Coming into my educational technologies class, I had no idea what to expect; I just knew that I had a lot to learn. I definitely did not anticipate coding to be one of those things. I believed coding to be far from my reality. Something that other people did who had a special ability for understanding technology. After all, I’m here to be a teacher, not a computer scientist. I didn’t see the connection between the two or the value of learning to code, both of which are vast, as shown through this video.
After completing just an hour of coding I have a much better understanding of what coding is and its immense benefits in the classroom and in life. It’s a multi-disciplinary skill that is displayed through science, math and even English classes. And given that our future is rooted in technology, it gives students an opportunity to be involved in future endeavours from an early age. And it’s soo easy.. if I can do it, anyone can!
Code.org was a great place to start. It’s step-by-step tutorial was really easy to comprehend and would be great for beginners of any age. Within the hour I had created my own game from scratch which was really cool. It’s a recreation of the Flappy Bird game, which I had on my phone a couple years ago, so it was interesting to see what went into making that app and how easy it truly is. My code to create the game ended up looking like this..
Kids love to be challenged in their learning in fun and creative ways. I can tell this will be an excellent resource to get my students excited and engaged in computer science, and am eager to see their success in that field transfer onto others.
Keilyn Howie 