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Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding
theodp (442580) writes "The NY Times reports that the national educational movement in computer coding instruction is growing at Internet speeds. 'There's never been a move this fast in education,' said Elliot Soloway, a professor of education and computer science at the Univ. of Michigan. But, cautions the NY Times' Matt Richtel, it is not clear that teaching basic computer science in grade school will beget future jobs or foster broader creativity and logical thinking, as some champions of the movement are projecting. And particularly for younger children, the activity is more like a video game — better than simulated gunplay, but not likely to impart actual programming skills. 'Some educators worry about the industry's heavy role,' adds Richtel. 'Major tech companies and their founders, including Bill Gates and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, have put up about $10 million for Code.org,' which recently announced its CS programs will be rolled out to more than 2 million students — nearly 5% of all U.S. K-12 students — at 30 school districts this fall. Among the 20,000 teachers who Code.org says have signed on is Alana Aaron, a fifth-grade math and science teacher who, with her principal's permission, swapped a two-month earth sciences lesson she was going to teach on land masses for the Code.org curriculum. 'Computer science is big right now — in our country, the world,' she said. 'If my kids aren't exposed to things like that, they could miss out on potential opportunities and careers.'"
Once again, another ignoramus has the false idea that coding is all there is to computer science. I don't expect the actual 'education' to be all that great, as usual.
...the rudiments of organizing work into a series of logical steps, some dependent on others, then maybe this will help the kids.
The world doesn't need more code monkeys, but kids who have technical skills AND project management skills may get further.
growing at Internet speeds
So, really fast for anyone who can afford a decent education and unbearably slow for everyone else?
It seems to me if you add coding to math curriculum, it would enhance both. In my high school during the '80's, boolean logic was not discussed at all, nor were principles like recursion, numerical approximation, and general algorithms. If those were added to algebra, geometry, and shown how computers help solve normally unsolvable problems (e.g. the simple pendulum without the law of sines approximation), the students understanding of both math and computer science would synergistically increase.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
..for average high school teachers.
..don't panic
More like screw, meet ball.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Curricula should be designed by science teachers and scientists. They shouldn't be designed by billionaires pushing their latest fad.
FTA: "swapped a two-month earth sciences lesson she was going to teach on land masses for the Code.org curriculum."
Coding is nice (although it's only a part of computer science). But what are you going to take out of the curriculum to make room for "coding"?
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejou...
Stoll re-emphasizes his belief that the most comprehensive educational programming and technology systems could never replace a quality teacher. He recalls his own experience in a graduate physics class. The professor is discussing radiative transfer as Stoll is daydreaming in the back of the classroom. The professor realizes that Stoll isn't quite following the lecture and pauses to ask Stoll a few questions. Caught off-guard, Stoll has to think quickly and come up with a valid response. Fumbling through his first few questions, Stoll is skillfully led to the answer by a talented professor, using the only educational tool available; the Socratic method. Stoll states that there are plenty of computer programs that calculate radiative transfer, and even admits to writing some of them. However he believes that there are no software programs which could have taught him "as effectively as goofing off in Professor Marty Tomasko's class did" (p. 120).
"Some educators worry about the industry's heavy role"
That's because the industry wants only one thing, plentiful programmers, which equates to cheap programmers. This is a barefaced attempt to flood the future programming market and depress wages. Obviously it also means that a lot of kids, almost certainly the majority, are being taught skills of little to no value. So much for potential opportunities and careers.
... is not going to deteriorate itself. H1Bs are the short term strategy for keeping the salaries low. This is the long term strategy. If there were so many great opportunities in IT, surely people would be flocking to get degrees in IT.
miss out on potential opportunities and careers
If you teach a 10 year old to write "code", that won't help them in 8 or 10 years time when they try to apply for a job. The "code" technology will have moved on in that time, so the stuff they learned a decade ago will be obsolete. The knowledge that a professional programmer has, has a half-life of a few years: maybe as long as 5 years in some areas - possibly as a short as 1 or 2 in rapidly developing fields of work.
Since nobody can tell what skills will be needed in the next decade, learning a particular coding language, the "learning to code" is almost certainly teaching the wrong language to children. It would be far better to teach them basic maths, basic logic and how to think in abstract terms - rather than focusing on tangible, here and now, stuff that will produce children who can blink an LED on a Raspberry Pi today, but will have no clue about hw to deal with the "AI on a chip" they might be faced with when they start their professional careers.
When I started my first job after graduating, the job description didn't even exist when I started my university course. So what is the chance that teaching 5 or 10 year children a specific computing skill will be relevant to their career prospects in 10-15 years time?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding
So, what would be next?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Will we teach kids a bunch of propriety toolchains that will be obsolete and disused by the time they get into the real world? Guessing yes
The answer is to teach them COBOL. That seems to keep running and running.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
What's worse then a 'computer scientist' that codes?
