Why Coding in the Classroom?

The deeper I dig into  the idea of teaching coding and robotics, I can’t help but wonder if the true way to conquer the digital divide isn’t to focus on the access to technology,  but rather to focus on the ability to control technology.

Coding is the final leg in the shift to turn students from consumers of technology to true producers of technology.  The idea of teaching children to code is not new, in the book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, first published in 1980 and again in 1993, Seymour Papert said that typical student computer use consisted of the computer programming the child with the child adapting to the the needs of the computer.  But coding, has the child programming the computer, adapting the computer to suit their needs. And in the book Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age by Douglas Rushkoff, he compares not knowing how to code to being Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy.  You sit in the backseat, of a windowless car, relying on the driver to take you where you need to go.  Not only does the driver take you where you want to go, but he also provides you with your options.  If the driver doesn’t want to take you somewhere, he can just not tell you it exists.  You are at the driver’s mercy.

Coding Skills:

Coding allows students to hone skills that will serve them outside of the area of coding and technology.  When students learn coding, they use their problem-solving, sequencing, critical-thinking, math, logic, creativity, and structured language skills. They are also provided with a better understanding of how technology and the related programs and apps work and what happens behind the scenes of computer functions.

Shifting from Extracurricular to Curricular:

Coding programs are quickly moving from after-school and extracurricular activities into the mainstream curriculum.  Texas is allowing computer programming to count as a foreign language requirement and other states like Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico are moving to follow suit. This approach may seem extreme, but other areas are taking a similar approaches.  Wisconsin and Alabama have approved allowing computer science courses to satisfy math or science requirements, joining DC and seventeen other states.  While Chicago and New York City are working to make computer science a core high school subject.   England and Estonia have integrated coding in the curriculum with countries like Singapore and Vietnam following suit. Regardless of opinions of these movements, it can’t be ignored that leaders and governments see a need and are striving to fill it.

Need for Coding:

The need for these programs come from job numbers, by 2020 STEM jobs are projected to increase by 26% and for all our focus on improving STEM education, we tend to focus less on coding and computer science than we do on the other STEM areas, roughly 2% of college graduates earn a computer science degree. Those degrees are not enough to fill the current job openings, much less the projected openings in the future.

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