Starting another journey

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To Code or Not to Code

Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash

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?

Time Management

Waiting for the bus and then the short ride is good thinking time. You might even meet another classmate on the bus! And that chat might get a stranger to comment on your conversation of not getting all your readings/prep done! And that stranger might even be a retiring Education prof who reinforces what you just realized – scan the articles for general information and carefully read the ones you connect with. Taking two courses in just over 3 weeks means you need to be efficient in your time use. This became really obvious this morning when instead of reading the assigned readings carefully, I went to Rich McCue’s blog and found all sorts of interesting stuff! I did eventually manage to tear myself away long enough to scan and take basic notes on the last reading for today.  But I am starting to realize what is good information, what is interesting information, and what is going to be relevant for me! Now, how to find the balance of how to allocate my time between the three. . .

So it begins

I have considered doing a masters for a long time. I did ongoing research and training for the classes I taught, but that eventually became stale. Getting involved in the International Baccalaureate Educator network satisfied my craving for new information and pedagogy development, and then my career path changed – being in administration required a whole new set of readings and research. Although I just retired from full-time work, I plan on continuing with shorter contracts and as a consultant, so the timing is perfect for starting a Masters of Educational Technology.

Through IB training and learning how to run our new Information System, I have been in online classrooms, face-to-face inquiry/lecture workshops, and required to read many documents. Most of the documentation was not to be read critically, though. It was to be memorized and questioned so it could be applied, but there was only a little analysis and evaluation. This is a HUGE jump, because everything needs to be analyzed and evaluated and then you have to blog about it! Yikes! I come from a generation where we were trained to be careful about what we put in writing because it could come back to haunt you. And now I have to put it out in public, online, and not just in a letter or a report card! (Yes, we were given the option to keep it less public, but . . . ) As the saying goes, “faint heart never won fair lady”, and in my case, the fair lady is this wonderful opportunity to take a Masters online, starting with a July of synchronous classes (half of us attend online), and connecting with a wonderful group of like-minded individuals. Time to analyze my readings!

“Bloom’s Taxonomy”by Vandy CFT is licensed under CC BY 2.0