Tynker User Guide for Teachers

User Guide for Educators

Tynker 480 San Antonio Road, Suite #100

Mountain View, CA 94040

User Guide for Educators

Contents

Introduction to Teachers ....................................................................................... 3 Tynker Workshop .............................................................................................. 4

Preparing for Class ............................................................................................... 5 Equipment Setup............................................................................................... 5

Administration ....................................................................................................... 5 Teacher Account ............................................................................................... 5 Logging In as an instructor................................................................................ 6 Teacher Dashboard ........................................................................................... 7 Classroom Tabs ................................................................................................ 7 Creating Student accounts................................................................................ 8 Distributing Student Login Information ............................................................. 8 Checking Lesson Progress ............................................................................... 8 Lesson Plan ....................................................................................................... 9 Assigning Lessons............................................................................................. 9 Tracking Student Progress ................................................................................ 9 Concept Map................................................................................................... 10 Class Showcase .............................................................................................. 11 Sample Showcases ......................................................................................... 11

Student Accounts ............................................................................................... 11 Online Account ................................................................................................ 11 Student Accounts on Tynker ........................................................................... 11 Lost Passwords ............................................................................................... 11 First Time Login for Students .......................................................................... 12 Types of Lesson Modules ............................................................................... 13

Tynker Workshop ................................................................................................ 14 Character Animation Studio ............................................................................ 15 Art Studio......................................................................................................... 15 Media Library................................................................................................... 16 Physics Engine ................................................................................................ 16

Tynker Tips from Teachers ................................................................................. 18 Frequently Asked Questions ............................................................................... 20

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User Guide for Educators

Introduction to Teachers

Tynker is very educator friendly ? it has been built with the specific needs of teachers in mind. To begin with, it is really easy to set up - a teacher can freely sign up for Tynker, add students and create a programming classroom in minutes.

Teachers with minimal or no prior programming experience are also able to use the Tynker platform and ensure real learning of programming concepts and skills among their students.

Teachers choose how they want to use Tynker ? as an end-to-end platform to teach a structured programming course, as a tool to aid and enhance learning in subjects like math and physics, or as a means for student expression in projects, field trips, or creative writing.

There is extensive support for schools and educators on Tynker, the key features being:

? Classroom & Student Management tools - Extensive tools for teachers to manage their classes and students effectively. Teachers create a classroom and add students in minutes. Integration with Google logins makes it even easier to login to Tynker. Teachers can pass out coding assignments, collect and grade student projects, communicate one-onone with students in real-time.

? Lesson Plans - Augment the freely included starter packs with a set of ready to use thematic lesson plans that teach a variety of skills such as animation, storytelling, game design, physics, math art, and more. Each lesson plan has several lesson units packaged into 45-minute activities that can be used in a session. You can use these in order or customize it to your students' specific needs.

? Advanced lesson-planning features - Enables teachers to manage a Netflix-like queue for lessons and use them over the course of time.

? Class Showcase - A class showcase ensures that interesting projects done by kids can be put up for parents and other students to see.

? Safe and secure private cloud - Tynker's digital classroom for programming establishes a safe and secure private cloud environment where teachers and students collaborate to create and share.

? Student Assessment and Metrics - Track your class as they progress through the programming skills concept map. The Class Assessment chart is a consolidated view of the skills and concepts that the students have been exposed to, are learning, and have mastered across all students in the class. The individual student performance report lets you focus on the progress of a single student. Tynker's patent pending technology enables a deep and detailed understanding of each student's progress.

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User Guide for Educators

? Anywhere Online Access - With this students may use Tynker anytime anywhere, even from their home computers.

Tynker Workshop

Tynker is a creative learning environment where kids learn programming by doing. Kids solve puzzles and create stories, mini-games while learning and applying skills they pick up on the way: design conception, pattern recognition, algorithmic thinking, and problem solving.

