Happy Monday! ...If Mondays can ever be happy, especially when they're so gloomy. A rainy Monday could be considered an inspirational Monday. However, gloomy just makes for a dreary Monday. To make it better, I thought I'd share my creation from one of Khan Academy's Hour of Drawing with Code. It's a very happy elephant enjoying the sun.
So why did I take an hour (technically over an hour) to do the Hour of Code for Khan Academy? Well, it was my job... sort of.
This summer I've had the fun pleasure of doing summer research at my school. We've been exploring the many resources out there that teach people, specifically kids, to code. Our projects goal is to bring coding to elementary schools as well as create an Hour of Code for our College-aged peers.
So far it's been a neat experience! Here are just a few things I've explored and what I think about them:
- Code.org
- A resource that is COMPLETELY FREE for anyone to use. It's friendly for teachers because it has lesson plans at the ready and a video geared towards teachers to explain the lessons.
- Below is the screen shot where I nerd-out on Facebook about the all-day workshop for in-service teachers I was able to attend.
- KhanAcademy.org
- I've used Khan Academy multiple times for learning math. I've always enjoyed it as a positive and free resource that's helpful for practicing your math skills. Since I used it in Middle School/High School, it has changed a lot. They offer a wide variety of subjects. They have early math to beyond calculus, history, biology, chemistry, and many others.
- Yes, Computing is now one of their subjects. I explored that one for my summer research project. I'm not entirely sure what I think of it yet. It is very fun and informative. My only curiosity with it is how does what is learned there, specifically the coding languages, transfer outside of their website. I'm currently doing some of their classes, so I'll post an update later.
- Scratch.mit.edu
- This resource is great for its limitless possibilities. Even if you never create anything, you should explore all the creations others have made. It allows users to use block language to create programs. This is a quick overview of why block language is useful. I'm not as familiar with Scratch as the the previous two resources, but it's definitely is fun to use and test one's creativity.
While I've only listed three resources, it's not because there aren't that many, it's because these are the main ones I found interesting. If you'd like to explore more resources, please go here. There are so many things out there.
I hope when our Research project is done, that I will have made sense of all the resources and how they work together. I find that might not be impossible to do, but it's worth a shot.
While people may think it's crazy to teach children how to code, I would like to argue that it's crazy not to teach them how to code. There is valuable critical and creative thinking that is grown from learning to code. All of the skills we want our kids to be learning like perseverance, problem solving, resourcefulness, and collaboration are learned via Computer Science. Even if these kids never become programmers, they will have become thinkers. We want and need thinkers. Here is a Ted Talk that explains why we should teach kids code. The talk is by the guy who created Scratch.
Thanks for taking your time to enjoy my happy elephant enjoying the sun and reading some of my Computer Science resource findings.
If you have ANY comments to add regarding Computer Science especially teaching Computer Science to the younger aged group, please feel free to share. Also, if you have a cool name for my elephant, I'm open for suggestions.
Happy Monday (or whatever day you're reading this)!
