Coding for kids?

Hi all,

As we continue to move from content driven work to competency driven work, it sometimes becomes necessary to rethink how we teach the basics of, say, mathematics. The act of programming a computer may seem a little unreachable to us let alone our students.  Coding seems scary because we've been taught that it has to look like this:

And yet the act of writing code can involve a deep understanding of patterning, algebra, mathematical operations, number systems, shape, space, and even place value. It involves the processes of communication, visualization, reasoning and problem solving on a deep level. Most importantly it touches all 10 competencies of an Educated Albertan!

The good news is that MIT have created a programming environment that is accessible to students as young as Div II.  It is called Scratch and is available to students and teachers for free at http://scratch.mit.edu. Last week teachers joined us for a 45 minute introduction to using Scratch in Mathematics.  The recording is available below:

If you would like to explore how you can use this or tools like this, feel free to contact me.

Yours in .learning,

Doug