These days, computers dominate our lives, providing the platform by which we work, play, and communicate with others around the world. As such, knowing how to work with and engineer these often quite complicated systems is a pretty solid skill to have in the modern workforce.
read more- The 25 Best Places To Take Free Online Computer Science Classes | Edudemic.
I’ve discussed the potential value of learning some scripting for any major in the past, and President Obama recently called for more of a focus on making sure students know “how to actually produce stuff” with computers, citing game design as a potential motivation. I’ve been participating in the Learning Creative Learning MOOC from MIT Media Lab, and this week we’ve been working with Scratch. Scratch is certainly a powerful entry point for the type of learning Obama called for. Playing with Scratch reminded me how powerful it is for a language that uses building block code, and made me reconsider it for introducing fundamental programming to some of my non-coders in the classroom. Scratch is a powerful way to support goals like Brian’s of teaching kids to make–but it’s for more than just kids. I grew up with Logo, a highly visual tool where writing simple code “commanded” a turtle to create things on-screen, and I’m amazed by how far we’ve come since then. Scratch provides a platform for anyone to try making animations, interactive experiments, and games. Unlike the tools I’ve looked at so far in this series — Inform 7, Inklewriter, and Twine –Scratch is highly visual and intended to provide a clear introduction to code.
via Making Games in the Classroom with Scratch – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Kids deserve more credit than they get. They’re observant, incredibly intuitive and can sometimes figure out what the world needs faster than adults can.
With rapid advancements in technology, and coding education geared toward youth, it comes as no surprise that there are kids pushing innovation out there, and creating apps and programs at astonishingly young ages.
Here are 10 youth innovators, from ages seven to 15, particularly worth noting and working on projects ranging from games to anti-bullying apps.
via Kids Code the Darndest Things: 10 Amazing Youth Innovators.
By BETH GARDINER
Published: March 7,
At 16, Isabelle Aleksander spends hours writing computer code and plans a career in engineering. Her latest passion is the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, credit-card-size computer developed to help teach programming.
But when she told her best friend — “he’s male, also into programming” — his response was not what she had expected. “He was like, ‘Wait, how do you know about them? You’re a girl and you shouldn’t be doing that,”’ Ms. Aleksander said incredulously.
She and her friend Honey Ross, 15, are among the few girls at King Alfred School, their private school in North London, with an intense interest in technology. The two, confident and outgoing, say they understand why: computing can seem boring from the outside, populated mainly by nerdy boys.
By Phil Johnson
March 05, 2013, 12:15 PM — A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some of things that I found most frustrating about being a programmer, back when I was a programmer. One of those things was the size of indentation in code. Somewhere along the line, I was trained (or just started on my own; can’t recall) to set the tab key in my editor to four spaces. That’s what I stuck with for years and got used to seeing. When I read someone else’s code that used two or eight character tabs, I found it annoying. It wasn’t a dogmatic thing for me; I didn’t care that much. Four spaces was just my personal preference.
In the programmer community, though, discussions of coding style such as the size of code indentation can quickly turn into a holy war. Some people tend to have very strong opinions on it. It flared up a little bit in the comments some people made on the article; but there are plenty of lengthier (and more heated) discussions on it elsewhere on the web.
via Religion, politics and coding indentation style: the three great debates | ITworld.
Published on Feb 15, 2013
From his February 14, 2013 Google+ Hangout, President Obama discusses the importance of computer science in preparing the nation’s future workforce.
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — Code.org Director Ali Partovi discusses the importance of learning how to code. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”
Want to Rule Silicon Valley? First, Learn to Code: Video – Bloomberg.
By Denys Bucksten, Special to the Tribune
February 27, 2013
The month-old Hello World computer science club at Highland Park High School has more than 30 underclassmen in a school lab learning to write code for mobile apps, with new members joining every week.
The club and its free-style study model is the brainchild of freshman Ethan Eirinberg, who asks more questions of himself and others than Alex Trebek in a round of Jeopardy.
Eirinberg said a teen’s idea of a cool app is “Snapchat,” which allows a user to text a photo for friends to enjoy — after which the images disappear and aren’t downloadable. Also popular are apps like Instagram, Alien Blue, Unblock Me and Subway Surfers, according to a quick poll of club members.
via Highland Park High School clubs creates apps – chicagotribune.com.
Maggie Johnson and Jordan Lloyd Bookey
At Google, we are passionate about empowering students to become creators of new technology, along with the educators, parents, and organizations who work with them. We applaud the efforts of so many people who are also helping to make this happen and hope that through our products, tools, and programs, we are able to make a positive impact.
Today, we are writing to sound the alarm on something we see as a major flaw in the emerging set of Common Core standards. For those who don’t know, the Common Core is a shared set of educational standards that states can voluntarily adopt. Prior to this, each state had its own process for developing, adopting, and implementing standards. As a result, what students learned varied widely from state to state. Over the past year, the state-led Common Core State Standards Initiative released the Mathematics and English Language Arts standards and Achieve released the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This standardization and the increased ability to measure progress across states is a significant improvement.
via Maggie Johnson: The Common Core Must Include Computer Science.