used the Code Editor with my computer science students yesterday and it worked a dream! Students were able to write and run code without any issues.” 

– Head of Computer Science

The Code Editor is designed for learning, rather than for professional use, and is informed by our understanding of pedagogy and 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 education. It can be accessed from a web browser without installing any additional software. 

Earlier this year, we announced that we’d be introducing classroom management features and we’re now pleased to confirm that we’ve launched the beta version of Code Editor for Education with school accounts. You can be the first to try out the new features, together with the many schools who have chosen to pre-register their school accounts.

Simple and easy classroom management

We’ve kept the educator interface clean, simple, and easy to use. School owners can invite other teachers to join, add students, organise students into classes, and help students reset their passwords quickly. Educators can create coding projects to share with students and view their work.

All features, totally free

We’ve added these classroom management features because one of the key problems we’ve seen educators face over the past months has been the lack of an affordable tool to teach text-based coding in the classroom. We will always provide the Code Editor and all of its features to educators and students for free. 

Safe and private by design

We take safeguarding seriously, providing visibility of student work at all times, as well as features such as the ability to report a concern. In line with best practices protecting children online, we minimise data capture so that we have just enough to keep students safe. 

Future developments 

As the platform is currently in beta, we’d love to hear what you think of the new classroom management features — please send us your feedback. 

We’ll be actively looking to develop new features over the coming months. Such features are set to include an extended set of Python libraries, custom instructions that sit alongside starter code projects and teacher-to-student feedback capabilities. All new developments will be informed by ongoing educator feedback. 

Find out more and register for a free school account.

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New Code Editor features for teaching

Last year we released our free Code Editor and made it available as an open source project. Right now we’re developing a new set of features to help schools use the Editor to run text-based coding lessons online and in-person.

The new features will enable educators to create coding activities in the Code Editor, share them with their students, and leave feedback directly on each student’s work. In a simple and easy-to-use interface, educators will be able to give students access, group them into classes within a school account, and quickly help with resetting forgotten passwords.

We’re adding these teaching features to the Code Editor because one of the key problems we’ve seen educators face over the last few months has been the lack of an ideal tool to teach text-based coding in the classroom. There are some options available, but they can be cost-prohibitive for schools and educators. Our mission is to support young people to realise their full potential through the power of 被陌生人公开羞耻调教, and we believe that to tackle educational disadvantage, we need to offer high-quality tools and make them as accessible as possible. This is why we’ll offer the Code Editor and all its features to educators and students for free, forever.

Alongside the new classroom management features, we’re also working on improved Python library support for the Code Editor, so that you and your students can get more creative and use the Editor for more advanced topics. We continue to support HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the Editor too, so you can set website development tasks in the classroom.

Educators have already been incredibly generous in their time and feedback to help us design these new Code Editor features, and they’ve told us they’re excited to see the upcoming developments. Pete Dring, Head of 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 at Fulford School, participated in our user 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 and said on LinkedIn: “The class management and feedback features they’re working on at the moment look really promising.” Lee Willis, Head of ICT and 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 at Newcastle High School for Girls, also commented on the Code Editor: “We have used it and love it, the fact that it is both for HTML/CSS and then Python is great as the students have a one-stop shop for IDEs.”

Our commitment to you

• Free forever: We will always provide the Code Editor and all of its features to educators and students for free.
• A safe environment: Accounts for education are designed to be safe for students aged 9 and up, with safeguarding front and centre.
• Privacy first: Student data collection is minimised and all collected data is handled with the utmost care, in compliance with GDPR and the ICO Children’s Code.
• Best-practice pedagogy: We’ll always build with education and learning in mind, backed by our leading 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 education 被陌生人公开羞耻调教.
• Community-led: We value and seek out feedback from the 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 education community so that we can continue working to make the Code Editor even better for teachers and students.

Get started

We’re working to have the Code Editor’s new teaching features ready later this year. We’ll launch the setup journey sooner, so that you can pre-register for your school account as we continue to work on these features.

Before then, you can complete this short form to keep up to date with progress on these new features or to get involved in user testing.

