Kip Glazer
Independence High School Bakersfield, California
Tell us about yourself
I moved from Korea when I was 23, and now I teach English and Web Design as a high school teacher. I was introduced to CodeHS by one of my classmates at Pepperdine where I am pursuing my doctorate in Education in Learning Technologies.
Tell us about your Students
I currently have 131 students enrolled in my classes, but I also have close to 60 students in the Coding Club outside of my regular classes. As you can tell by my school’s School Accountability Report Card my school is a Title 1 school with a majority of students receiving free and reduced lunch. We have a diverse student body with 51% Hispanic, 29% White, 9% African American, 4% Asian, and 7% Other students.
I use CodeHS in my Web Design class with my 25 students and with my coding club students. Both my Web Design and coding club students love learning about electronics, computer programming, and problem solving. When I started the computer coding club in August of this year, I did not expect it to grow into one of the biggest clubs on campus. I attribute our success to CodeHS.
“When I started the computer coding club in August of this year, I did not expect it to grow into one of the biggest clubs on campus. I attribute our success to CodeHS.”
What do you like about CodeHS?
What makes CodeHS superior to others? In my humble opinion, CodeHS has one of the best pedagogical models I have seen in terms of teaching a defined skill set like computer programming. Its instructions are so clear, its feedback is immediate, and its ability to level up the user is seamless. My students liked Kodu and Codecacademy, but they LOVE CodeHS. Of course, Codecacademy offers more languages, but if you are starting out with teaching your students the very basics of programming, CodeHS with Karel really is the way to go. I have used various free online resources to introduce coding to my students prior to using CodeHS. Some of them allowed my students to create games, and others introduced them to various programming languages. However, I found that no other resource is as intuitive and informative as CodeHS. I also noticed that my female students favor CodeHS over other resources.
“CodeHS has one of the best pedagogical models I have seen.”
What do your students like about CodeHS?
My students like the immediacy of feedback they receive from working with Karel in CodeHS. They love being able to watch the tutorials repeatedly. They mentioned that unlike some other resources they have used, CodeHS would not let them get completely stuck because of its highlight feature.
Biggest Success Story
I think the biggest thing is how many girls are interested in programming because of Karel. As you can tell by the pictures I shared, I have lots of girls participating. Several of my girls are torn between working with e-textile and CodeHS. Often times I end up staying longer than 2 hours on Saturdays because many of them beg me to stay, so that they can work on CodeHS.
“Often times I end up staying longer than 2 hours on Saturdays because many of [the girls] beg me to stay, so that they can work on CodeHS.”
Originally published at codehs.com.