Tynker is browser-based, totally device independent, and runs 100% in the cloud, which makes it is very easy to set up and very simple to use. The interface for using Tynker is the Tynker Workshop - an excellent web based environment with unique and user-friendly features:

? Lego?-like visual code blocks - Coding with Tynker is not syntax driven, but completely visual and conceptual. This eliminates the typical frustration elementary and middle schoolers face when dealing with syntax in a traditional programming language. Kids can now focus on the underlying programming logic, not the language.

? TynkerBlocks - Fully functional and ready to use packaged objects. Tynkerblocks are interesting objects with behaviors and codes associated with them. Kids can plug in these complex objects into their projects, making the experience more exciting, and opening up more creative possibilities.

? Searchable Rich Media Library - Hundreds of high quality characters, animation frames, sound effects and music. The Tynker Media Library is unparalleled in quality and range of age-appropriate media, ensuring high interest and engagement. Kids can also import their own drawings, or draw using the in-built drawing tool.

? Built-in Tutor - Tynker provides guided tutorials and puzzles to enable self-paced learning. Tynker gives kids the flexibility to learn at their own pace, reviewing concepts or moving or jumping ahead to more complex ones if they feel ready for it.

In addition to the Tynker Workshop and features, there are some important principles of learning that are built into the Tynker experience:

? Lesson Delivery Platform - Tynker provides the opportunity for kids to go through a cycle of learning programming concepts and applying them. This ensures that the kids are grounded to complete a task rather than getting frustrated or jumping around concepts.

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User Guide for Educators

? Collaboration - Tynker provides the means for sharing and collaboration across the board - with classmates where students remix, with the teacher, and with parents and friends.

? Learning Continuum - The Tynker learning curriculum is structured along a continuum of Introductory, Advanced, and Expert levels, ensuring kids are not limited by age or grade, and allowing for flexible learning.

Preparing for Class

Equipment Setup

? Each class needs computers (Laptops, netbooks, or chrome books)

? 1 Computer is required per student. ? The teacher needs a computer to

assign lessons. ? The computers must be Internet

enabled with a modern browser such as Chrome, IE9, Safari or Firefox. ? If iPads are available, the Tynker iPad puzzles can be incorporated into the session. The Tynker app must be downloaded onto each iPad.

Administration

Teacher Account

As a teacher, you can login and perform the following actions: ? Create new virtual classrooms ? Import Students from CSV files to create student accounts ? Manage students ? change passwords, add and delete students ? Assign lessons to a classroom ? View projects that students have built ? Publish a class showcase ? Communicate with parents ? Track the students' progress via dashboards

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User Guide for Educators

Logging In as an instructor

SAMPLE CREDENTIALS Web site: User name: teacher@email.domain Password: XXXXXXX Teachers can sign up free at Go to and click " Sign in"

Sign in with your credentials as a teacher

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User Guide for Educators

Teacher Dashboard

The very first time you will be prompted to create a classroom and choose a lesson plan. After that you will see a list of classrooms. You can add as many classrooms as you need. In this account, there are 3 classrooms. Each classroom contains many students, and you can manage them as a group.

Watch the videos in the Help section to learn more about Tynker and using the platform.

Classroom Tabs

You'll notice that each classroom view has several tabs. We will go over each of the tabs and their purpose below.

You can import student accounts for each location using CSV files.

As a teacher, you can also add or change individual student accounts from the Student Management tab.

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User Guide for Educators

Creating Student accounts

There are 3 ways of creating student accounts: ? Sign in via Google logins ? if your school uses Google Education login accounts for students ? Create a Tynker Account ? Import via spreadsheet

Distributing Student Login Information

In the Student Management Tab of any classroom, you should see a list of all the students enrolled in the class. Click on "Generate Student Cards" to create a printable version of student login cards and distribute them to the students.

If any student cannot log in, you can reset their password and provide a new one.

Checking Lesson Progress

You can view all your students' projects here. You can browse through all projects or look at a particular student's lesson. As a teacher, you can also open any project and see the code, and help the children fix their issues.

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