Karel #2: Reason Abstractly and Quantitatively

What It Means Get ready for the words contextualize and decontextualize. If students have a problem, they should be able to break it apart and show it symbolically, with pictures, or in any way other than the standard algorithm. Conversely, if students are working a problem, they should be able to apply the “math work”

Karel #1: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them

What It Means Understand the problem, find a way to attack it, and work until it is done. Basically, you will find practice standard #1 in every math problem, every day. The hardest part is pushing students to solve tough problems by applying what they already know and to monitor themselves when problem-solving. Computer Programming

Eyeballs and Brains

One of the Math Practice Standards (#5) refers to using appropriate tools strategically. I would like to show that computer programming is excellent at teaching students to do just that. Let me use a simple example. It is Halloween! Karel needs to pick up three eyeballs and enter his home square! Below are six different

Visit us at CUE 2014!

We will be presenting NCLab at CUE 2014 in Palm Springs on March 20 – 22, booth #536. If you happen to be there, stop by to say hello. We will be showing cool updates of our computer programming and 3D modeling courses. Karel the Robot now has 15 amazing themes. Shown is “Under the

Computer Programming Teaches Perseverance

What It Means Understand the problem, find a way to attack it, and work until it is done. Basically, you will find practice standard #1 in every math problem, every day. The hardest part is pushing students to solve tough problems by applying what they already know and to monitor themselves when problem-solving. Computer Programming

NCLab Has R!

We are pleased to announce that the R language was added to the family of computing languages available in NCLab. Other computing languages in NCLab include GNU Octave, Scipy, CUDA, and Hermes. R is a free software programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The language is widely used among statisticians and

Version 0.9.10 Released

NCLab Version 0.9.10 with many bug fixes and improvements was released today. In the Karel course, all games have tutorial videos. There is also a new line number constraint that prevents students from writing excessively long code.

What is NCLab?

We are pleased to announce a new introductory computer programming course named Karel Jr. This course is based on the original popular Karel course, but the scope of changes exceeded a usual update. The original Karel course is still available for schools to finish their courses. It will be discontinued at the end of March 2016. We

Free STEM Training!

March 10 and 17, 4 pm – 8:30 pm. Do not miss out! For more information and to register, contact Brian Crosby at bcrosby(at)washoeschools(dot)net.