Hi all,
For my A1 assignment, I looked into coding as a learning and teaching tool in K-12 education.
Initially, even though I had seen many colleagues in my teaching discipline using coding/robotics in their classes, I was not so enthusiastic about incorporating coding in my teaching practice due to lack of knowledge, confidence and instructional time limitations.
While completing this project, I have learned so much about coding, rationales behind this learning activities, resources to teachers, students and parents to develop the 21st century competencies – computational thinking skills.
I hope that my presentation motivates you to learn to code, incorporate coding into your teaching practice, and practice computational thinking skills in your lives.
Happy coding!
Hi Esther,
Thanks for this clear and concise overview of coding for K-12 students. I wish that I had learned (or even been aware of) coding when I was in school and I’ve looked into ideas around game design for younger students in other MET courses. There are so many good reasons that you outline for including coding in the curriculum, and it can translate into meaningful learning within multiple disciplines, depending on the projects that are undertaken. Learning the basics of coding can open up new possibilities and ideas for young students and can encourage them to create and design.
(Tran, K. M. (2016). “Her story was complex”: A Twine workshop for ten- to twelve-year-old girls. E-Learning and Digital Media, 13(5–6), 212–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753016689635)
HI Esther. I like that phrase — “computational thinking skills” — because as frustrating, error-prone and opaque as computers and coding might seem to us, they do model a certain type of valuable logical process. I’d love to see a bit of coding be core curriculum. If it’s worth learning how an internal combustion engine works, or how mitochondria supply energy for the cell, then why not how computers function?
For anyone who wants to know how computers work, not just in some vague or abstract way, but literally down to the transistor level, I highly recommend watching Ben Eater walk you through simple logic circuits all the way to a programmable computer (all on breadboards) starting here (or thereabouts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo2KgRN04XI
I won’t lie; it’s several hours of geeky instruction, complete with tons of math, but when he finally showed how imaginary instructions — computer code — can actually, in the real world, make transistors bleep and bloop, and in the process add or subtract or multiply numbers, it filled in a giant gap in my understanding. I knew computers were made of transistors and diodes and IC chips, and I knew they ran “code”, but before viewing this I still had no idea how we could write a few characters, call it a program, and a computer would then “run” it and do something.