Community reviews for codeSpark Academy

I love the learning, but there could be more. When they learn a lot, they want to learn more!

I like the puzzles and coding. I wanted to use the digital storytelling portion more but it is not intuitive. One student had trees eating animals and people eating people.

I have used this project with my kids and my students. I think it is a great tool to teach coding. One caveat: if you are using Codespark on Chromebooks or older desktops, it can take a while to load.

I like this app for practicing problem solving. When the students complete puzzles, I challenge them to persist and keep trying until they get all 3 stars. They want to do it because they want to gather as many coins as they can.

I love this! The students are highly engaged and learning. The website offers lots of teacher supports and materials. The only concern is the interface with Clever can be complicated so I don't recommend building your classes through Clever. Take the time to do it manually so you can make changes if necessary. Overall, this is a wonderful and engaging teaching tool for coding. I highly recommend it.

I've used codeSpark Academy for a couple of years now and students are very engaged and enthusiastic about solving the puzzles. I've used the unplugged activities to reinforce the concepts of algorithms and debugging, but have also supplemented it with other resources to dig a little deeper than what's provided on the website. Since it is a free resource, it is a great way for students to continue using it at home and share their learning with their families. Classroom teachers can continue having students progress through the levels when they leave the computer lab, because it is so easy for them to log-in. I would love to be able to share a class with one or more teachers, so that they could connect devices in their own classrooms.

Initially I used the site during my Hour of Code which was successful, but the students asked for more so this year I've created accounts in first and second grade classes and added it to their classroom iPads. The kids love it and there are many different areas and levels to discover which makes it interesting for much longer than some other games I've introduced. I love that users don't need to read yet to learn how to code. They can simply watch the demonstration and begin. I also like the animations themselves, they are very kid-friendly and feel like they are gaming when they are actually coding. The one area I think might use some improvement is the hourly code activation and the character creation. Students who missed the lesson and didn't activate a device need to wait until I regenerate a new code which is inconvenient. A classroom code might be preferable. Another area that I'm confused by is the character/avatar login. Students have a multitude of choices for their character and the name which they truly enjoy, but we don't see the character again in the play area. It would be cute if they were in the game somehow. Also, passwords would be ideal. Some kids don't realize they are in their classmates account (especially if they are very young). Overall though, I love CodeSpark and know that I will be including it in my teaching from now on!

This program has so many benefits and very few negatives. As a teacher, it was easy to set up for all almost 800 of my students. It also is so easy to teach the students to use and many of them have gone home and created their own accounts. I love how engaged they are and how many different games there are to play within the program. The program is often updated and adds new stuff around each holiday so you don't have to worry about the students "finishing everything". The teacher dashboard is great and easy to read. It is hard to think of anything I would change! If I had to choose, I wish the codes for each grade lasted longer than two hours before they expire. I am on desktop computers though so that is different than if the students were using iPads.

I like using codeSpark because of the simplicity in the lessons. It's easy to understand the lesson and all the materials (the slides) are already created so I can just download to my Google Drive and go! I also like the fact that I can limit the stages that students can go in when doing individual work. That way, they can focus on the objective of the lesson. The app is very appealing to younger students and it's very user friendly!

I love the codeSpark Academy app. Students are engaged and excited about learning. Reading is not a requirement, so it's perfect for pre-readers, but even older students (and adults) enjoy the quirky Foos characters. Each level introduces different computer science content. The app is free for educators and provides access to lesson plans, both plugged and unplugged, and the codeSpark community.