Talentbuddy. Programming tools for kids. Dear Marginalized People Coming Into Tech, by Kronda Adair. The tech industry is undeniably dominated by straight white men (much like the rest of the world, surprise surprise). If you're coming into this industry and don't match that description, you're going to have some extra challenges.
Your hardships may range from the mildly annoying to cry-in-the-bathroom-at-work heartbreaking. I don't want you to be caught by surprise, but the most important thing I want to tell you is that in the end, it doesn't matter. If this is what you want, you can do it. If you're curious and persistent, you can have the career you want in tech and no one can stop you. Pic from Women Who Hack in Portland, Oregon You're smart enough. You're good enough. Imposter syndrome is the phenomenon of feeling inadequate, or like a fraud, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Who Am I and Why Am I Telling You This? I'm a 42 year old Black lesbian, living in the one of the whitest large cities in the U.S, and making a living in tech.
You don't have to be young. Girls and Software. December 2013's EOF, titled "Mars Needs Women", visited an interesting fact: that the male/female ratio among Linux Journal readers, and Linux kernel developers, is so lopsided (male high, female low) that graphing it would produce a near-vertical line. I was hoping the piece would invite a Linux hacker on the female side of that graph to step up and move the conversation forward. And sure enough, here we have Susan Sons aka @HedgeMage.
Read on. —Doc Searls Yep, I said "girls". Looking around at the hackers I know, the great ones started before puberty. When I was 12, I got my hands on a Slackware disk and installed it on my computer—a Christmas gift from my parents in an especially good year for my dad's company—and I found a bug in a program. What I didn't find out about until later was the following private message exchange between one of the veterans who'd been helping me and a channel denizen who recognized my nickname from a mailing list: It Really Is about Girls (and Boys) Out in the Open: Man Creates One Programming Language to Rule Them All | Wired Enterprise.
Stefan Karpinski, the co-creator of Julia. Photo: Brendan Adamson Stefan Karpinski was building a software tool that could simulate the behavior of wireless networks, and his code was a complete mess. But it wasn’t his fault. As a computer science grad student with years of industry experience under his belt, Karpinski was far from a programming novice. He knew how to build software. The problem was that in order to build his network simulation tool, he needed four different programming languages.
No single language was suited to the task at hand, but using four languages complicated everything from writing the code to debugging it and patching it. Dubbed Julia, it provides an early glimpse into what programming languages might look like in the not too distant future It’s a common problem for programmers as well as mathematicians, researchers and data scientists. Today’s languages were each designed with different goals in mind. Julia co-creator Jeff Bezanson. Julia co-creator Viral Shah. Learn.
Create a 3D T-Rex Game Grades 2+ | Blocks Dance Party Minecraft Hour of Code Escape Estate Grades 2+ | Blocks, Python Code a 3D Space Invaders Game Minecraft Timecraft Rodocodo: Code Hour Pre-reader - Grade 5 | Blocks NASA's Space Jam Make a Flappy game Long Live Wakanda Grades 6+ | Blocks Hello World CodeMonkey Jr.: Pre-coding for Preschoolers Pre-reader | Blocks My Google Logo Grades 2-8 | Blocks Coding Town Grades 2-5 | JavaScript Mario's Secret Adventure: Build Your Own 3D Mario Game CodeCombat: Goblins 'n' Glory Grades 6-8 | JavaScript, Python Code Farm: Plant a Garden Blocks Jumper: Game Creation Make Shapes with Code Pre-reader - Grade 5 | JavaScript, Language independent (can be taught in multiple languages) AI for Oceans Grades 3+ | AI and Machine Learning The Grinch: Saving Christmas with Code Bot is sus?! Grades 2-8 | JavaScript | Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari Code Club World: Make cool stuff with free coding games and activities Grades 2-5 | Blocks Dragon Blast Design your Hero.
Should Coding Be Part Of Kids’ Curriculum? Ctd. Kids learning computer code in after-school clubs. Billy Harkins, 11, is one of roughly 100 fifth- and sixth-grade students staying late after school in the computer labs. He's not in trouble. He's not staying for sports. He's staying to learn a new language, one that many adults don't even know. He's learning to write computer code. Cypress Grove Intermediate and Oakwood Intermediate are two College Station ISD schools testing out coding clubs to teach their students how to write code through educational coding websites such as Codeacademy.com and Code.org.
