CodeWizardsHQ Review

My son just attended probably the coolest online class he has ever taken. A huge thanks to CodeWizardsHQ for inviting us to be a part of this review. Interested in coding classes? This company specializes in classes for EVERYONE, not just homeschoolers. There are a variety of times available for all students, so be sure to check out their general page for all of the options. Check out the homeschool page for options on classes offered during the daytime for coops or small groups of students.

Now we have tried coding classes in the past. The class we tried was a pre-recorded class that my son could take at his own pace. Sure, he was excited about the class and for a couple of weeks worked very diligently on the content, but soon lost interest. It was especially discouraging when he made a mistake in the coding and had to start the lesson over from the beginning in order to catch his own mistake, or worse, he had to start from the very beginning. Needless to say, he became quite discouraged and never actually finished the class.

This class is completely different. This was an actual live class, taught online. It was especially nice because we didn't have to travel to a learning center. My son simply logged on at the appropriate class time and participated in the class. We received a couple emails prior to the class with important information and reminders that class was coming up. I appreciated that, especially since this class was something that was out of our normal homeschool routine. Since this was a live class, we definitely didn't want to forget to attend!

The instructor interacted with the students, and the students could interact with each other. The content was engaging and the coding was easy to understand and fun. My son coded a simple comic that he was able to customize how he wanted it to look in the end. It was all quite engaging. I'll be honest, when I first told my son that I had signed him up for this class, he rolled his eyes at me and said he didn't want to do it. I encouraged told him that he was going to try it anyway. I personally think he was thinking it was going to be hard, and I'm sure he was remembering that other class that had been quite challenging.

We didn't need to have any special equipment in order to participate in the class. We plugged in our headset that also had a microphone attached to it and he was on his way. The instructor spent a few minutes at the beginning of class getting to know each student. They were able to speak directly to the instructor and other students. I noticed that one student was typing in the chat section of the classroom, so I am going to make the assumption that if you don't have a microphone that you can still attend the class. You would just need to type your answers instead of speaking them. We used a headset, but I think we could have simply used the computer audio instead.

One thing that I want to note about this class is that my son was working with actual code, not coding blocks. He was able to completely customize his comic the way he wanted it. Check out his finished comic!

The online classroom is very simple and user friendly. I was a little bit nervous that we would get hung up on some tech things, but it was really nice and easy to enter the classroom and get started. I knew my son was hesitant to take the class. Once the class got started, he really enjoyed it. I sat in the background, listening and glancing at what was going on. I could tell that he was really into the coding and enjoyed making his comic. After class was over, he kept asking if he could take more of those kind of coding class. I guess you could say that he enjoyed it!

Curious what other reviewers had to say about this product? Head on over to the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read all the reviews.

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