Oh, I know, I know! A computer scientist that doesn't know the difference between "then" and "than"!
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Or better yet a computer scientist who creates a smarter parser to distinguish "then" from "than".
Do you have evidence for any of that, or is this one of those cases where people trot out vague nonsense?
And where I work, your ability to solve complex logical problems is far, far more important than being able to do something utterly inconsequential like typing 'fast'.
- When writing code, you are more likely to write comments, again because it takes less effort.
Rather, I write comments because they help clarify why certain code exists in the way it does, and in some cases, what it's doing. Have some mercy on the next guy who has to work on it.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
My school district provided early exposure via apple II computers. They showed up one summer with an extracurricular summer workshop and then one to two per classroom, and a computer lab in Jr. High. And while there was an Atari computer at home, I basically had all of my meaningful early exposure to programming via the school district, and the teachers who were willing to spend extra time learning about and then sharing how to use them. Starting at probably age 8 or 9, I used basic and then later logo. The logo continuing off and on until 8th grade when I was using functions/procedures, getting user input, redrawing the screen, etc. By 8th grade my programming was beyond the scope of the curriculum or programming knowledge of the teacher. These skills then lay dormant for 4-5 years resurfacing in college with the first two years of CS course work. Which then led to computer support employment and then high end systems/networking employment.
It is impossible to attribute my skills to nature v. nurture, but I believe that any meaningful early exposure to computer languages, problem solving, or independent exploration of programming to solve a problem or provide something new is a worthwhile investment.
As with others, I do see teaching programming in the early grades as a bit counter productive. However, teaching problem solving skills at an early age is valuable. Furthermore, using code to teach problem solving skills offers opportunities for visualizing problems. While that isn't useful for all learners, it is certainly useful for some learners.
There is something else that we should consider. Computers are going to be introduced into the curriculum whether we agree with it or not. Some of that is going to be the perception of keeping the curriculum relevant or to appear progressive. Some of that is going to be due to slick sales pitches from educational publishers, both of the textbook and software variety. If we go around nay-saying this, we are very much removing our voice from the table. Rather, we ought to be looking at what we want education to gain from the introduction of technology and to try to steer the education system away from counterproductive implementations. (For example: focus upon transferrable skills rather than pandering to industry interests.)
- When writing code, you are more likely to write comments, again because it takes less effort.
Rather, I write comments because they help clarify why certain code exists in the way it does, and in some cases, what it's doing. Have some mercy on the next guy who has to work on it.
There are actually quite a few instances where you can put too many comments in the code. Often times if there are lots of comments to explain what a logic block does, rather than just explain design decisions, that means you are not using meaningful class-variable name structuring. There has actually been a very good movement at my company the past year or so to drastically improve coding standards and that was a big point that was brought up (I am quite glad too, between that and the damn hungarian notation in a strongly typed language some of our legacy code was just ugly as hell for no reason).
K-8 Intro to Computer Science Course (15-25 Hours)
Free to all, not a sampling, and includes all resources needed for off-line instruction and activities.
Basic programming concepts are introduced in the second session ("The Maze") using graphical building blocks. You can expose the equivalent JavaScript code.
No. Hello World is _NOT_ going to achieve that. This needs to be a deeper program.
Most classes tend to get past the first day.
I'm curious as to what you expected. Did you honestly think even the least competent instructor could stretch that out to 6 weeks?
Required reading for internet skeptics
Will we teach them sound theoretical backgrounds? Guessing no.
Yeah, they're totally going to skip loops, variables, conditional branching, etc. and focus exclusively on visual studio's UI.
Required reading for internet skeptics
If you can't do the first three, what makes you think you'll get the Forth?
what would really help prepare children better than writing code is playing chess — it will help them learn how to think logically and consistently — if they learn it in chess first — learning all the various changing semantics of languages that may come and go will be trivial — if they got a good grounding in thinking properly through chess. a couple years of chess for grades 5-10 should be mandatory in every school curriculum.
chess is even more important than learning to how to code — because to get anywhere with code, you have to immerse yourself in a language, an API, an IDE, and a way of thinking that is large, legacy, and arcane. by contrast, chess gets it down to the critical skills in a pretty efficient way.
teach chess, then code later will be a piece of cake — because chess teaches the essential skills of grasping clear thoughts/moves in a facile way with the mind — and this mind muscle can be brought to higher level of logical consistency and clarity of thought with chess. something that is simple, yet lends itself to the greatest sophistication.
another reason to teach chess is science standards — lack of critical thinking in regards to science is a reflection of a nation that has lost its ability to think clearly upon basic subjects. chess is the remedy for a lack of clear and lucid thinking on many subjects.
one must work the mind, or it becomes weak, and unable to judge things very well — and then tends to be easily manipulated by political and emotional cues.
