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Meet the Team:
Goncalo, 6 Years Old
Matias, 7 Year Old
Last year Goncalo was one of the students involved in the launching of the eSkills Campaign, with a short testimony about what he thinks about Kodu. He loves Kodu because it’s a great oportunity to teach his colleagues and he can also teach the teachers.
Matias came to Colégio Monte Flor last year, to attend the first grade. Quickly he demonstrated a great enthusiasm for the learning process and for technology. For him, Kodu is an excelent tool to understand computers and to learn how to put everything we have in our world working.
The interest of these two young pupils for technology allowed them to be on the television, last year, talking about the use of ICT in the classroom. They started exploring Kodu on the 1st grade and since then they learned a lot about this tool. Every week, the class dedicates one hour to coding with Kodu and the pupils create their games, exchange knowledge and ideas and play each others games. Matias and Gonçalo are always in the enthusiastic group of students during these activities and this Kodu Kup was a perfect reward for these two Kodu Kids.
Project: Water Planet
Water Planet is a game about the importance of water and biodiversity. Because Colégio Monte Flor is an Eco-School, environment is always present in the learning process. The game was the result of a complete year working the topic Water. So, the game they created tells us the story of the Fish Robots and the Mechanic Octopus, that are polluting the water and destroying the real fishes. Kodu will try to save the two last members of the species and save the Planet from its enemies.
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Rui Lima (Kodu Ambassador) is a Portuguese Primary School Teacher and an awarded Microsoft Expert Educator. In the past 7 years he has been involved in severeal national and international programs related to the use of technology in the classroom and currently he’s the Portuguese Lead Teacher in the Creative Classrooms Lab Project, a EUN project related to the use of Tablets in the learning process. He started using Kodu in 2011 and believes that Kodu is an excelent tool to introduce young pupils to Coding and also a fantastic way of exploring children creativity, comunication, storytelling and other important skills for their future.“Kodu is much more than a software to learn code. It’s a tool to challenge our students to think, to plan, to create, to collaborate and comunicate. In other words, Kodu is the ultimate 21st century tool!”
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José Marques is a science and mathematic teacher. In the last years he uses ICT as primary resource in the classroom and he believe in the power of it to engage students to learning and preparing them to the challenges of the future. Last year he was rewarded in Global Forum (Barcelona) as a 1st runner up in the category Cutting Edge in use of Technology for learning. He participates in various Microsoft programs such Teachers Forum in Paris (2007) and Vienna (2009) and he was selected to participate in the first group of Partner in Learning program in Redmond (USA). Started to work with Kodu in 2011 and as Ambassador this year as challenged students and teachers thru is country to work with Kodu in the classroom.“I believe that students must be involved in their learning process and technology is one of their resources in their day life. Put students to create contented, specially games and coding allows them to develop several skills. It’s important to them to understand the need to planning, reflect and above all develop ability to solve problems. Allied to this, is possible to put students to program and develop its effective technological intelligence, the use, handling and application of their knowledge. As they are digital natives it’s important to end the technological illiteracy since they don´t use ICT essentially to learn.
This experience as ambassador allow me to awaken dormant spirits of teachers who are afraid to do something different with their students. Various initiatives were a starting point and an important contribution to the launch of the programming games specially Kodu and Kodu Kup initiatives.”
Find out more about Kodu Kup Portugal
