Year of code

[DirtyDog]

Is this the best way to start?

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10

Surely a REPEAT..UNTIL FALSE loop would be better than a GOTO?

[DirtyDog]

You can teach that in woordwork and lets face it for the general population that is massively more useful to know than printing the alphabet backwards with some ropey perl code.

How many primary schools have a woodwork space that can be used by the whole class?

[administrator]

Maybe they should try Codecademy instead?

The primary school where my children go have bought in a load of set lesson plans etc. because they need to teach coding and they haven't got the experience to do it themselves. Year 5 and 6 are using Scratch, which is pretty good for the kids to get something working quickly; I don't know what the younger ones are doing.

There are significant benefits to learning to code, even if people don't go into computing at all. At the most basic level, learning to program teaches that if you have a complex task, breaking it down into simple units that can be tackled easily is the best approach - a skill which works well whatever the children do as a job in later life.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=code+academy

Works for me

Yes, massive benefits to getting kids working with computers from an early age and problem solving, analysis and logic are all really good byproducts of learning to code at a young age. Scratch looks good. I have put Hopscotch on our kids' ipads and have some time each week with them, have also dabbled with HTML and will get a raspberry pi in a year or two. Your local primary school sounds more switched on than central gov!

I think it's possible to pick up the basic structure of a computer langauge to the point where one can write programs in a day or two.

Learning to code to a high level and the associated background knowledge of maths and comp sci is obviously a whole different ball game but if you can teach someone who can barely count maths and physics to a level standard in their school career then it ought to be possible to teach them computer programming as well. Whether we should is debateable.

I don't disagree - but if you don't practice these things and continue with them then you forget the majority of it. So learning a bit of coding at school and then thinking you will be able to make your own website and app a decade later (as Lottie stated in the vid) is unlikely.

So what you saying then? Not a fan?

Massive fan of the concept, just think the execution, especially putting a non-technical person as the director, is a fail.

[VectraMan]

There are significant benefits to learning to code, even if people don't go into computing at all. At the most basic level, learning to program teaches that if you have a complex task, breaking it down into simple units that can be tackled easily is the best approach - a skill which works well whatever the children do as a job in later life.

WHS. The problem is it's hard to sell the direct benefits, but 99% of what we learn in school is a waste of time in terms of what you actually use in your career (I have a chemistry A-level for example). That doesn't mean we should give up on all those other subjects. Coding at its heart is problem solving; it's engineering, and that seems to me a pretty good thing to be teaching kids. It doesn't mean we're going to be a nation of code monkeys, but if every child learns to come up with creative solutions to any and all problems they face in life and work, rather than what appears to be the case these days of assuming somebody else will do it for them, then that can only be a good thing.

[DirtyDog]

Yes, massive benefits to getting kids working with computers from an early age and problem solving, analysis and logic are all really good byproducts of learning to code at a young age. Scratch looks good. I have put Hopscotch on our kids' ipads and have some time each week with them, have also dabbled with HTML and will get a raspberry pi in a year or two.

Scratch comes as standard on Raspian - got our Pi a few weeks ago and started working with the children with it. Two days later, my elder daughter started it at school as well. There are some really good resources for Scratch as well - and we're meant to be going to the Manchester family hack day in March with friends as well.

When the OS ships this summer, Kano looks like a good OS as well, which starts with the kids building the Pi themselves, through to writing their own Minecraft levels. I've got an alpha release and we built a game of pong the other day, making the ball get faster and change colour when it hits the bat etc.

Your local primary school sounds more switched on than central gov!

They have the advantage of a real geek as the link governor, who can push the school into action about IT things

[d000hg]

I think I disagree with admin on this one. Not that it's easy to teach coding, but that this isn't the point.

I was never taught to code, I was interested and learned on my own as a direct result of being exposed to it by my father... who was by no means a professional programmer but an electrics guy who had had to learn when computers entered his industry. He only knew BASIC but could write little programs and that got me interested.

If teachers know enough to get kids playing and interested, that would be plenty. A generation of kids who learn for fun, the same way kids used to when they had to type in games code from a magazine, or when kids used to muck about with electrical circuits, is all we need. They don't need to be taught, just inspired... nearly all our professional athletes were initially taught by fairly average PE teachers and/or parents.

[suityou01]

I think it's possible to pick up the basic structure of a computer langauge to the point where one can write programs in a day or two.

Learning to code to a high level and the associated background knowledge of maths and comp sci is obviously a whole different ball game but if you can teach someone who can barely count maths and physics to a level standard in their school career then it ought to be possible to teach them computer programming as well. Whether we should is debateable.

It worked out ok for SAS.

[barrydidit]

More to the point.
Lottie Dexter - I would.

[NickFitz]

It's not down, thats example XML for people to learn from

Given the utter pig's ear 99% of people make of working with XML, it sounds like a much-needed resource

[suityou01]

I never saw what scratch was for. You add a cat to the screen and make it go meeoww 10 times. Not exactly enthralling for a kid with an XBox360.