Experiencing Coding as a student and not the teacher was truly a learning experience! It took me a few days to finally click the right key to hear the clicking of the Sprites! Oh happy day! This was truly a challenge for me because I could not see nor did I understand what the end product would be. I know I was writing a computer program but I did not understand the program that I was writing. Thus, the persistence needed! Again, I was simply happy to see something happening on the screen and unfortunately, then the hour came too quickly.
I remember those days, for a week, when the Math Specialist told all of the teachers that the district expected us to have all students to Code. And, the excitement from the students, was priceless. I could actually get them to complete the other academic assignments so they could get the laptops to code.
I don’t know if they actually understood the reasoning behind coding-“teaching computational thinking, where they were really following a step-by-step process to solve a problem.”( Snelling, 2018) As I reminisce on their eagerness to code, I can only hope that someday they too will be writing programs that can help to prevent storms or “save the world by analyzing real time earthquake data.” (Sheldon, 2017) The students already spend so much time on various electronics playing games that require some type of computational thinking. I now have a better understanding of how Coding can change that “evil” into a good for mankind. The makers of Fortnite recognized that so they created Fortnite competitions.
I agree with Snelling in saying that the library is the perfect place for students to experiment with Coding. It’s a quiet place where they can concentrate and we as librarians can teach them about the Essential Attitudes (Sheldon, 2017). In so doing, we can perhaps impact how many students will consider entering STEM programs.
Sources:
- Code.org. [Image]. Copied from https://studio.code.org/projects/dance/Z1uKsr-G2nhasRWY9v2B019CiQKOr5zg8f1YNwJKz9k. (2020)
- Sheldon, E. Computational Thinking Across the Curriculum. (2017)
- Snelling, J. Don’t Stress about coding: Focus Shifts to Teaching problem solving Not computer skills. (2018)