Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials. One of the most buzzed-about startups over the last few months has been Codecademy — a site that looks to make programming accessible to just about anyone, with a variety of interactive, web-based courses that have users writing their first lines of code within a few seconds.
The site’s ‘Code Year’ program, which invites users to receive one programming lesson each week, racked up a whopping 100,000 signups in only 48 hours — and it even has the White House on board. But, as anyone who has spent much time on the site can attest to, Codecademy has had one big problem: there just aren’t that many lessons available. And the ones that are on there sometimes seem to be moving too quickly, without many practice exercises to explore and reinforce what you’ve just learned. Today, the company is launching a feature that will go a long way toward fixing that. Meet the Codecademy Course Creator. Lots of options for getting students into computer programming. Mathew Kennedy started programming with LegoMindstorm when he was 8.
Now, at age 15, he creates games and applications for phones and computer systems. His father, William Kennedy, applauds the hobby and wishes all kids could be exposed to programming. "It's fun," said Kennedy, who has hired hundreds of software engineers at Microsoft, "and it will be more and more important in the job market as these kids grow up. " Until computer programming becomes standard curriculum at middle and high schools though, families can turn to the Web for free resources and programming games for students. Computer programming helps develop critical thinking skills, such as how to break down a problem into manageable parts or how to put tasks into a logical sequence, as well as the importance of precise communication. Introducing Programming to Preschoolers. Kids and Coding Teaching Strategies Flickr: AngryJulieMonday By Heather Chaplin Since MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten group released Scratch in 2007, kids ages 8 to 13 have built more than 2.2 million animations, games, music, videos and stories using the kid-friendly programming language.
Scratch allows kids to snap together graphical blocks of instructions, like Lego bricks, to control sprites—the movable objects that perform actions. Playing with blocks, building apps. Program or Be Programmed eBook: Douglas Rushkoff, Leland Purvis. Young coders: ideas for change. Priscilla Ossai, 18 Where are you studying?
I'm at school in Chingford, London. How did you get into coding? My uncle is a systems analyst, and he works all around the world. I was always interested in what he was doing. What drew you in? What's the attitude to coding at school? Mputer science: the teachers' view: 'There is only so much Powerpoint and Word that you can teach' Teachers will play a crucial role in achieving the transformation of the computing curriculum.
A radical manifesto for teaching computing. What's missing from teaching computing in schools is a big vision.
Photograph: Alamy A vigorous debate has begun – within government and elsewhere – about what should be done about information and communication technology (ICT) in the school curriculum. Various bodies – the Royal Society, the Association for Learning Technology, Computing at School (a grassroots organisation of concerned teachers) and the British Computer Society, to name just four – have published reports and discussion documents aimed at ministers and the Department for Education. Michael Gove, the education secretary, made an enigmatic speech at the recent BETT technology conference indicating that a rethink is under way in the bowels of Whitehall. La programación, la enseñanza y los niños. Es una traducción libre de un fragmento del fantástico “manifesto for teaching computer science in the 21st century“ publicado por John Naughton, Profesor de la Open University, acompañado por este otro artículo hoy en The Guardian.
Una razonadísima y certera aproximación a por qué deberíamos estar enseñando a los niños a programar, en lugar de simplemente enseñándoles “herramientas de usuario” para que escriban documentos y hagan presentaciones. Muy al hilo del muy recomendable “Program or be programmed” de Douglas Rushkoff que leí hace unos meses: ante un mundo diferente, necesitamos educar a nuestro hijos de una manera diferente. No se trata de crear programadores más allá de quienes manifiesten una vocación hacia ello, sino de prepararlos para el mundo en el que van a vivir, rodeados de productos servicios que son lo que son debido fundamentalmente a cómo fueron programados. Algo que requiere el entendimiento de una ciencia que cuando nosotros crecimos, no era tan importante.
A manifesto for teaching computer science in the 21st century. 1.
We welcome the clear signs that the government is alert to the deficiencies in the teaching of information and communications technology (ICT) in the national curriculum, and the indications you and your ministerial colleagues have made that it will be withdrawn and reviewed. We welcome your willingness to institute a public consultation on this matter and the various responses you have already made to submissions from a wide spectrum of interested parties. 2. However, we are concerned that the various rationales currently being offered for radical overhaul of the ICT curriculum are short-sighted and limited. They give too much emphasis to the special pleading of particular institutions and industries (universities and software companies, for example), or frame the need for better teaching in purely economic terms as being good for "UK plc". 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.