ELN302 - Week Seven Coding and Programming
Coding and Programming in
Primary Schools
Welcome to our Week 7 Coding and Programming website.
Hyperlinked pages will be in bold or will be buttons, please click on bolded words to access the certain pages.
Please click here to learn how to navigate the site and begin activities.
This Week's Focus
This week will focus on providing a better understanding of coding and programming and how to teach your future students the skills of coding and programming.
In activities we look at 'Scratch' software, using Lego to teach relevance of coding and "Hour of Code" using the "Angry Birds" software".
We have also compiled a comprehensive list of resources that could be used to teach coding and programming to students.
This presentation can be linked to the previous tutorials. For more information about this click here.
This weeks activities have been created using websites and a range of readings. References can be found on the References page.
Coding and Programming
Computer coding and programming is becoming more and more relevant in todays society with many advocating for the inclusion in schools across the globe. Teaching students how to code also teaches them computional thinking - skills that are required for success in the 21st Century.
Computional thinking, put simply, is range of probleming solving skills combining mathematics, logic, algorithms and many more techniques (Technology Core, 2014). Computational thinking is fast becoming the new literacy of the 21st century, just one of the many reasons why coding and programming should be taught within schools (Wing, 2011).
Activities
The activities created pertain to Early Stage 1 and Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3. The Early Stage 1 activity on Lego, builds the learing activity in three parts demonstrating the importance and success of entry level programming. Stage 2 integrates and develops students' prior knowledge of coding and progamming into a computer based medium, by manitupating the avatars based on the game angry birds. A wide range of Stage 3 activities can be developed using 'Scratch' software. Students are able to program and share a variety of creative and interactive media such as stories, games, and animation.
