This time last year, the CodeCombat team was preparing for the big beta launch of Ozaria and deep in the midst of final improvements. Since that time, hundreds of educators and students have experienced the magic and adventure of Ozaria. Ozaria was built on a strong foundation crafted from the same material as CodeCombat and designed completely based on the feedback of educators and students. Over the last few months we’ve continued to build on that strong foundation and improve the student and educator experience.
Our Primary Classroom Product
We’re proud to announce all the major updates and changes Ozaria has made because of the direct input of teachers. Ozaria’s early adopters were educators ready for an adventure with a new CS curriculum program. Their valuable assistance and early feedback helped drive the direction of development.
After an extensive upgrade and revision of performance, learning scaffolding, and levels, Ozaria can now serve as your primary CS curriculum, providing everything you need to teach computer science in your class or remotely.
If you are an early adopter, we welcome you back to Ozaria or for the first time, to experience all the new features and content waiting for you and your class.
What’s new?
Our New CS Core Curriculum
Ozaria’s turnkey 100% CSTA-aligned curriculum and in-game content gives you the flexibility to manage your class however you choose with no CS experience necessary. Many teachers and schools are facing the possibility of extended distance learning or hybrid scenarios this school year. CodeCombat was created for online learning, we like to think Ozaria has elevated online learning. During this difficult time, Ozaria offers educators an adaptable program that can fit any schedule, use case, or teaching style and provides students an escape into computer science through creativity and challenge.
The new Ozaria is built around a thoughtful curriculum that fully supports the learner journey with scaffolded instruction that prepares them to master and retain foundational coding concepts at their own pace. Through our new curriculum students will be prepared for pathways into advanced computer science or other STEM courses. Importantly, they will gain 21st century skills like problem-solving and persistence, and apply concepts learned to other disciplines.
Ozaria’s new standard’s aligned resources help students reflect on what they’ve learned and prepare for the real world impact of computer science through cross-curricular assignments and unplugged extension activities. All new lesson slides offer you a step-by-step guide through each module and learning objective and designed with distance learning in mind.
Within the game, we’ve made major changes and updates based on the valuable feedback from educators; including a completely revised introductory level renamed, “Chapter 1: Sky Mountain” with an updated story, levels, and capstone project! Chapter 2 levels and modules have also been completely redone.
Other in-game components such as immersive cutscenes, engaging levels, and concept checks for understanding have been enhanced with new additions:
- Extra scaffolded support: Tutorial messages which offer customized hints and highlight areas of code when your students need it.
- Engaging imagery: New animated gifs and images to introduce new concepts
- Improved Accessibility: Color-blind friendly example code
New Teacher Dashboard
Ozaria’s new teacher dashboard has been completely redesigned to include all the actionable insights you need to support multiple students no matter your use case or coding experience.
It’s now easier than ever to track student progress and see exactly where students need more support. Progress modals give you the ability to switch between different students and levels with just one click. Now with just one glance you can view student code and submitted projects and compare them with example projects and solution code.
The curriculum guide is your comprehensive map for all the content, resources, projects, solutions, concepts, and standards covered across each chapter within Ozaria. To help inform your lessons and how you structure classes, you’ll also be able to access and play each level through the guide.
How do I access the new content?
To access all the new content you must create a new class and invite your students, even if you have an existing class. So now is a perfect time to introduce your students to Ozaria if you haven’t yet!
If you are coming back to Ozaria, we welcome you back to experience the new Ozaria curriculum and game changes.
While these are a long list of changes and updates, we’re not done yet. We still have more features on the way! And as always, welcome questions and feedback if you’re a teacher email us at schools@ozaria.com or request a demo.
CodeCombat makes computer science programs for students to learn Python and JavaScript while playing a real game. Over the last five years, over 12 million people have learned to write Python and JavaScript using CodeCombat, making it one of the most popular coding games in history.
Source
New Teacher Dashboard & more! is written by Daniela Lao for blog.codecombat.com