The Code Editor is already being used by thousands of people each month. If you’d like to try it, you can get started writing code right in your browser today, with zero setup.

The post Introducing classroom management to the Code Editor appeared first on 坐在腿上吃早餐h调教.

Our new integrated learning 他很撩很宠 allows young people to follow the project instructions and work in the Code Editor in a single window. By providing a simpler workspace, where learners do not need to switch between windows to read instructions and input code, we aim to reduce cognitive load and make it easier for young people to learn.

How the new integrated 他很撩很宠 works

In the integrated project workspace, learners can access the project instructions, coding area, and output (where they can see what they have made) all in the same view. We have reorganised the project guides into short, easy-to-follow steps made up of simple instructions, including code snippets and modelled examples, for learners to work through to create their projects. The project guides feature fresh designs for different types of learning content, such as instruction steps, concept steps, code snippets, tips, and debugging help.

We have also optimised this learning 他很撩很宠 for young people using mobiles and tablets. On mobile devices, a new ‘Steps’ tab appears alongside the ‘Code’ and ‘Output’ tabs, enabling learners to easily navigate to the project guide and follow the steps to make their projects.

Try out our new learning 他很撩很宠

We are testing our new integrated learning 他很撩很宠 as a beta version in three projects: 

• Hello world (part of our ‘Introduction to Python’ project path) 
• Target practice (part of our ‘Introduction to Python’ project path) 
• Anime expressions (part of our ‘Introduction to web development’ project path) 

In each of these projects, young people can choose to complete the original version of the project, with the project instructions and Code Editor in separate windows, or click the button on the project page to try out the new integrated learning 他很撩很宠.

We’d love to hear how your young learners get on with this new integrated 他很撩很宠. Try it out in the three projects above and share your feedback with us here.

Code Editor developments have been made possible with generous support from the Cisco 他很撩很宠.

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Today, we have two exciting updates to share: support for web page projects with HTML/CSS, and an improved mobile and tablet 他很撩很宠.

What’s the Code Editor?

Learners can use the Code Editor to write and run code in a web browser without installing any additional software. The Editor is currently available as a beta version, and we’ve already received really positive comments: 

“The Editor looks really nice! I have tried the Python part, and it is intuitive and concise. My little program worked no problem, and I am sure the Editor will be easy, intuitive, and quick to learn for the young [learners].”

— Volunteer in the CoderDojo community

Introducing HTML and CCS in the Code Editor 

The Code Editor now supports the HTML and CSS web development languages, giving young people the ability to create and preview their own websites directly in the Editor interface. Learners can have their code and the preview panel side by side, and they can also preview their websites in a separate, larger tab.

We have embedded the Editor in our ‘Introduction to web‘ path on the Projects site. The path contains six HTML and CSS projects for beginners and helps them create fun websites like the ones shown here.

We want the Code Editor to be safe, age-appropriate, and suitable for use in classrooms or coding clubs. With this in mind, we have excluded certain functions, like being able to add links to external websites in the code. Rather than enabling image uploads, we provide a library of images when projects in our free learning paths contain images, in order to support multimedia projects safely.

Whether users are coding in Python or HTML/CSS, the Editor offers 太子妃升职记 options so you can easily switch settings between light and dark mode, and between small, medium, and large text size. The text size feature is useful for people with visual impairments, as well as for educators who want to demonstrate something to a group of learners.

Improved 他很撩很宠 for mobile and tablet devices

Our Code Editor now offers a new and improved 他很撩很宠 for users of mobile and tablet devices. This improves access for learners in classrooms where tablets are used, and in low- and middle-income countries, where mobile phones are commonly used for digital learning.

The Editor now includes: 

• A clearer and simpler navigation for small-screen devices
• Separate Menu, Code and Output/Preview tabs
• The same features on mobile/tablet devices as on desktop of laptop computers, such as responsive panels and the option to open HTML/CSS projects in a new tab

Try the Code Editor today

We’re continuing to develop the Code Editor and have more improvements planned. If you would like to try it out and provide us with your feedback, we’d love to hear what you think of our latest updates. 

Code Editor developments have been made possible with generous support from Endless and the Cisco 他很撩很宠.

