Code Literacy - Horizon Report for Higher Education

The 2017 Horizon Report for Higher Education addresses the subject of Coding as a Literacy as a key short-term trend in K-12 education. Short term trends are described as technology adoptions that are trending within a one to the two-year time frame. The report states that computer science is currently one of the fastest growing industries and that coding literacy is quickly becoming a critical skill across many different career fields, to include many non-technical fields. The report states that many education programs around the world are including basic coding in their curriculum (Freeman, Adams, Cummins, 2017). I found this article interesting because I regularly volunteer for several programs in and around Texas that provide coding camps for children. One program called Youth Code Jam focuses on teaching computer science concepts to children with mild learning disabilities like autism but is also open to anyone who wishes to attend. As a parent of two school-aged children and as a regular volunteer, I do not believe that our public education system is focusing enough effort on teaching code to children. I believe this is due to several forces that negatively impact adopting coding literacy as a priority in the school curriculum. Teachers need to be educated in coding themselves, the cost of resources to teach coding needs to be addressed, and the availability of resources to teach coding is also a challenge.

I believe that there are current technologies that can successfully address each of these issues. To start with the issue of cost, we often use Raspberry Pi mini-computers as platforms for many of our Youth Code Jam events. Raspberry Pi’s are small single board computers with video and audio output, USB and network interfaces, and Wi-Fi capability. The computers are very inexpensive and make great platforms to teach coding literacy on. There are many different projects and applications that students can attempt and learn from. In my daughter’s public school, I am trying to start a program where each student is given a Raspberry Pi as a personal coding platform. The Pi is small enough that they can carry it in their backpack and take it to classes with them. Each class then just needs monitors, keyboards, and Wi-Fi access for the students to use the Pi to access the internet and learn to code. This leads to the second solution of availability. There are several amazing resources online that teach coding at a beginner level. The Horizon report has a link to Common Sense Education that lists the 29 highest rated online resources for learning code. Sites like Code.org and Code Academy provide lessons in many popular programming languages where students can work through lessons at their own pace and be graded on their progress (Code, 2017). These online resources address the last issue of teacher education. I believe that allowing teachers to use these online resources as part of a formal curriculum would alleviate some of the burden of them becoming proficient at coding before they can properly educate their students (Learn, 2017). With online resources like Code Academy, the teachers can learn alongside their students and can rely on the lessons that have already been created for the site instead of having to build lesson plans for a subject that they are still learning themselves.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Raspberry_Pi_3_B%2B_%2839906369025%29.png/300px-Raspberry_Pi_3_B%2B_%2839906369025%29.png

 

References:

Freeman, A., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Davis, A., and Hall Giesinger, C. (2017). NMC/CoSN

Horizon Report: 2017 K–12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

Code.org: Anybody can Learn. (2017). Retrieved July 18, 2018, from http://code.org

Learn to code - for free. (2017). Retrieved July 18, 2018, from http://codeacademy.com