Why Haven’t I heard of this???
Before this week the only time I have ever heard of coding was my sophomore year of college, when my roommate was complaining about some assignment she had to do with coding. I just laughed with her not even understanding what ‘coding’ meant!
Now that I’ve looked into it further, I feel kind of dumb! This stuff is important!
Should we teach coding in schools?
When we look at coding through the lens of education and school, advocates for teaching coding in schools explain that it is a necessity when kids today are growing up with all the technology that they have. The advocate.org explains that, “There is merit in school students learning coding. We live in a digital world where computer programs underlie everything from business, marketing, aviation, science and medicine, to name several disciplines.” Therefore, its important to know the coding behind these tools to take full advantage of the technology we have in all domains. It also helps gives those students more appreciation for the technology they use so often and what goes into it!
An Education for the 21st century means teaching coding in schools
Others may so that teaching kids how to code is probably just a waste of time. Hackaday.com wrote an article on a news report and said, “When you teach a kid to code, what benefit do they actually get? I mean, we can all agree that teaching a kid Python isn’t necessarily going to help them get a job in 10 years because Python will probably not be the hot language in a decade.” Which again, makes sense; what if we don’t even need coding then? What if its a whole other language and system we need to learn with the newest technology then, then coding was only wasted time.
While I haven’t had any formal coding instruction ever before, I wish I had! For one, it would have made all of this much easier for me to understand. But also, by looking at HTML and coding more I was able to see a different side of the internet I never understood. And with the internet and technology becoming more and more advanced I think it puts you as a teacher or student at an advantage to be able to understand all the stuff that is behind the technology we are using!
So, either side has its points regarding teaching coding but I don’t think teaching coding would be a disservice. Honestly, I think we should be doing it, even if times change our students will have understand of the technology that they are using right now!
Sooo… I’m thinking we should definitely teach it!
While Mozilla’s Learning Network is super helpful for educators, here are some more helpful tools for teachers to teach coding! Get to it ladies!!!
Blogging by Popi 
You raise an interesting and important point, many of the teachers who have used the Mozilla remix project for this assignment have never coded before. I think we need more pre-service teacher education on how to code and incorporate it into the classroom. There are so many fun projects that will help students learn computational thinking and logic (despite the language they are being taught).
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Popi-
I totally agree that coding allows us to see a different side of the internet. As someone who uses the internet and web-based applications very frequently, it was very cool to get a taste of what is behind all that. I definitely think becoming more knowledgeable of the basics of coding would only benefit me in the future.
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