Cool Coding in the Classroom!

In class the other day we explored the idea of coding and discussed if it would be something useful for students to learn at school. At first I was hesitant about thinking it was something that would be useful or important to learn. My mind was changed after listening to others opinions, reading others blog posts and experiencing coding myself.

I chose the option of doing an hour of code on code.org which was an eye opening experience for me. It changed how I viewed coding as a post secondary skill and topic as this site had basic coding skill practice for as young as Kindergarten age. When I first saw that they had games that involved coding for that young of age I laughed to myself and thought what five year old would understand coding. Since I have no experience with coding and I did not quite believe that these games would be age appropriate for the grade levels I tried out the games made for K-5 age range. Down below is a video of me playing some of these games. However, it is just the first 15 minutes of my experience as when I went to upload my entire screen recording I learned that YouTube only allows you to upload videos 15 minutes long or less and that you need to be verified if you would like to upload longer videos.

While playing these games I caught myself thinking, ‘oh wow this is pretty cool.’ Although I was hesitant to agree that coding is a valuable skill that should be taught in all grades I now completely agree and would argue with anyone who disagreed. Learning to code does not only teach you how to code but it teaches critical thinking, problem solving and so much more. Now I understand if we do not make coding a subject per say to be taught throughout elementary and high school, but I do think teachers should recognize the importance and benefits learning how to code has and try to get 2-3 hours of coding in their schedule for their students per week. This site is a great resource that I saved as I hope to be able to introduce this to my future students to help their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Since I am hoping to be in Elementary, I would implement this through using resources such as this site during centre time, free time, or during morning meeting or morning work time. I feel kids would love engaging in this as it feels like you are just playing computer games but you are actually doing a lot of learning.

Let me know in the comments what you think about teaching coding in the classroom. How would you implement it in your class structure?