What is the Hour of Code?

The Hour Of Code is a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science and is organised by code.org! Some of the biggest companies in the world have come together to support the Hour of Code, too — including Microsoft, Apple, & Amazon etc.

For our ninjas it’s a great chance to try something for an hour that might be a bit different to what they are already be tackling. It’s also a great way for new ninjas to get up and running with the creative would of programming.

The Hour of Code site has a load of learning resources that are great fun to tackle. When you complete them, you even get a printable certificate! Just a note that a lot of the information is based on US Grades but thankfully we have this information that shows how they map to NI school levels.

Highlighted Lessons

Some of the better resources are listed in this table:

Resource	Details
Minecraft	Loads of block based (like Scratch) challenges from the team behind Minecraft and introducted by Stacey Plays.
Crossy Road	A number of block based (like Scratch) challenges from the folks behind Hipster Whale’s awesome game.
Star Wars	Help Rey overcome challenges with either Blocks or Javascript.
CS-First	A challenge from Google’s CS-First that let’s you build your own Google Doodle.
Kano Spray Art	Fun and creative way to learn abouts loops and events.
Code Academy	Two great activities for Hour of Code with the Foos and Snoopy.
Code Combat Dunegon & Code Combat Arcade	Battle against monsters in the Dunegon while learning the basic of either Python, Javascript, CoffeeScript or Lua. Finsih that then move onto the Arcade to learn even more advanced topics.
CodeMonkey - CoffeeScript	Really fun way to learn CoffeeScript.
CodeMonkey - Python	Introduces kids ages 14+ to Python in 15 exercises. The objective is to code a chatbot that can interact with users and test their trivia knowledge. Python Chatbot teaches python, server side programming, chatbot development, string manipulation, data structures, loops, conditionals and variables.
Intro to App Lab	Introduces kids ages 13+ to creating your own app in JavaScript using blocks or text. You’ll make a simple app with buttons, images, sounds and multiple screens that you can share with your friends or publish to a public gallery. If you’ve already done some coding with blocks, this is a great next step to take your programming to the next level.
Khan Academy	Khan Academy’s Hour of Code covering Databases, Website or Design
RoboGarden - Advanced	Perfect for anyone looking to move from Block programming to Javascript or Python.