Alpine Elementary has begun a new focus on technology, to better prepare your child for life in the world around us. Any more it seems like computer skills and logical thinking are present and useful in almost any job.

Not only are we using technology in every class room with learning programs and assignment and such, we are instituting serval new areas, that will be taught a separate class, not only computer devices and terminology, online citizenship, typing but much more advanced topic like Coding and electronic basics, Robotics.

In addition to the robotics taught in coding class, for the first time ever we are having a Robotics Club, the focus of the robotics club is to provide a school team to compete in Area, State and World competitions.

The chosen platform by the school and by most districts in Arizona is created by Vex Robotics. They have many different divisions for various age levels, we are using Vex robotics “IQ” Class of robots, this class is geared for the 4-8 grade levels. Where they build, and modify to improve their robot to achieve the task that the annual program has. The 2025-2026 school year competition is called “Mix and Match” (look it up!). While at the High school level they have head-to-head competitions at the elementary level it is based on cooperation with another team to achieve the yearly tasks outlined for the year. This years competition is called Mix and Match check it out

.We are also planning to be building Aerial drones

Students K-8 will have a daily class geared to the level of the child teaching basic skills like

·       Google apps, since google education is a integrated part of each and every class room the navigation of the relevant google applications is the top request from our teachers, so while in class the skills to navigate and operate the google tool set for students will be more natural and provide more time for the teacher to further your child’s knowledge taking less time to show and demonstrate the computer skills.

·       Digital Citizenship, in 2026 this is a Arizona mandated curriculum, by grade level the topics of how to be responsible and kind while online, in this day and age many people fill quite liberated to be little, make fun of and be rude online as there seem little consequence, without any thought to the target of there behavior. The curriculum we are using is https://www.commonsense.org/

This covers all state and federal mandated items in a way that is carefully designed for students

·       Typing while not mandated is the most desired technical request we receive from High Schools

While when most of you when in elementary school coding or programming was most-likely either not present or very limited,  

Today we know that whether your child will grow up to be a developer or not, knowing the basic logic skills of Coding builds problem-solving, logical thinking, creativity, persistence, collaboration, and attention to detail, attributes of high value in any capacity regardless.

Code.Org will be the base of much of our Code skills learning, as they are the Education world most select curriculum for this and many other S.T.E.M. related learning.

·       They will start with block programming like Blockly ( look it up! )   

As they complete block-based coding they will move into several other computer languages like Python and Microsoft C#. Python is used not only industry wide, but Our robotics program uses both Block and Python.