Originally Published in the CSTA Voice
Volume 13 Issue 1, Newsletter Content
By Daniel Moix & Stephanie Hoeppner
Have you been looking for a way to flip your classroom? Or do you need a strategy to differentiate instruction for various groups of students during a class period? These are challenges we all face. Codio offers solutions.
Why Codio?
Codio is a web-based computer science (CS) teaching and learning platform. One of the cool features is the option to have a split screen where students and/or you can run a program (in Codio, no other IDE needed) and have a learning environment open at the same time. In the split screen, you can make changes to the code and rerun the program to observe the results. This interactive IDE with a full learning management system might be just what you need.
Partnership between Codio and CSTA
Thanks to a partnership with Codio that was announced at the 2016 Annual CSTA Conference, CSTA members have free access to the Codio platform for professional development. This means you can try it out for yourself to explore or learn a new coding language. Courses that introduce Java, Python, Assembly, JavaScript, HTML, MySQL, and Linux are available now. Soon a suite of middle school and high school courses aligned with CSTA standards will also be available to you.
Because Codio is a web-based programming environment, you can connect to a robust set of development tools. Whether you’re programming in Java, Python, C++, or Flode (a visual flowchart language), the system allows you to create, debug, and run code. Anything you can do in Ubuntu Linux can be done in your browser through Codio. Web services with database backends can be configured with the push of a button.
With a paid plan, members can also use Codio with their students. You have the options of assigning one of the off-the-shelf courses provided by the platform, creating your own course, or assigning a mixture. Codio allows teachers to see live student progress through the classroom dashboard. With auto-graded programming assignments, teachers and students get immediate feedback, but teachers can also view the details of all student submissions.
If you have experience teaching CS and are comfortable in a digital-learning environment you can author your own “Guides.” These are like pages of an online textbook that link to the programming environment, allowing you to introduce concepts, and provide students with interactive experiences. Codio also has a rich assessment editor that connects to the classroom dashboard automatically, enabling meaningful and timely feedback to students.
Whether you’re just getting started as a CS educator or you’ve been teaching for years, we recommend you check out this membership benefit. To get started with a free Codio account with full access for professional development purposes, visit email.codio.com/join-codio-for-professional-development-csta and complete the form.
