To Code or Not to Code - My Adventure in Coding with EDU 774 Coding for Educators

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Well a lot has gone on since my last foray into blogging.  My education at Dominican University has continued and I am almost done with my classes for my Technology Specialist endorsement.  After I am finished with my tech ed. courses, I am going to continue on to get my masters.  I will say that I have hit burnout mode and I will be glad to be finished with the whole thing.  Here is a little bit about my current adventure in my tech ed travels.....

I am currently finishing up my fall semester with EDU774 Coding for Educators.
I was not looking forward to this class.  I had absolutely no interest in coding.  I thought coding was for nerds, involved a lot of math, was very difficult, and definitely wasn't for me.  I was pleasantly surprised and I learned some intriguing, surprising, and important  things about coding.

First, you don't have to be great at math to be good at coding.  With this class I have learned that coding involves creativity, logical sequential thinking, and good problem solving skills.  I found that I can do that.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Second, there is a great need for coders/computer programmers.  As we venture more and more into the technological era the demand for computer programmers will sky rocket.   Did you know that by the year 2020 about one million coding positions will go unfilled?  That's huge!  It's so huge that there is now a strong push to start teaching coding at all grade levels.  

This new coding push is posing new challenges for our schools.  How do we teach coding in our schools when there is barely enough time to address all of the academic demands?  Very few high schools have computer programing classes.  There are very few high school teachers able to teach coding.  How do we introduce coding at the elementary level?  There are very few girls that pursue coding at the college level.  How do we broach the gender gap in the industry.  The list goes on and on.

Well, at least part of the solution falls on those that are or going to be Technology Specialists such as myself (hence me taking this class that I was not looking forward to). The going thinking is to embed coding within our regular academics.  Tech specialists' help the general education teacher introduce the basics of coding to students and then students use beginning programs like Scratch to complete class projects.  The cool thing is that kids are not afraid to experiment with technology like we older folks are.  They almost magically catch onto this stuff with little help. I think that's hope and the whole idea.

So, I bet you are wondering how I feel about coding now after taking this class.  Surprisingly, I like it.  Don't get me wrong, it's stressful trying to learn and figure out how to write the simple code that we learned to complete assignments.  I didn't catch onto it as quick as I would have liked but I find myself wanting to learn more. The take away from this class is that you don't have to be an expert to introduce students to coding.  It's my job to introduce it to students, teach them the basics, and let them take it from there.  In the mean time I need to keep practicing and learning.  There are tons of stuff on the internet to teach coding like Hour of Code, Scratch, Computer Programing with Khan Academy.  Don't be afraid to give it a try.  I'm glad I did.