Making things… Learning Things
"I am convinced that the best learning takes place when the learner takes charge…" –Seymour Papert
[Updated July 2017] I want to share my set of "coding to learn" outcomes. These are the things that I am looking for in children who are coding in educational contexts. These are the targets in my mind. To me, these represent the powerful learning potential in coding to learn. "Coding to Learn" Outcomes Students... Continue Reading →
Coding in education is once again gaining more and more popularity in education. There are now too many coding tools, online and device-based, to keep up with. There are so many choices now for students, teachers, or for anyone looking at using coding in education. Choice is great but it creates a new challenge for... Continue Reading →
One of my favourite chapters in Constructionism in Practice was written by Yasmin Kafai: Learning Design by Making Games (pp. 71-123). She was interested in learning more about the development of children's design strategies within the context of creating an authentic artifact - a computer game. Children were asked to design and create an interactive computer game that... Continue Reading →
One of my blogging goals is to share more often about coding to learn experiences of the students I am working with at various schools. Case in point, on Friday, some grade 5 students were hard at work during their fourth session (our first was October 3) of game design using Scratch. In January, they... Continue Reading →
It’s great that so many students and teachers I know, and many whom I do not know (but am aware of via Twitter) are checking out code.org or other hour of code sites next week. There are so many great resources that always result in a fantastically exciting hour for students. Coding has become the current term... Continue Reading →
I made this because I think there is an important distinction between learning to code and coding to learn. I think the focus with students doing coding in schools should be coding to learn. Bill Ferriter’s graphic called what do you want kids to do with technology was the inspiration for my graphic. I created this for... Continue Reading →
A grade six teacher and I had co-planned a series of sessions with her students around coding with Scratch. In one of the later sessions, I was working with a boy who was frustrated with the game he was making and told me he wanted to start over again. In age appropriate words, I reassured... Continue Reading →
(Updated August 2016, May 2017) I am very pleased that there is a growing sense in the education world of the connection between coding and cognition and learning. There is a mountain of research examining the various beneficial cognitive effects of learning computer programming. Great! But, I believe Seymour Papert would say that students learning... Continue Reading →
In a recent blog post by @MatthewOldridge, he questions the 'whys' of learning to code. And rightly so, I think. If you are at all following educational trends, you are probably aware that people are seriously discussing the merits of coding/programming in terms of a new literacy. For example, you have probably seen all or part of this... Continue Reading →
Making things... Learning Things 