Harkins and his best friend, Jerimiah Stoddart, have been attending the Cypress Grove club since the beginning of the year. HTML is a programming language used as a framework for designing websites, and CSS is used to style those sites. "I just like coding," Harkins said as he clicked through his code, working through a page on web design fundamentals. Both schools' clubs were started this year after an email blast from Texas A&M University encouraged the study of code. E-Pubs - Charleston Library Conference: Geek Out: Adding Coding Skills to Your Professional Repertoire. These are The Skills Students Learn from Coding. Coding is an important skill that our students should be able to learn from an early age. There are now several free web tools and mobile apps to help teachers introduce coding to students and to also dispel the myth that coding is done only by a narrow sub category of people with special mathematical and technology background.
Coding isn’t just for computer whizzes, says Mitch Resnick of MIT Media Lab -- it’s for everyone. In a fun, demo-filled talk Resnick outlines the benefits of teaching kids to code, so they can do more than just “read” new technologies -- but also create them. I particularly loved the analogy Mitch made to reading and writing: When kids learn to code , it enables them to learn many other things, opens up many new opportunities for learning. 2- What schools do not teach. Should Coding be the "New Foreign Language" Requirement? Over the decades, students have been required to take a foreign language in high school for reasons that relate to expanding communication abilities, furthering global awareness, and enhancing perspective-taking. Recently, our home state of Texas passed legislation that enables computer science to fulfill the high school foreign language requirement.
Coding (defined by BusinessDictionary.com as "the process of developing and implementing various sets of instructions to enable a computer to do a certain task") is, after all, both a language and a foreign subject to many students -- and much more. Coding, Cognition and Communication In terms of cognitive advantages, learning a system of signs, symbols and rules used to communicate -- that is, language study -- improves thinking by challenging the brain to recognize, negotiate meaning and master different language patterns. Memorizing rules and vocabulary strengthens mental muscles and improves overall memory. Coding is Ubiquitous. NBA Superstar Chris Bosh: Here's Why You Should Learn to Code | Wired Opinion. Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat. Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images I get it. There seems to be something silly about asking everyone — from the homeless to really young kids — to learn to code.
There are deeper things that need to be fixed in the “system” too. But I don’t think that means we should dismiss the value of learning to code. Being a kid of the 1990s and living in a house run by tech-savvy parents, I began to notice that the world around me was spinning on an axis powered by varying patterns of 1s and 0s. We’d be fools to ignore the power of mastering the designing and coding of those patterns.
We use code every time we’re on the phone, on the web, out shopping — it’s become how our world is run. A professional basketball player for the Miami Heat, Christopher Wesson Bosh has appeared in over 640 games during his 11-year NBA career [stats here]. For most athletes, the sport they end up turning into a career was decided in school. Plus, it’s cool. Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90. 7 Apps for Teaching Children Coding Skills. It's hard to imagine a single career that doesn't have a need for someone who can code.
Everything that "just works" has some type of code that makes it run. Coding (a.k.a. programming) is all around us. That's why all the cool kids are coding . . . or should be. Programming is not just the province of pale twenty-somethings in skinny jeans, hunched over three monitors, swigging Red Bull. Not any more! The newest pint-sized coders have just begun elementary school. If you're concerned that that a) elementary school students don't have the ability to code, b) there's no room in the curriculum, and c) you don't possess coding chops to teach programming skills, throw out those worries.
In no particular order, we have listed all the coding apps that are appropriate for young learners. GameStar Mechanic Platform: WebCost: $2 per student GameStar Mechanic teaches kids, ages 7-14, to design their own video games. Scratch Platform: WebCost: Free! Tynker Platform: WebCost: Free! Move the Turtle. Coding the Curriculum: How High Schools Are Reprogramming Their Classes. There are no lockers in the hallways at Beaver Country Day School. Instead, backpacks and tote bags line either side of the floor while students step over them during the mid-morning rush to class. Nearly everyone is carrying a laptop. "There used to be lockers, but nobody was really using them," a passing staff member tells me with a shrug. The private school, for grades six through twelve, sits in a quiet nook of Chestnut Hill, Mass. — a suburb sandwiched a few miles between, and directly below, Cambridge and downtown Boston.
