Why blog?

I am a high school physics teacher near Reading PA. My first five years out of college I worked as an engineer. I learned to code for my own professional purposes and found it very rewarding. Successful simulations of the physical world gave me confidence that I understood. And it was thrilling. I have been wanting to weave programming into my classroom for many years. In 2014 I included programming of Lego Mindstorm EV3 robots into my units on motion. I made it work, but the programming instruction ate up too much time for too little payoff. In 2017-18, I was a participant in an ongoing NSF grant to include Pyret programming within a physics modeling approach for ninth graders. I loved the Pyret language and being part of a group with the same mission as mine, but at the end of that academic year, I concluded that the Pyret programming language was too heavy an intellectual lift for my students. In the summer of 2018 I developed learning tutorials for my honors students to learn Snap! I also developed lesson plans and Snap! programming activities. The semester was modestly successful, but I sensed it could be much better. More importantly, it seemed to me that block programming was a far more suitable platform for my students. In this second semester, I am evolving the next generation of my course. I have done a lot of work. I think it has promise. I would like to share. Lord knows I have benefited from the generous on-line reflections and sharings of others over the years. I am glad to make my contribution to the universe. And, I expect this practice will enhance my experience and my results.