MERIDIAN — This week's innovative educator has her lesson plans focused on technology.
Angie Fraas is a 4th grade teacher at Hillsdale Elementary. She recently received a master’s degree in Educational Technology. In her classroom, it may look like the students are just playing games on their computers. That’s because they are playing games, but they’re playing games that they created themselves by writing their own computer code.
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“They’re on computers, but they’re being productive and they’re building things,” says Fraas. “I know the importance of technology in these digital natives and that they bring technology effectively into the classroom.”
Fraas has written several grants to equip her classroom with extra technological tools. One of those tools is a computer program called “Scratch.” The program was developed at MIT, and it allows the kids to code in “block format,” which makes it easy for them to create their own technological commands by just clicking and dragging a “coding block.”
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“It's the beginning steps of coding. So, we're setting them up to understand coding and what it means. The next step will be where they're actually coding... in fourth grade,” says Fraas.
With “Scratch,” the kids can create their own computer games, make robots move, even write their own test questions for different subjects in the classroom. The students are having fun and may not even realize their learning. For some of them, it’s becoming the homework they want to do.
“A parent said to me ‘thank you so much!’ for introducing her son to Scratch because he wanted to go home and play fortnight every night, and the other night he went home and said, ‘Mom, can I build a game on scratch?!’” says Fraas.
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“It's fun for the kids and it's really fun for me. It's not just me up front talking to the kids all the time, but they're actually exploring and using critical thinking and teamwork and it's just really fun to see,” says Fraas. “They now know what coding is and technology and how to use it. That's where our 21st century is and where we're going.”
We highlight an “Innovative Educator” every Monday morning on Today's Morning News.