Risk Versus Reward
Submitted 7 years ago
Community Review for codeSpark Academy
Leslie T.
McKeel Academy Central
Lakeland FL, US
My Take
I feel the app has a lot of potential. I would like to see the addition of more coding levels and possibly some coding applications to the games, especially the digital pets areas. I would say applicable for K-3 with 4th grade using it the first half of the year as my students mastered the coding levels in this time range.
How I Use It
I used this product with my class of 4th graders as an enrichment activity. The graphics were very kid friendly. Students easily grasped the app. Many of my students gravitated toward the game section. I had to institute a policy that students could only play games on Friday.
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David G.
Technology coordinator
Comprehensive Grammar School
Methuen, MA
January 10, 2024
NOT SO GOOD
The gameplay, and coding activities are fun but...
1. You can not demo or model this game as a teacher if you signed in through Clever (they won't even give me another account to sign in so I can play it even though I have paid for a subscription already.)
2. It is hard for kids to scroll down to basic levels as there is no scroll bar, so if you are using laptops, PCs, or Chromebooks, it is very hard for little kids to do it.
3. It often kicks kids out after they finish level 8, afterwhich, they need to go back to the homepage, scroll down to the level they were on, click on it so that level 9 shows up.
4. “Game stuff" should be at the bottom and the coding levels should be at the top.
Some of the answers they provide on their guide (Kite Plight) are WRONG.
5. There should be an arrow so students can easily switch screens between levels 1-8 then to 9-16 (or 17)
6. There are often problems going back to a page and there is an error. You have to reopen it, log out, then open it again to log back in, very frustrating.
7. After contacting them, they don't seem to be too interested in fixing anything.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND IF YOU ARE USING FOR IT A WHOLE SCHOOL OR SCHOOL SYSTEM.
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Mrs. T.
Teacher
Forest Glen International Elementary School
Indianapolis, IN
May 26, 2020
codeSpark Academy is great for helping my students learn to code! But it displays the students' info publicly, so I had to create one account for my whole class. And it doesn't provide any further or more advanced learning. But my 2nd graders loved it!
I love the learning, but there could be more. When they learn a lot, they want to learn more!
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Mrs. N.
Teacher
Propel Charter School - McKeesport (District)
Pittsburgh, PA
November 4, 2019
Love the lock/unlock app ability and individual student progress tracking.
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.
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