If you want your kids to start coding, you’re not alone. And you have come to the right place! By the time that elementary-aged students enter into the future workforce in 10 or 12 years, coding will be as mandatory as showing up for work. Luckily, we have these new secrets to help children get ahead of the game—the Base and Ultimate kits from Let’s Start Coding.
Students are often required to use a computer and work with digital modules to get familiar with coding languages and syntax (i.e. code.org). While this is a great and invaluable tool for teaching coding, there is so much more that kids can do with code—especially when it comes to applying what they know to real-world scenarios!
According to Code.org statistics, about 90 percent of parents in the United States want their children to learn how to code. On the other hand, only 40 percent of students in K-12 schools are currently learning about computer science. Considering the huge demand for technically competent workers in today’s growing-by-the-minute IT sector, learning how to code is key.
As more and more emphasis is being placed on preparing workers primed to succeed in the 21st century workforce, it seems logical that more emphasis should be placed on helping students acquire programming skills. In over half of US states, however, computer science-related disciplines don’t count towards graduation requirements.
Here at Eduporium, we have been lucky enough to acquire our very own version of one of the most advanced robots in the world—a little bot called NAO. NAO is about two feet tall and voice activated. We’ve had it around the office for a little while now, and although we’ve seen a little of what NAO is capable of, we were eager to dive in and see some more.
The annual Computer Science Education Week put on by Code.org serves as a yearly reminder of the importance of coding and Computer Science education in contemporary K-12 schools. Expected to be the literacy of future generations, coding has become an extremely important skill to have and creative Hour of Code projects are very helpful.
The Raspberry Pi is a tool that I’ve become very aware of since I started working here at Eduporium: there’s one in the entryway of our office running a slideshow with company announcements and events. It’s one of the first products we show off to visitors, interviewees, and people joining our team and it is one of our most adaptable products.
If you think you’ve seen kids get excited about learning, you probably haven’t seen the full extent of excitement until you’ve seen robots make their way into the classroom. Teachers can discuss the ideas of learning with robotics with their students, but when it comes to unleashing their potential in the classroom, students won’t be able to contain themselves.
Thinking about the hottest and most useful skills that today’s students will, more than likely, need to know, the first thing that always comes to my mind is coding. Coding is everywhere in the workforce in 2016. For students in first and second grade now, however, coding will be in even more places than everywhere by the time they’re ready for job hunting.
The Finch Robot is a teaching tool designed to combine these two crucial areas of STEM education for kids as young as 8 years old. Finch has a super simple surface, giving it the appearance of simplicity in the eyes of young students despite the fact that it’s actually filled with many tiny sensors. Plus, it supports over a dozen programming languages!