It's not far from where Mark Zuckerberg built a world-changing social network from his Harvard University dorm room just nine years ago. Two weeks ago, Beaver became the first school in the United States to implement computer coding into each of its classes. It's a new, albeit eccentric experiment. It's a new, albeit eccentric experiment. Some high schools have begun to offer programming courses as electives, but that is largely still a rarity.
And in the meantime? 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. “We believe that intelligence and passion are far harder to hire for and much more important than a specific technical skill,” Chad Fowler, LivingSocial’s senior vice president of technology, told the Washington Post last year.
See also: Plenty Of Ways To Learn Programming Lots Of Coding Jobs Going Begging. Schools Aren't Teaching Kids To Code; Here's Who Is Filling The Gap. Learning to code is all the rage these days, but not in one place that matters a lot: U.S. schools. U.S. students already significantly lag their global counterparts where math and science skills are concerned. But computer science is in even worse shape: Of 12 technical subjects examined in a recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics, computer science was the only one that declined in student popularity from 1990 to 2009 (p. 49). See also: Why Coding Is The Core Skill Of The 21st Century Last year, just 1.4 percent of high school AP students took the computer science exam, compared to almost 40 percent that took exams in English. Far more students took AP exams in Spanish language, psychology, calculus, and history than in programming.
Insufficiencies in school can translate into a bigger problem on an economic level. Bridging The Gap See also: Meet Four Teen Hackers (And An Even Younger One) A Prep School Shows The Way A Teaching Shortage. Make Coding Fun for Students with LearnStreet. Tagged with: Edmodo AppsLearnStreet What do Edmodo, Twitter, Instagram, and even this blog have in common? Computer code. Considered one of the most important skills of the 21st century, coding can be difficult to teach in the high school classroom; complicated coding concepts often present challenges to engaging students and encouraging classroom interaction.
A technology teacher for 15 years, I was excited to discover LearnStreet, a free app available from the Edmodo Store. With a comprehensive list of lessons and crash courses in a variety of programming languages, LearnStreet makes it easy to teach students how to code–whether or not you teach computer science. Modernized Lesson Plans Inspired by the popularity of Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and Words with Friends, I’m currently teaching a course on game development. LearnStreet makes studying Python easy and fun by breaking difficult concepts down into components and requiring students to constantly write code. Positive Student Reaction.
Code Club Fall Session | Seward Code Club. Cross-post from SCN: Seward Code Club Fall Session (pdf flyer) The Seward Code Club is starting up again for a 13 week course of computer programming using Codecademy, short informative lessons, and a supportive learning environment to develop your understanding of computer science and programming skills.
It is self-paced to accommodate returning students as well as new students. Free7th – 12th grade *Correction: Ages 12-19 yearsMonday’s, 4:30 – 6:00 pmSeptember 9 – December 9Seward Community Library Museum (Community Room) Register and download the permission slip & waiver form (and bring it with you to the meeting). If you are a local computer programmer, we would like to invite you to join us as a guest or volunteer. See you there! Seward Code Club Checkout what Code.org has to say about coding… Like this: Like Loading... Binary, One, Null, Pay - Free image - 86218. Why obfuscate email addresses? I spent some time this weekend working on a new email obfuscation website: Obfuscate, please. Obfuscate, please.
Email harvesters are constantly crawling the web looking for addresses to spam. To prevent these harvesters from finding their addresses, many people have attempted to obfuscate them before posting in a public place (if you aren’t already, I highly recommend it). I’ve done this for years, and while there are many sites that will obfuscate them for you, I’ve never really been able to find any that handled the exact options that I wanted. While some may argue that email obfuscation isn’t worth the hassle, I’m not so sure. I don’t like techniques that force the end user to do extra work, but not all techniques are like that. Posting an email address as user[AT]provider[DOT]com is all too common, and all too annoying. Instead, I like to utilize techniques that pose no burden on the end user. Obfuscate, please. Tutorials. E-Pubs - Charleston Library Conference: Geek Out: Adding Coding Skills to Your Professional Repertoire.
Writing programs using ordinary language. In Massachusetts schools, computer science students are still the outliers - Business. One Thing I Am Going To Focus On And Learn This Summer.....Coding And Integrating It Into Our Curriculum.