Rhondda
Our Minister for Education has been praising the review of the “National Curriculum” This report has caused quite a lot of angst across the board but technology in particular may well be phased back, especially before year 9. Whilst most agree that there is a crowded curriculum many do not believe that studying ICT contributes to a this unnecessarily. Many will argue that ICT skills are fundamental and it is critical that they should form part of the core curriculum, along with numeracy and literacy, in this increasingly digitized world.
Today I came across this well designed together infographic that explains how teaching coding to students, even young students, has several benefits and why teachers must teach coding to their students. It is offers a very good argument for teaching the skills.
It was created by Kodable and is an iOS app that teaches children various coding and programming concepts through a variety of maze activities.The free version allows users to play the first 30 levels (Smeeborg World) for free. The Pro version (has a small fee) offers full access, giving you a total of 4 Worlds. I have only seen the work of others as I use microsoft and android options.
Please include attribution to Kodable with this graphic.
A few links to other posts/tools that might be useful:
7 Apps for Teaching Children Coding Skills Digital learning specialist Anna Adam provides a quick overview of seven apps that are appropriate for teaching younger children one of the most critical 21st century skills: coding.
Ten Resources for Helping Students Learn to Code and Program by Richard Byrne on his blog Free technology for teachers. Very well explained uses for 10 tools.
Engaging 6th Graders With Coding A guest post on Richard Byrne’s Free technology for teachers where a teacher discusses how she approached teaching coding to her class.
Scratch Tutorials provides guidance on getting starting with Scratch with kids. Scratch is a website from MIT specifically for kids. Kids can program stories, games, and animation. It’s so empowering for kids to be able to learn how to build their own programs.
A useful pinterest board is Coding or Programming for students that collects all sorts of resources.
Filed under: Education | Tagged: classroom activities, coding, educational technology, Free Technology for Teachers, how to, infographic, programming, Richard Byrne, Scratch |
Rhondda's Reflections - wandering around the Web 
Hi Rhonda,
I couldn’t agree more re the angst about the suggested changes to the F-10 Digital Technologies Curriculum. Others are similarly unimpressed see http://goo.gl/rBVRa5 where you can express your support for the existing curriculum.
You might also be interested in a slidedeck I am using when presenting about code titled Should Your Students Catch a Code at http://goo.gl/Oa6TZs
Thank you for the information John. I have sent the petition on to other colleagues as well.
[…] Kodable and a post from Rhonda Powling comes this quite useful infographic exploring more about coding and associated […]
[…] still argue that we should Teach coding to students, it’s an important skill. (A post I wrote 12 months ago). More articles are being written and research undertaken that […]