To Code or Not to Code

Our reading this week was from a session delivered at a 2016 Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) conference by Leon Sterling on whether coding should be part of the curriculum or whether it is just a fad. I think it depends on what you consider coding. According to Sterling, “computer scientists prefer the term computational thinking, a position advocated 10 years ago by Jeanette Wing (2006), with wide adoption. According to Wing, ‘computational thinking involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behaviour, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science.’”

I totally agree with this definition. In the arts, we are encouraging students to learn so they can appreciate the arts. By teaching coding and creating code and apps, we are encouraging students to appreciate the logic required both for coding and for mathematics. The arts, coding and mathematics are useful ways to develop critical and creative thinking skills.

I don’t think you need to teach actual computer coding at all levels, but the reasoning skills necessary for coding need to be taught. As an adult, when working with many applications, a basic knowledge of html coding is useful. Games and puzzles are great starting spots to teach computational thinking. There are many free and fun apps and websites to use to teach coding at various ages to improve students’ reasoning skills. We do not know what type of jobs our students will be doing in the future, but we do know they will need excellent reasoning skills as well as critical and creative thinking skills. Why not develop them using computer coding as there are such excellent and effective resources available?