Community reviews for Lightbot : Programming Puzzles

This application easily engages students from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade. This works well for collaboration as well.

This app is advertised for any age, but I would recommend it for 3rd grade and up. It begins by asking the user to apply very little strategy, but quickly becomes more difficult as the user progresses through the different levels. The objective of this app is to move the little robot through puzzles in a given number of moves while "lighting up" specified tiles. Tutorials are short, sweet and clear. Users are quickly off and running on their own. Overall this app is a great tool for strategic, logical thinking.

This is a great game that actually makes students think. Gifted learners feel challenged and motivated to keep going onto the higher levels. I loved that 98% of the class enjoyed using this program. Students have told me that they played it at home because they wanted to "beat the game."

Light-bot is a great way to get kids to start thinking logically. The app is basically like a series of puzzles that are very simple at the beginning, but get more and more complex as you progress from one level to the next. At each level, your objective is to move the robot around the squares to light one or more lights. One of the things I like the most is that there is often more than one way to complete each level. This is just like programming, as two programmers will often write code in slightly different ways to achieve the same goal. The game gives more stars for writing code more efficiently, which is good for getting students to think about solving problems efficiently. The app is great for people of all ages, but pre-schoolers and kindergartners will likely find it too difficult after the first couple of levels in the Basic section (after basic challenges, players move onto procedures). In both the paid version and the "lite" version, if they offered more basic level challenges, it might be more engaging for younger kids. The paid app does offer levels challenging enough for more advanced students. In fact, I still haven't finished the last two levels myself.

This is a great tool! The app costs, but also has "lite" version that is also good and helpful depending on what you need it for. This app does not have a way for teachers to store information from different students playing the app, but students can do their own individual reflections and alert you to which levels they have progressed on. I think that allowing teachers to "sign up for a class" in the system like in some other sites would be a way to do this.

This app is both an iPad and web based app that is a good introduction to computer programming and computational thinking. It was featured during the December 2013 Hour of Code. Parents and students enjoyed using it during our evening program.

This is a great way to introduce logic and also coding to younger students. The kids needed to think and plan. They also helped each other without "Doing it for" them. One middle school student in particular stands out to me. He has a lot of trouble learning and gets quite a bit of resourcing support. He tried to do a more advanced coding activity during the Hour of Code but just could not conquer it. I switched him to Lightbot and the slow progression and simple interface gave him a real taste of success. I heard some of the younger students talking about how they went home and used the activity on their own. To me, that is the hallmark of a great learning tool, when kids want to do it even though no one is telling them to. It is also so interesting to see how different students react to this activity. Introducing this to young students may just capture those kids who are destined to continue on in computer science in a way that nothing else could.

As an introductory practice to coding in the early grades, Light Bot is very versatile. It provides tutorials in 4 different languages (English, French, Portuguese and Russian). It can be set up very easily since it is a free app, it can be used individually, in small groups or as a whole class. Interest and challenge is immediate and students are engages very quickly, and it encourages learning differentiation since students can learn and progress at their own pace.

I used this game for 1-5 grade gifted students and they had an absolute blast with it!

Light-bot is an excellent introduction to computer programming for elementary aged students (K-5). It provides a strong foundation of coding basics, procedures, loops, conditionals, and overloading. The app is challenging to learners of all levels, gender, and of all ages (my fifth grader and I try to complete a level every night).