First of all, I realize that this MAY be your first course that you take in our Educational Technology program. The last thing I want to do is freak you out if you have a fear or a predisposition to think that ‘coding is not your thing’. Generally speaking, coding is not our thing either. But there is a rising tide of support in favor of increasing the level of knowledge of technical subjects (you know STEM….!). The landscape of technology is changing rapidly. Our over-arching goal includes empowering you to realize that learning how to build/construct products/artifacts needs to become a part of your skill set. After all, coding is really not all that big a mystery. We submit that there is the need to have you dig a little deeper into the backbone of some of these products.
The analogy we like to use is that of a traveler versus a tourist. There is a BIG difference between being a tourist and a traveler who goes to a foreign country. A tourist is always dependent on someone else for showing/teaching him or her about the culture, where to go, foods, etc. On the other hand, the traveler decides on their own what to do, and what to learn. Perhaps an recent article in the Huffington Post says it all:
a tourist as “one that takes a tour for pleasure or culture”. A traveler is “one who goes on a trip or journey.”
In this case your journey is to travel into the world of educational media/instructional technology.
Said another way:
“A tourist is an amateur traveler, and a traveler is a professional tourist.”
Perhaps it can be best summed up by a fellow ed tech student in their final reflection for another course in the program (emphasis is mine):
As we moved into using editing software and content management systems, I initially questioned the relevance of the HTML and CSS lessons. That fear and sense of loss has been overcome and replaced with a sense of pride in what was accomplished in just 16 weeks. In addition to comfort with using editors for website design, I also rely on simple code for marking up our Moodle based LMS that we have switched to this semester. Being as I am the only EMS instructor with this skill, the timing was impeccable and allowed the transition to a new system to occur relatively seamlessly. This has increased my passion and appreciation for educational technology as a professional discipline that greatly contributes to effective delivery of otherwise less engaging content.
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In short, we are looking for a transformation here .. a subtle but significant one… we want to empower you to change from being a consumer of technology to becoming a user/producer.
Here is a simple self-test you can take to determine for yourself if you are a traveler in ed tech or a tourist. Mind the analogies and substitute for yourself the appropriate wording/phrase from technology courses you have taken or tutorials you have sat through when learning a product:
The Educational Value of (learning) Coding
It is not enough for us to simply WANT you to learn how to code. There has to be a significant amount of evidence to back up its educational value. Lucky for us there is a site out there that does just that: http://code.org. There is so much here that, instead of reinventing the wheel, we simply send you there and point out a few stopping places (remember we are not your tour guide… we are helping you to plan your trip… but you are in charge of your own decisions):
First off the bat, here is a short promo video with lots of cameos of folks who think coding has tremendous educational value:
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This is a short follow-up on the same topic
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Some Other Places of Interest
- Districts expand computer science instruction to give students critical job skills
- The Coding Curriculum
- What is Computer Science (ok this is not a computer science class but there are some relevant facts here)
- Computer Programming in Education (again we are dabbling here but there is some value to be mined out of the article)
- The Cognitive effect of Learning Computer Programming
- Article that asks the rhetorical question: Should every school classroom be a computer programming class?
What is coding anyway?
So I think we have made our point here. Now let’s take the next step and learn some things about what coding is and how it works:
- First some stuff on Curriculum (this is where you really start to become a traveler and search things at your own pace/interest)
- Some exemplar tutorials on coding
Digging Deeper
For those of you who wish to dwell on this a bit longer.. here are some mini courses you can sign up for:
- This one is a 20-hr job but you can go into as far as you want to
- Last but not Least, take a look at all these languages. Pay particular attention to the Children’s section
When you are ready, go to our little coding activity to test yourself and your basic level of critical thinking. NOTE THAT THIS IS A TEAM ACTIVITY. TEAMS WILL BE FORMED AT THE END OF ADD/DROP (AUG 25) BUT YOU SHOULD TAKE THE TIME TO REVIEW THESE MATERIALS BEFOREHAND