Coding for Kids
Babble
10/16/13
She asked for more ukeleles.
At our Parent Council Meeting last week, the principal brought a funding request to the Council from the music teacher. She wanted money to buy more ukeleles.
I get that music is important. I get that sharing ukeleles in a crowded class of 9 yr olds is not conducive to a positive teaching environment. But .. ukeleles? Listen to the drum beat in the distance. It’s not a snare or a bongo or some cool tribal drum. It’s the echoing call for kids needing to learn how to code.
There have been articles all summer talking about how we need to change how we are teaching our kids.
“Children aged from 5-11 have so much potential for learning about algorithms and computation that it would be a shame to wait until they are teenagers before we teach them the foundations…The most obvious argument, of course, is economic: Demand for software developers already far outstrips supply, and it’s expected to increase 30 percent by 2020 — more than double the average for all other jobs. ” – [Wired]
We need to get them prepared for the real world. More than 90% of schools in the US don’t offer any computer programming classes.
