Coding Articles

A $25 computer that fits in the palm of your hand, the Raspberry Pi has the potential to challenge the digital divide and make coding in schools as commonplace as textbooks. Computing could truly become about what kids can make rather than what schools can buy.

With smartphones, tablets, and apps, coding is becoming the language of the digital age, but is the U.S. lagging behind? A panel of experts discusses how we can improve our coding literacy and close the programming gap among women and minorities.

Proclamations like 'kids need to learn to code!' may be accurate but, without some context and conceptual unpacking, they can be rather unhelpful. Thankfully, fellow DMLcentral contributor Ben Williamson has done a great job of problematising the current preoccupation with coding by asking questions like: "What assumptions, practices and kinds of thinking are privileged by learning to code?

Ryan Orbuch, 16 years old, rolled a suitcase to the front door of his family's house in Boulder, Colo., on a Friday morning a year ago. He was headed for the bus stop, then the airport, then Texas. "I'm going," he told his mother. "You can't stop me."

Proclamations like 'kids need to learn to code!' may be accurate but, without some context and conceptual unpacking, they can be rather unhelpful. Thankfully, fellow DMLcentral contributor Ben Williamson has done a great job of problematising the current preoccupation with coding by asking questions like: "What assumptions, practices and kinds of thinking are privileged by learning to code?

With smartphones, tablets, and apps, coding is becoming the language of the digital age, but is the U.S. lagging behind? A panel of experts discusses how we can improve our coding literacy and close the programming gap among women and minorities.

January 12, 2014 I have recently received a couple of messages through the Facebook Page of Educational Technology and Mobile Learning about resources on teaching coding to kids and instead of sharing them individually I decided to write this guide for all of you.

by James Walker Teachers struggle to teach budding minds important concepts, but the fact is that America is lacking in science and engineering. In a video aimed at students called What Most Schools Don't Teach, Mark Zuckerberg tells students: "The whole limit of the system is there just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today."

As technology is becoming more and more a daily part of teen's lives, digital literacy educator is becoming a part of the teen librarian's job description. In 2011, the American Library Association's Digital Literacy Task Force defined digital literacy as, "the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills."

By on Learning to code is a popular topic in educational circles these days. For good reason. When young people code their own apps, games, stories, or websites they have a chance to think critically, troubleshoot, problem solve, and collaborate. It's a way to create something real that can be seen and used by lots of different people.

A handful of nonprofit and for-profit groups are working to address what they see as a national education crisis: Too few of America's K-12 public schools actually teach computer science basics and fewer still offer it for credit. It's projected that in the next decade there will be about 1 million more U.S.

Sometimes we talk about things we didn't learn in library school. The point of that occasional series is to illustrate that a lot of our librarian skills are learned on the job, and to acknowledge that the scope of what we do is wide and ever-changing.

If your local school system offers computer science courses, chances are those courses are electives that won't count toward core science or mathematics credit. The implicit message is that, while those skills may prove important for some students' futures, they aren't as transferable to a wide range of occupations as, say, Algebra 2 or Biology.

As the conversation about education shifts towards helping students develop useful skills in life beyond the classroom, a new spotlight on computer coding has emerged. Kids are impressing adults with their creativity, with their facility in learning new technologies, and their ability to design challenging video games.

Last week we participated in the Hour of Code, sponsored by CSEdweek.org. We shared the introduction video on our morning news and invited everyone to try coding activities in the library during lunch. I had the free tutorials from the site pulled up on the computers in the library, Lightbot app on the library iPods and cups for the non-tech coding activity from the site.

Last week, one of our Technology Support Teachers invited me to the district's Technology Center for an Hour of Code. I hadn't paid much attention to Hour of Code as it didn't look that interesting to me, but a trip to the Dublin Technology Center doing something she seemed excited about made sense to me.

I first heard about Hour of Code on Twitter which is my best source of inspiration! I saw several tweets about it, but really didn't think about jumping in until Andy Plemmons invited me and several other teacher-librarians to plan together via a Google Hangout about how to implement at our schools and in our libraries.

This week as we celebrate with Hour of Code with over 9,000,000 others around the world, the young people at Van Meter are having fun learning, collaborating, creating, and sharing with others too. Today after I showed our third graders the three coding apps we would be using during their library time....

Yesterday I was asked, why should librarians learn Python? And I answered the wrong question. I answered, why should librarians learn Python, when I should have answered, why should librarians learn code. (Python is merely an entry point, with strengths and weaknesses; it's one I happen to find convenient, but others will do.)

Are kids these days really as hopeless and self-absorbed as we claim? Perhaps not. The next wave of tech extraordinaires seem to get younger and younger, and the app-creating students mentioned here are just the tip of the iceberg.

By Terry Chao on Two California teens and longtime friends, Nikhil Cheerla and Vineet Kosaraju, decided to share their love of computer coding with young and old students alike, and came up with the idea about six months ago to teach free coding class at various public libraries around the San Francisco Bay area, including at the Mountain View (CA) Public Library.

January 12, 2014 I have recently received a couple of messages through the Facebook Page of Educational Technology and Mobile Learning about resources on teaching coding to kids and instead of sharing them individually I decided to write this guide for all of you.

Welcome to Coderdojo! Ms. Gutkowski and Ms. TechmanThanks to our awesome 2013 teen volunteers!!Monday: SCRATCHScratch is an appealing easy way for children and teens to make 2-dimensional stories, comics, simple animations, or even games.You can download the old Scratch at: http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4/ Scroll down on this download page to see Scratch Cards - each one shows...

This is one of the first lessons that has been pretty difficult for me. One thing was finding the quiet time I needed to get something accomplished was very tricky; and, the second thing was that the concepts were a bit puzzling.

"Jewelbots are programmable friendship bracelets for teens and pre-teens. Right out of the box, girls can easily program the bracelet to light up when their friends are near or send messages to a buddy across the classroom. These are not just pretty jewelry, they are a powerful communication tool."