2cents
Will we teach kids a bunch of propriety toolchains that will be obsolete and disused by the time they get into the real world? Guessing yes
The answer is to teach them COBOL. That seems to keep running and running.
Hey, I'm working at a site that uses COBOL, you insensitive cl.. oh, I'm sorry. Yes, it does just keep going. God knows why, meantime I'll just bank the cheques.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
This topic comes up once a quarter, or so. I agree with the gent above suggesting 'Chess' but in a different way. Teach the original abstract, not the implementation. If we've time and room in the curriculum, teach the kids logic. This will let them code, play chess, think, reason and analyze no matter what the end up doing for a crust in later life.
And 'Critical thinking' - which someone had taught me that at Scumbag High. I had to work a lot of it out myself in later life. With Critical thinking around, we'd have a lot less homeopaths, psychics, spiritualists, gamblers...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
I think some have pointed out that coding develops logic skills, but I think that's reversing the "real" direction -- that logic skills help develop coding (and numerous other technical skills! and even just plain mathematics understanding). And yet, I have not seen any discussion about logic in our rush to improve education. AFAIK, Common Core doesn't even mention logic ( I browsed through the standards once for a couple hours but I don't recall ever seeing it).
Basic propositional/symbolic logic should be taught and reinforced over and over in high school, particularly your last few years. I'm not an expert on childhood brain development, but I have the suspicion our middle school kids could do it fine too.
At university, I was appalled by how many students were completely dumbfounded in a basic logic class. We're talking problems understanding if-then statements, and why affirming the consequent is bad. We didn't even get to symbolic logic that much, it was mostly analyzing simple sentences. I'm sure everyone could, and ultimately did, learn it, but you shouldn't even be able to get into a university without knowing logic. And that isn't all the students' fault -- that's the failure of the adults for not pushing for appropriate curricula. After that class, I became pretty convinced that its not that our kids are bad at math per se, but that they have a really hard time following logic arguments and therefore, mathematical arguments.
There are H1-Bs given to cancer researchers; some cancer research corps are actually on the "exempt list" meaning they aren't subject to the cap on the number of H1-Bs.
This said -- does the US actually have a lot of open cancer research jobs to give to foreigners? I expect not, given how infamously out-of-whack researcher salaries are compared to the expected education level. You can think it's important, but it doesn't do any good to have a million visa slots available if you can only use them to fill a half-dozen jobs.
If you teach a 10 year old to write "code", that won't help them in 8 or 10 years time when they try to apply for a job. The "code" technology will have moved on in that time, so the stuff they learned a decade ago will be obsolete. The knowledge that a professional programmer has, has a half-life of a few years: maybe as long as 5 years in some areas - possibly as a short as 1 or 2 in rapidly developing fields of work.
This seems incorrect. A simple back of the envelope regression analysis between 12 programming languages I used in school/work and the jobs available on monster.ca. Gave a R of about -0.1. So programming language age and jobs available appear to be uncorrelated. Now you will probably be tempted to drop back and punt. That is to make your argument way more specific (Oh I meant that Business knowledge W + Language X + IDE Y + Framework Z wouldn't be useful in 2025) however clearly, if you had been educated in logic you would realize that doesn't mean that teaching language X is of little or no value. Knowing Lisp a language almost as old as CS itself has helped me in evaluating products and understanding problems just in the last five years.
Since nobody can tell what skills will be needed in the next decade, learning a particular coding language, the "learning to code" is almost certainly teaching the wrong language to children.
The argument of someone who doesn't understand the need to clarify your premises. If nobody has any information on what is needed in 2025 then no premise should be privileged (i.e. learning current languages is of almost no help). If you are asserting that we only have enough information to determine that learning languages people use today is of almost no help. Then you are either wrong (by my regression above) or just begging the question.
It would be far better to teach them basic maths, basic logic and how to think in abstract terms - rather than focusing on tangible, here and now, stuff that will produce children who can blink an LED on a Raspberry Pi today, but will have no clue about hw to deal with the "AI on a chip" they might be faced with when they start their professional careers.
The assumption here is pretty ignorant. Learning to program is of almost no value because there will be nothing in common between programming languages now and whatever people use in 10 years. Well the Church-Turing thesis begs to differ. Unless the "AI on a chip" (*snort* *chortle*) is not a Turing machine then clearly any programming language would have something to teach them and would at least be potentially useful in instructing them on the nature of computer science.
When I started my first job after graduating, the job description didn't even exist when I started my university course. So what is the chance that teaching 5 or 10 year children a specific computing skill will be relevant to their career prospects in 10-15 years time?
Again a correlation coefficient of -0.1 seems to say "not nearly as bad as a moron like you thinks"