Platforms & Setup¶

Every tool used this year: what it costs, what it needs, and what will bite you.

Everything here is free

No subscriptions, no licences, no hardware purchases. The only paid resource anywhere in this course is the teacher's own Azure subscription in Unit 4, which runs on the free tier of Azure Static Web Apps.

At a glance¶

Tool	Used	Student account?	Camera?	Risk
MakeCode Arcade	Wks 1–8, 17	❌ No	❌	⚠️ Browser-storage saves
Google Quick Draw	Wks 1, 9	❌ No	❌	Low
Teachable Machine	Wks 10–11	❌ No	⚠️ Yes	⚠️ Camera policy
Python (browser)	Wks 18–26	⚠️ Optional	❌	Low
HTML/CSS editor	Wks 27–28	⚠️ Optional	❌	Low
Azure Static Web Apps	Wks 29, 33	❌ Teacher only	❌	⚠️ Setup time
Scratch	Backup	⚠️ Optional	❌	Low
CS Unplugged	Plan B	❌ No	❌	None — it's paper

The two things that will actually bite you¶

1. MakeCode saves to browser storage, not to an account¶

This is the single biggest operational risk in the entire year.

MakeCode Arcade stores student projects in the browser's local storage. That's wonderful — no logins, no COPPA paperwork, nothing to provision. But if the school's Chromebook policy clears browsing data on logout, every student project vanishes between Fridays.

Units 1 and 7–8 build a multi-week game. Losing it in week 6 would be genuinely demoralising.

Test this in Week 1 or 2 — do not wait

On a student Chromebook (not yours — your account may have different policy):

Create a MakeCode project. Name it something obvious.
Log out completely.
Log back in and reopen arcade.makecode.com.
Is the project still there?

If it survives: you're fine, do nothing.

If it doesn't: switch to file export. At the end of each session students click Save / Download to get a .png project file (MakeCode encodes the whole project in the image) and save it to their Google Drive. Next week they drag it back into the editor. Costs 90 seconds a week. Budget for it in the Anchor segment.

2. Teachable Machine needs the webcam¶

Weeks 10–11 have students train an image classifier using the Chromebook camera. Managed Chromebooks frequently block camera access by policy.

Ask IT in August, not in October. It's on the whitelist request.

If camera access is denied: Teachable Machine also accepts uploaded images. The lesson still works — students use a folder of prepared images instead of live capture. Slightly less magical, entirely functional. The Week 10 lesson includes this fallback.

Tool by tool¶

Microsoft MakeCode Arcade¶

https://arcade.makecode.com · Weeks 1–8, 17 · Free · No account

Block-based game programming that toggles to JavaScript and Python in the same project.

Why this is the backbone of Unit 1: the language toggle is the best differentiation mechanism available for a room spanning grades 5–10. A 5th grader drags blocks; a 10th grader flips the dropdown and edits real JavaScript. Same project, same task, adjacent seats, no one singled out.

Setup: none. Open the URL and start.
Chromebook: works well, including on low-RAM models
Saving: browser local storage (see the warning above)
Sharing: every project gets a share link that plays in a browser — no account needed to view. This is how Week 8's playtest day works.
Tutorials: built in. "Chase the Pizza" is the Week 1 starting point.

Google Quick Draw¶

https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com · Weeks 1, 9 · Free · No account

A neural network guesses your doodle. Instant, loud, and genuinely delightful.

Used twice on purpose. Week 1 as the hook — "how did it know?" Week 9 as the callback, when students finally have the vocabulary to answer their own question. That eight-week gap is deliberate.

Doubles as your Week 1 tech check — if a device can't load Quick Draw, it can't load MakeCode either. You find out during a fun activity instead of during instruction.

Google Teachable Machine¶

https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com · Weeks 10–11 · Free · No account

Students train a real image classifier in about 15 minutes. The anchor experience of Unit 2.

Privacy — worth knowing and worth telling parents: training runs entirely in the browser on the device. No images are uploaded to Google. Nothing is stored. No account is created.
Camera: required for live capture; image upload works as a fallback
Week 11 uses it backwards — students deliberately train a biased model and discover the failure themselves

Python in the browser¶

Weeks 18–26 · Free · Optional account

Unit 3 leans on MakeCode Arcade's Python mode as the primary environment, for one specific reason: a student drowning in syntax can flip back to blocks and see what the code was supposed to say. No other free tool offers that safety net, and in a mixed-age room it matters enormously.

Standalone Python editors are usable for students who want plain Python. Confirm any editor is still free and login-free before building a lesson on it — this part of the ecosystem changes often.

Azure Static Web Apps¶

https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/static-web-apps/ · Weeks 29, 33 · Free tier · Teacher account only

Where student web pages go live. The payoff of the entire year.

Students never touch Azure

Students never create Azure accounts, never see credentials, and never open the portal. The teacher deploys on their behalf, one Static Web App containing a folder per student.

This is a hard requirement — privacy, safety, and the fact that no 5th grader should be near a cloud billing account.

Cost: the free tier covers this comfortably
Prep: Weeks 29 and 33 need real prep time, not five minutes. The lesson pages say so honestly.
Safety: no student full names in URLs or page content; teacher reviews every page before it goes public

Scratch¶

https://scratch.mit.edu · Backup / extension · Free · Optional account

Not on the main path — most students used block-based tools last year and this course deliberately moves past that. Keep it available for:

A student who's genuinely overwhelmed by MakeCode and needs a familiar footing
Capstone projects (Weeks 30–33) where a student wants to build a story or animation
A substitute-teacher day

CS Unplugged¶

https://www.csunplugged.org · Plan B · Free · Paper

Printable, no-computer activities. Not a downgrade — several are better than their plugged equivalents, and this curriculum schedules some deliberately.

See Unplugged Backups for the ready-to-run set, indexed by concept.

For students who want more¶

Some students will want more than 45 minutes a week. Never assign these — the class is homework-free and that promise should hold. Offer them only when a student asks.

For	Where
More game building	MakeCode Arcade's full tutorial library
Creative coding	p5.js Web Editor — https://editor.p5js.org
Structured CS practice	Khan Academy Computing — https://www.khanacademy.org/computing
AI concepts, older students	Elements of AI — https://www.elementsofai.com
Anything Microsoft	Microsoft Learn — https://learn.microsoft.com/training/

First-month checklist¶

Send the whitelist request to school IT — week 1
Test MakeCode on a student Chromebook, including logout/login persistence
Confirm camera policy for Teachable Machine (needed by late October)
Confirm whether browser data is cleared on logout
Ask about the school's file-sharing setup — needed for Unit 4's file handoff
Print the Week 1 handouts and the unplugged go-bag contents
Buy 10 plastic cups. Seriously — here's why