This morning in the AT&T Classroom the Lippman students were very excited to Skype with a second grade class in Ravenna City Schools to play Mystery Number Skype. Through a Skype video call, the two classes were able to take turns asking yes/no questions to apply what they have learned about place value, odd/even, higher/lower to guess the other class’s Mystery Number. Skype is a telecommunications application software available for free from Microsoft. The software can be used for video chat and voice calls between computers, tablets, mobile devices, Xbox One consoles, and telephones. 
In preparation for next week’s international Hour of Code, this morning the Lippman first and second graders explored the basic elements of coding using the Code Monkey game platform. Code Monkey is an online game that engages children with coding and programming concepts as they participate in game play. The game involves the child helping a monkey retrieve her lost bananas as she travels through a map of coding puzzles. The platform offers a split screen so that players are coding on the right side and viewing the results of their code as the game progresses on the left side. To proceed through each level, players must write and "run" code snippets on the right side of the screen to steer the monkey across each level on the left side of the screen. Each new level introduces an additional piece of code or a new function. In addition to building expertise with programming language, games such as Code Monkey also offer important opportunities to children for further developing their creativity and problem-solving skills as well as skills for divergent and higher order thinking.
