Logic gates and coding in class: a guide for teachers
LearnGates is a set of free tools for teaching digital logic and programming. Students open a link and start working: there is nothing to install and no account to create, so a lesson can start in the first minute.
Why it works in a classroom
No accounts, no installs. Everything runs in the browser on school computers and Chromebooks. Work is saved in the browser on that computer, and students can download it as a file or share it as a link.
Made for school networks. A whole class can work from one school connection at the same time. If the network blocks live connections, the site falls back to ordinary web requests, so it keeps working behind school firewalls.
Live sessions. Start a session, share the link, and everyone works on the same circuit or the same code at once, with names and pointers. It is a quick way to show something to the whole class or let groups build together.
Challenges that check themselves. The lessons end with challenges in GateLab. The circuit is checked against a truth table automatically, and stars reward solutions with fewer parts, which is a good push for the fast students.
English and Italian. Every tool and every lesson is available in both languages.
A suggested sequence
Lesson 1: gates and truth tables. Introduce 0 and 1 and the basic gates with Logic gates. Students try each gate on the page, then solve First steps and NOT from NAND.
Lesson 2: one gate for everything. AND, OR and XOR built only from NAND gates. A good moment to introduce De Morgan’s laws.
Lesson 3: arithmetic. Binary addition with the half adder, the full adder and the 4-bit adder. Students learn to reuse their own circuits as parts.
Lesson 4: choosing and comparing. The multiplexer, the decoder and the equality comparator.
Lesson 5: memory. The SR latch, the D flip-flop and a counter: the step from logic to computers.
After that, GateLab’s examples go further, with Arduino, ESP32 and Raspberry Pi Pico boards, classic 74xx chips and a working x86 CPU you can program in assembly.
For programming lessons too
CodeLab is an HTML, CSS and JavaScript editor with a live preview and a console, for a first website. The C++ page compiles and runs C++ and C programs, with keyboard input in a terminal, as a single file or as a project with several files. Both have the same live sessions.
Questions
Do students need an account?
No. They open the link and start: no sign-up, no password, no e-mail address. In a live session they only type the name the others will see.
Where is students’ work saved?
In the browser, on the computer they use. To continue on another computer, they save it as a file or share it as a link.
How many students can join one live session?
Up to 60 people can work in the same session, enough for a whole class.