Starting places
Programming is lots of fun and extraordinarily useful. It allows students be creative and develop skills which are beneficial throughout their life. If you want to teach programming to young studentsstudents, you need to ask yourself a question: Which programming language should I teach first? That’s probably one of the most popular question from first time learners and it is something educators debate as well. The thing is, you can ask ten programmers what the best language is to get started with and you could get ten different answers. There are thousands of options. Which language you start with depends not only on how beginner-friendly it is, but also the kind of projects you want to work on and the school subject you want to teach as well. As you well know, teachers are already stretched pretty thin, and often it seems like there is’s just no bandwidth to add something new to a very full schedule. Additionally, some schools have few or no computers and/or tablets for classroom use. There are a few things you should barebear in mind when introducing coding to your curriculum, regardless of your budget or specific circumstances.
- Get connected. There are so many educators and organizations that promote computer science. The resources available on the Internet (www.playfulcoding.eu)are amazing. It offers teachers 18 examples of workshops.
- Creating a 1:1 classroom (a technology device associated with each student) is not necessary. Coding is a language which involves logic and problem solving, so working in pairs is actually a great way to increase productivity, develop collaboration skills, and allows children the opportunity to take on different roles in a partnership.
- Trust the kids. Do not underestimate what young children are able to accomplish when educators let go of the wheel and allow students to become the drivers.
- Make it fun.
Choose age-appropriate resources that allow kids to progress and grow. Scratch is a free visual programming language. Scratch is used by students, scholars, teachers, and parents to easily create animations, games and provides a stepping stone to the more advanced world of computer programming.
Teaching young learners how to code helps them move from being technology consumers to technology producers. And that's precisely what our students need right now. Do not wait for conditions to be perfect, or for that new batch of classroom tablets to arrive. Just jump in and take action today.
That being said, there are a lot of coding examples a teacher can start with:
- Scratch program: Scratch is a programming language and an online community where children can program and share interactive media such as stories, games, and animation with people from all over the world. As children create with Scratch, they learn to think creatively, work collaboratively, and reason systematically. Scratch is designed and maintained by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. You can start with the Workshop "Poetry animation with Scratch".
- Lego Mindstorms: One thing that students might enjoy quite a bit is Lego Mindstorms. This is a Lego robotics kit. It uses a graphical language that is pretty simple to understand. It is a very good option, but probably it is a bit expensive. Teachers can start with the workshop "Moving a robot around with Lego Mindstorms"
- Arduino Robot: With older children coding can be introduced with an Arduino robot. It combines programming and simple electronics. The programming tends to be very simple You can do real things with it, or at least things that seem real. The best workshop for this is "Introducing to Arduinos: Blinking LEDs". In conclusion, if one wants to introduce students to programming, there are many different ways to do it. Just start looking, try different things with your students, and see what works for them. It can be a lot of fun.