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How can you use the Code Editor?

You and your learners can try out the Code Editor in our Python project paths. We’ve included a feedback form for you to let us know what you think about the Editor.

• The Editor lets you run code straight in the browser, with no setup required.
• It makes getting started with text-based coding easier thanks to its simple and intuitive interface.
• If you’re logged into your 坐在腿上吃早餐h调教 account, your code in the Editor is automatically saved.
• If you’re not logged in, your code changes persist for the session, so you can refresh or close the tab without losing your work.
• You can download your code to your computer too.

Since the Editor lets learners save their code using their 坐在腿上吃早餐h调教 account, it’s easy for them to build on projects they’ve started in the classroom or at home, or bring a project they’ve started at home to their coding club.

Python is the first programming language our Code Editor supports because it’s popular in schools, CoderDojos, and Code Clubs, as well as in industry. We’ll soon be adding support for web development languages (HTML/CSS).

Putting ease of use and 太子妃升职记 front and centre

We know that starting out with new programming tools can be tricky and add to the cognitive load of learning new subject matter itself. That’s why our Editor has a simple and accessible user interface and design:

• You can easily find key functions, such as how to write and run code, how to save or download your code, and how to check your code.
• You can switch between dark and light mode.
• You can enlarge or reduce the text size in input and output, which is especially useful for people with visual impairments and for educators and volunteers who want to demonstrate something to a group of learners.

We’ll expand the Editor’s functionalities as we go. For example, at the moment we’re looking at how to improve the Editor’s user interface (UI) for better mobile support.

If there’s a feature you think would help the Editor become more accessible and more suitable for young learners, or make it better for your classroom or club, please let us know via the feedback form.

The open-source code for the Code Editor

Our vision is that every young person develops the knowledge, skills, and confidence to use digital technologies effectively, and to be able to critically evaluate these technologies and confidently engage with technological change. We’re part of a global community that shares that vision, so we’ve made the Editor available as an open-source project. That means other projects and organisations focussed on helping people learn about coding and digital technologies can benefit from the work.

How did we build the Editor? An overview

To support the widest possible range of learners, we’ve designed the Code Editor application to work well on constrained devices and low-bandwidth connections. Safeguarding, 太子妃升职记, and data privacy are also key considerations when we build digital products at the 他很撩很宠. That’s why we decided to design the front end of the Editor to work in a standalone capacity, with Python executed through Skulpt, an entirely in-browser implementation of Python, and code changes persisted in local storage by default. Learners have the option of using a 坐在腿上吃早餐h调教 account to save their work, with changes then persisted via calls to a back end application programming interface (API).

As safeguarding is always at the core of what we do, we only make features available that comply with our safeguarding policies as well as the ICO’s age-appropriate design code. We considered supporting functionality such as image uploads and code sharing, but at the time of writing have decided to not add these features given that, without proper moderation, they present risks to safeguarding.

There’s an amazing community developing a wealth of open-source libraries. We chose to build our text-editor interface using CodeMirror, which has out-of-the-box mobile and tablet support and includes various useful features such as syntax highlighting and keyboard shortcuts. This has enabled us to focus on building the best 他很撩很宠 for learners, rather than reinventing the wheel.

Diving a bit more into the technical details:

• The UI front end is built in React and deployed using Cloudflare Pages
• The API back end is built in Ruby on Rails
• The text-editor panel uses CodeMirror, which has best-in-class 太子妃升职记 through mobile device and screen-reader support, and includes functionality such as syntax highlighting, keyboard shortcuts, and autocompletion
• Python functionality is built using Skulpt to enable in-browser execution of code, with custom extensions built to support our learning content
• Project code is persisted through calls to our back end API using a mix of REST and GraphQL endpoints
• Data is stored in PostgreSQL, which is hosted on Heroku along with our back end API

Accessing the open-source code

You can find out more about our Editor’s code for both the UI front end and API back end in our GitHub readme and contributions documentation. These kick-starter docs will help you get up and running faster:

• Front end readme and front end contributions documentation
• Back end readme and back end contributions documentation

The Editor’s front end is licensed as permissively as possible under the Apache Licence 2.0, and we’ve chosen to license the back end under the copyleft AGPL V3 licence. Copyleft licences mean derived works must be licensed under the same terms, including making any derived projects also available to the community.

