iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Building apps teaches teens far more than just computer skills—they also learn social entrepreneurship and gain self-confidence.

My sense is we might also need to rethink dominant approaches to teaching kids to code in this emerging context of fake news and computational propaganda.

As the “Homeland” plot indicates, coding skills can be put to all kinds of purposes. Media-literate young programmers with extreme political views may not have quite the power that “Homeland” suggests. But, as the brilliant and terrifying 2016 documentary film “Zero Days” has shown, the cyber-warfare plots of “Homeland” may not be far from the reality.

Which is why it strikes me that the learning to code movement needs to be clearer in its commitment to new forms of digital literacy and digital citizenship education. England was one of the first countries to embed coding in the curriculum for all schools. For many of its original advocates, knowing how computers, code and algorithms work would be valuable for informed citizenship.

The reality, though, is that coding in the curriculum, and many other learning to code schemes, have tended to overemphasize either economically valuable skills for the software engineering sector, or high-status academic computer science knowledge and skills. There has been far too little focus on enabling young people to appreciate the social consequences of code and algorithms.

Too many classes, all grade levels, begin the school year with getting down to academic business – starting to cover content, discussing expectations regarding academic requirements, giving tests, and other academic information provided by the teacher to the students in a mostly one-way communication.  The human or social element is often disregarded.

I believe that all classes should begin with focusing on having the students make connections between themselves and the educator; and between one another.  I want students to learn about one another in a personal way.  I want to learn about my students so my instructional strategies can be more personalized and tailored to their needs and interests.