Why Programming Is The Core Skill Of The 21st Century. In the 20th Century, meaningful education was all about learning your ABCs. Today, it's centered on Alphas, Betas and C++. Programming skills are becoming ever more important, quickly turning into the core competency for all kinds of 21st Century workers.
That inescapable fact is leading individuals to seek out new ways of learning to code, startups and non-profits to find ways to help them and businesses to search for innovative approaches to finding the coders they so desperately need. When daily deal site Living Social couldn't find the coding help it needed, for example, the company took matters into its own hands and successfully created its own qualified programmers. Through an experiment called Hungry Academy, Living Social paid 24 people to learn computer programming within five months.
All two dozen passed the class and became full-time developers at Living Social following their graduation. See also: Plenty Of Ways To Learn Programming Lots Of Coding Jobs Going Begging. The coding movement: Resources for computer science education. Computer science education is making its way into K-12 schools, even at the elementary level. In the middle of a resounding push for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education is a growing movement to expose children to computer science education and skills, also known as computer programming or coding. According to Code.org statistics, computer science is the highest-paid college degree, and jobs in computer programming are growing at two times the national average–but despite that, fewer than 2.4 percent of college students graduate with a degree in computer science. Forty of 50 states do not count computer science toward math or science requirements for high school graduation, and only 1 in 10 schools offer computer programming classes.
That could change, though, because states like Washington are making moves to count Advanced Placement computer science courses toward math and science graduation requirements. ( Next page: Eleven coding resources to engage students ) Managing disruptive technology: A conversation with investor Chamath Palihapitiya. “Technology will disrupt every facet of every job,” says Chamath Palihapitiya, the former Facebook executive turned venture investor.
For executives, he argues, it isn’t enough just to understand the technologies, such as sensors and autonomous vehicles, that will have an outsized impact on improving the quality of life and economic output. New waves of technological disruption will probably blindside executives who don’t build technical proficiency into the way they manage their organizations. This interview was conducted by James Manyika, a director in McKinsey’s San Francisco office. What follows is an edited transcript of Palihapitiya’s remarks. Interview transcript Three technologies to watch I’ll tell you the three things that I’m most excited by. So for the first example, what we’re seeing now is sensors everywhere. And as that happens, what we’re going to see are extremely explicit ways of improving one’s quality of life, one’s economic output, in really tangible and simple ways.
Ideas for Teaching Computer Technology to Kids | A collection of ideas and resources that might help someone who wants to teach kids about computer technology. Computational Thinking. Blockly - A visual programming editor. Professional blog. I was recently asked about some programming environments I've used with students, and I thought I might as well compile a list of them, as well as some environments I've considered using. Blockly (Image credit: BlocklyBlockly is an open-source online programming environment developed by Google. It is currently very much a work in progress, although the language itself seems pretty stable, getting it to a state of usability for a group of students is not for the faint of heart.
I mocked up a version of Blockly that resembles some aspects of the Logo programming language that I used with kindergarten students. Turtle Art (Image credit: Sugar Labs)Turtle Art is a derivative programming environment of Logo, having been heavily influenced by the Logo programming language, and developed into a visual block version of it. Hopscotch Introduces Programming for Kids on an iPad. Hopscotch is a new app designed to get kids coding on the iPad. It is an absolutely great introductory program, and one that will only improve as time goes by. In many ways Hopscotch is a simplified version of Scratch with some additional controls for the iPad – you can, for example, make an object react to the tilt sensor.
Like Scratch, you create a program easily by dragging jigsaw-like pieces arrayed on the side of the screen into an active area. Modify the details such as distance or duration and you’re good to go. The implementation is clean and simple. There are limitations, though, which mean that even slightly older kids, or those with a bit of experience with programming, will soon be looking to move on to something more sophisticated. The next release, coming out in the next couple of weeks, will allow you to edit the random numbers. Although there are limitations, Hopscotch works wonderfully within them. Like this: Like Loading... Code.org: Solving our CS shortage 1 teacher, 1 student at a time. Code.org, founded by brothers and serial entrepreneurs Ali and Hadi Partovi, is dedicated to improving the state of computer science education in the United States.
The bottom line is that we're nowhere close to being able to meet the demand for programmers in the coming years. Check out this graphic from Code.org: These statistics are actually pretty ridiculous. We focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in many of our conversations, but actual programming rarely enters the picture. We give students iPads and various devices, and promote 1:1 to meet the "technology" component, but programming itself is a novelty for most schools in K12. We know that college grads with computer science degrees are going to get good jobs, but we don't let students explore CS meaningfully in high school so that they have an interest in pursuing a related degree in college.
Code.org has attracted interest from some of the biggest names in technology and politics. Mitch Resnick: Let's teach kids to code.