Coding for Kids
One of our main topics of discussion this week was coding and how it can be used in the classroom to help children with other skills along with coding skills. In my research, the three main skills that coding works alongside of are math skills, literacy skills, and storytelling/creativity skills. While these are all wonderful skills to spend time practicing I truly think the most valued skill children learn from working with coding applications is how to code.
Of course, math, literacy, and storytelling are some of society’s most basic skills which can be widely used in many fields of work. Students should be able to comprehend and work well with these skills but I stand by the fact that coding could be the most important skill they learn from these applications. While coding is not as generally used or taught to people quite like the other skills I believe it holds more value in this day and age.
As we move towards a more technological society the job sector which coders fall under is ever-expanding at the moment. As people continue to come up with technological ideas jobs continue to open up for coders. This skill will be so greatly needed in the future that I see no reason why not to start teaching it young. Giving children the opportunity to learn the basics of coding also can lead to innovation as they will the power to create what they wish within the world of technology.
The idea of being able to understand code and use it to create things amazes me. I remember just the other day I was trying to figure out a way to automatically turn off my projector at a certain time so that I do not leave it running all night as I often fall asleep with it on and do not want to burn out the lightbulb. Unfortunately, my projector does not have a turn off setting like that, it will continue to stay on as long as there is something playing. There is a setting that will shut down the projector when there is nothing playing and it has been disconnected from my computer but I again had no way of doing this. So my next thought was how can I make something small to sit on top of my projector that will press the button at midnight to turn it off. That whole idea was something completely out of my range of knowledge sadly. I considered a whole set up like the one Doc uses to feed his dog in Back to The Future but it just seemed over the top and like a whole lot of work.
I was luckily able to figure out something that works which if I had any coding skills whatsoever this probably would have been the first thing I tried. After about an hour of going through my projector settings and thinking about ways I could create an elaborate contraption to turn the projector off, I decided to make a quick Google search asking something along the lines of, “how to shut down and disconnect your computer from the media player it is connected to?” The very first thing that came up, no word of a lie, was a coded shortcut to turn off and disconnect my computer. The only thing I had to do was copy and paste it into shortcuts and put the time I wanted into the code. I did not even know this was a skill computers have. I am now rethinking everything I know about computers.
Anyway, the point of that story was that we need to equip students with some basic computer skills. Their lives are going to revolve around technology whether we as a society likes it or not. Children are going to do a huge amount of learning, projects, communicating, gaming, jobs, and much more on technology in ways our generations have never done before. It is such a new resource and I think we as educators have spent enough time ignoring the fact that this is the future. If we consider ourselves to be preparing and teaching the next generation then we should be teaching them skills which they will, at some point, definitely need to use throughout their lives.
So, while I appreciate the skills that come along with coding I do believe there should, at some point, be a focus mainly on coding skills. I want students in my classes to leave prepared for the technological world that is waiting for them. I want them to be able to feel as if technology is opening up a whole new world of limitless possibilities for them rather than feeling the way I did and still do which is as if the world of technology is growing in front of me but leaving me behind. So with that said and done I will be working towards better myself and teaching myself more and more about how we can teach technical skills so that my students don’t feel lost in the overwhelming world of the fast-paced growing technology.
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading!
Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash
