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That is a great question Neo!

This week I was able to venture into the world of coding. I have noticed this growing trend as stores are even popping up such as Code Ninja around the city. I must admit that when I previously thought of coding it didn’t exactly fill me with excitement or a growing desire to learn more. In fact, my mind would think of The Matrix and binary numbers floating through the air.

There are numerous free websites available to try your hand at coding and I feel they would even be beneficial to utilize in the classroom in a lesson about coding. After some very preliminary research into coding it becomes apparent that the topic of coding could be used in a variety of different ways in the classroom. After all, coding is everywhere around us, from sending a tweet to swiping a debit card, there are a set of instructions that have been written that a computer can understand and then perform a certain function.

The focus of my coding for this week was around creating a simple game through the website code.org. While I understand that what I was doing was very elementary in regards to coding, it was still a fun exercise that I feel students would also enjoy. Through the process of simply dragging and dropping commands I was able to create my own version of Flappy Bird. Check out my screencast to show you how the process worked…

Although I did not grow up in an era where there was much of a focus on coding in schools, technology is more and more prevalent with each passing year. Utilizing something that is already of interest to students can be a great way to jump start the discussion around internet safety and how rapidly it is evolving. There are so many available resources that including coding in the classroom can be an interactive and fun activity. And if that still doesn’t do it for you, just show them The Matrix!