Geekosystem: Schools need to stop ignoring coding. We use computers every day. We carry tiny computers around in our pockets everywhere we go, and most people can’t even make one of them say “Hello World!” Beaver Country Day School outside of Boston is trying to change that by making coding a graduation requirement, and other schools should too.
9 comments:
This is a great idea. It embraces the fact that technology is so much of our lives and encourages this education. I wish I would have had more education with computers when I was in high school (god that makes me feel old). I'd like to see where this program goes in the next few years and where the students go. If it helps with future jobs that might be worthwhile. Maybe coding is the new shop class in high school.
With technology becoming such an intricate part of our everyday lives teaching coding in schools is a brilliant idea. The article says there will be an abundance of jobs in the computer science field, having kids start to learn how to be able to this job will only help them in the long run.
I think that this is a great idea. Schools today try to get young adults ready for the world. I believe that you just can't understand today's world without coding. If two hundred years ago you would have an advantage if you knew how to write. And if one hundred years ago you need to know math to understand the world. Today you have to understand coding. It's an amazing tool that many people who just don't know anything about it, don't even understand the "amazingness" of it.
I didn't learn coding and during the army I saw how that was a disadvantage because it didn't allow me to understand things that other people did. I wish that back in high school I would have known how important it was to learn coding.
This is an interesting idea, but still might not be a practical requirement for all districts.
The article indicates that in 2020 there will be approximately 1mil more jobs than qualified graduates in the computer science industry. While that may be true, is it really a good idea to require all schools to specifically teach coding as a course requirement?
While it is nice to think that in an ideal world all students will go on to pursue a computer related career, many of them will pursue traditional trades such as electrical and plumbing. These are arguably more important than computer technology. These trades maintain the infrastructure that allows our society to utilize such advanced computing technology.
Perhaps a more useful (and realistic) approach would be to require all students to take a "trade technology" course. Among those courses could be computer programming/coding or computer networking/database administration (the two largest growing technology fields http://education.yahoo.net/articles/six_fast-growing_jobs.htm), but also electrical technology or plumbing technology. It sounds silly, but these trades are continuing to advance technologically, and if we don't have skilled labor that is trained to utilize it, our society is going to have a larger problem then unfilled computer science jobs, in 2020.
I always thought that my secondary school education should have taught me the basics of coding and programming. When I applied to CMU I didn't even know we had one of the best Computer Science programs in the World because I had never been exposed to that kind of teaching. I think what Beaver Country Day School is doing is really important to a world that is so focused on technology and how technology can make our life easier. This past summer I took an introductory course to programming. It was very obvious that some students in the class had already had some experience, whether it be secondary school or some other outlet. I eventually was able to get to the same level as those that already knew some programming, but it would have been nice to know the basics before I came to CMU. To say the least, it can never hurt to learn programming, especially starting at a young age.
Honestly, I think this is crap. I think that college (most anyway) already has a numerous amount of diverse requirements that provide us with a well rounded education, and schlepping on another BS requirement will just be another class the university is forcing students to take.
I want you to take a step back and remember GE's (General Requirements). What are they? Pretty much sample courses. Sure if you spend enough time on a subject you'll retain something, but taking one class on computer coding wont help you become experts on coding, let alone knowledgable. And before you can take a class on coding, students should be required to learn about computers generally before you force them to learn an entirely new language in a very limited amount of time. Can you imagine someone who hardly knows how to operate excel, learn to code?
I think that learning to code could be useful (to some people). But the undertaking of actually preparing people to take such courses and then actually retain and make use of this education is just unrealistic.
This is a great idea. I know from taking computer science in high school that learning to code teaches you so much more than just coding itself. It teaches logic which is useful in so many different situations. Even if students don't necessarily want to go into computer science, taking a coding class will ultimately serve them in the future.
I think that the idea of what they are trying to achieve is interesting. As a graduating requirement, I don't know, that's a bit extreme. You don't want to keep students from graduating because of coding or maybe it won't be that difficult for them to understand at that age, I have no idea (I know very very little about coding. Maybe if I did it at school I would know). However, I think that adding it as an introductory course is a good addition. Actually I think that they tried to do that at my secondary school, but we had a lack of computer resources then. However with most people having access to computers it would be good for them to know how things work!
YES. Can't agree more. I took 3 years of computer science in high school and what I took away from it was a heightened understanding of logic, methods, organizational layout, as well as some basic knowledge of how to code in Java, Unix, SQL, and HTML. I wish that the things I learned about setting up methods, functions, if/else statements, etc had been given to me sooner, because they are so universally applicable. Coding and computer science teach you how to break things down into individual steps, how to make sense of large tasks and commands in terms of smaller ones, how to lay things out in logical order, and overall, how to think. Regardless of whether or not one wants to go into CS or software programming, it's something that everyone should be exposed to and that can help everyone think a bit more broadly, no matter what field you go into.
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