Una platform

Una, meaning “together” in Latin, is an online teaching and learning platform that brings practical collaborative learning experience into every classroom. Specifically designed for Coding and STEM education, Una provides teaching materials, virtual classroom and Microsoft MakeCode with co-coding enhancements to facilitate teaching and learning between teachers and students. With Una, students are better motivated and their problem-solving and cooperation skills are strengthened, while the workload of lesson preparation and in-class supervision of the teachers is reduced.

HIGHLIGHTED FUNCTIONS

• Block-based co-coding environment powered by Microsoft MakeCode - Block-based coding provides a more friendly programming experience to students new to coding with higher learning efficiency. With the co-coding enhancements by Una, students will be able to work together, learn from others and share their knowledge easily.
• Support micro:bit and its ecosystem - micro:bit is an affordable and easy to use device designed for STEM education and there are many products built for it. Una supports all of them via MakeCode and MakeCode extensions.
• Virtual classroom assembly, management and lock-step - Through Una, teachers may assemble all students belonging to the same lesson to enter the virtual classroom immediately and gate-keep students’ progress by “lock-step”.
• Flexible group management and group discussion by built-in chatroom - Teachers may flexibly assign students to join or leave groups, before or even during class, and students may resume their work at home online with discussions through the built-in chatroom.
• Task division and sample code - A complex task may be divided into multiple subtasks for students to jointly or severally solve them step by step. Sample code may be provided by teachers as hints or suggestions to students for each subtask.
• Auto-save and real-time update - Progress is automatically saved and shared to teachers and members of the same group, allowing interaction anytime and anywhere. Also, when there is any unexpected technical problem such as power outage and system failure, students may immediately resume their work using another computer.
• Support Q&A evaluation and auto-marking - In addition to coding, Una supports short and multiple-choice questions that may be marked by the system automatically to evaluate students’ understanding.
• Ready-to-use teaching materials and uploading customized teaching materials - Ready-to-use teaching materials enables teachers to teach STEM immediately after subscription and let experienced teachers upload their own teaching materials.