week 6 reflections

 Digital Technologies

We have commenced the digital technologies component of the course this week. The first section is exploring coding. In terms of computer programming, my experience is nil. As a computer user, I understand the very basics of keys and buttons representing instructions to the software. I have never actually created a programme and I view software programs as highly complex systems. So I am dubious about how to incorporate 'coding'  into pedagogy because of my lack of understanding. To teach effectively, one needs to understand the content and ideally, have a passion for it. I enjoy maths and have a good grasp on mathematical concepts so hopefully this will translate to  a good understanding of coding principles and processes.

We visited binary code this week. I vaguely remembered it from school. The concept is easy to understand and games would be a great way to teach it. I still struggle with relating it to computer language' though.

How do I answer the question, "Why are we learning this?"

I hope to answer this over the next couple of weeks.

I found the following article posted on the moodle site a good place to start.
Article : www.districtadministration.com/article/coding
 The article discusses computer coding in the curriculums of American schools. Computer science instruction is vital "to give students critical job skills". Computer coding teaches logical reasoning, algorithmic thinking and structured problem solving skills. The cross curricula potential for these skills is obvious and a link is made between improved algebra results and increased computer science lessons.

I explored  this website that offers activities to introduce coding to students:

http://studio.code.org/

http://studio.code.org/flappy/1

Whilst the activities are very engaging for students, I am unsure of their genuine learning quality. I felt it involved reading instructions then clicking and dragging to correct positions, kind of like a multiple choice exercise. I'm not sure that students would necessarily make connections between coding and what they are doing. I will explore the site further as there were some paper based activities that looked interesting and could be easily implemented in classrooms without one-to-one devices.