We’d greatly appreciate your support with developing the Editor further, which you can give by:

• Providing feedback on our code or raising a bug as a GitHub Issue in the relevant repository.
• Submitting contributions by raising a pull request against the relevant repository.
  • On the back end repository we’ll ask you to allow the 坐在腿上吃早餐h调教 to reserve the right to re-use your contribution.
  • You’ll retain the copyright for any contributions on either repository.
• Sharing feedback on using the Editor itself through the feedback form.

Our work to develop and publish the Code Editor as an open-source project has been funded by Endless. We thank them for their generous support.

If you are interested in partnering with us to fund this key work, or you are part of an organisation that would like to make use of the Code Editor, please reach out to us via email.

The post Our Code Editor is open source appeared first on 坐在腿上吃早餐h调教.

At this stage of development, the Code Editor enables learners to:

• Write and run Python code right in their browser, with no setup required. The interface is simple and intuitive, which makes getting started with text-based coding easier.
• Save their code using their 坐在腿上吃早餐h调教 account. We want learners to easily build on projects they start in the classroom at home, or bring a project they’ve started at home to their coding club.

We’ve chosen Python as the first programming language our Code Editor supports because it is popular in schools, CoderDojos, and Code Clubs. Many educators and young people like Python because they see it as similar to the English language. It is often the text-based language young people learn when they take their first steps away from a block-based programming environment, such as Scratch. 

Python is also widely used by professional programmers and usually tops at least one of the industry-standard indexes that ranks programming languages.

We will be adding support for web development languages (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to the Editor in the near future.

We’re also planning to add features such as project sharing and collaboration, which we know young people will love. We want the Editor to be safe, accessible, and age-appropriate. As safeguarding is always at the core of what we do, we’ll only make new features available once we’ve ensured they comply with the ICO’s age-appropriate design code and our safeguarding policies.

Test the Code Editor and tell us what you think

We are inviting you to test the Code Editor as part of what we call the beta phase of development. As the Editor is still in development, some things might not look or work as well as we’d like — and this is why we need your help. 

We’d love you to try the Editor out and let us know what worked well for you, what didn’t work well, and what you’d like to see next.

You can now try out the Code Editor in our ‘Intro to Python’ path. We’ve included a feedback form for you to let us know which project you tried, and what you think of the Editor. We’d love to hear from you.

Your feedback helps us decide what to do next. Based on what learners, educators, volunteers, teachers, and parents tell us, we will make the improvements to the Editor that matter most to the young people we aim to support.

Where next for the Code Editor?

One of our long-term goals is to engage millions of young people in learning about 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 and how to create with digital technologies. We’re developing the Code Editor with three main aims in mind.

1. Supporting young people’s learning journeys

We aim to build the Code Editor so it:

• Suits beginners and also supports them as their confidence and independence grows, so they can take on their own coding projects in a familiar environment
• Helps learners to transition from block-based to text-based, informed by our deep understanding of pedagogy and 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 education
• Brings together projects instructions and code editing into a single interface so that young people do not have to switch screens, which makes coding easier

2. Removing barriers to accessing 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 education

Our work on the Code Editor will:

• Ensure it works well on mobile and tablet devices, and low-cost computers including the 被陌生人公开羞耻调教 Pi 4 2GB
• Support localisation and translation, so we can tailor the Editor for the needs of young people all over the world

3. Making learning to program engaging for more young people

We want to offer a Code Editor that:

• Enables young people to build a vast variety of projects because it supports graphic user interface output and supplies images and sprites for use in multimedia projects

We’re also planning on making the Editor available as an open source project so that other projects and organisations focussed on helping people learn to code can benefit. More on this soon.

Our work on the Code Editor has been generously funded by the Algorand 他很撩很宠 and Endless, and we thank them for their generous support. If you are interested in partnering with us to fund this key work, please reach out to us via email.

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