Great tool for introducing coding concepts to young programmers!
Community Review for Lightbot : Programming Puzzles
My Take
My take is that this is an AMAZING tool to get kids excited about coding. It's very engaging (and a little addictive!). It works well in various settings and with a variety of student populations, which is especially helpful when you have students ranging from special needs to gifted at the same time. More practice with each step would probably benefit this app (i.e. more simple puzzles should be available to solidify a concept before jumping into it too deeply). Overall, a great tool!
How I Use It
I introduced the Lightbot app to my 5th grade students after they were already comfortable with block coding. They understood coding basics (algorithms, debugging, loops) and were able to see those in Lightbot and therefore use it as a teaching tool themselves. These 5th grade students visited 4th grade classrooms during our school's Hour of Code event last year. 5th graders introduced 4th graders (in a one-on-one partner setting) to the concept of coding using Lightbot. It worked well to have a more experienced student guide students with little to no coding experience in knowing how to program the bot. The most difficultly came in with the separate programs and looping (P1 and P2). The app jumps into these on a more sophisticated level than I would prefer.