Sparking children’s curiosity for the world of technology through the power of stories with Zerus & Ona, a picture book series designed to make it fun and motivating for young and old alike.
I agree that we might be getting it wrong when adding coding lessons to schools' curriculums all around the world. Not every child needs to become a programmer...
Still, I think it's important for them to know how computers work and what they can do with them. So, they'll end up using them for their advantage (in whatever way they choose!).
I especially liked your ideas on how we need to teach critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. How do you think we could teach those 4 together with technology and make sure that kids look at coding as one more tool to express themselves?
To answer to your question: we might start from ourselves. We simply have to learn those skills ourselves - and there is still a lot to learn. Moreover, each curriculum in the tech for kids must not be only about tech. Thats where we should put all of our knowledge not to make them a 'coding monkeys':) And it is also vice-versa: put tech everywhere else - ask them to write a song with software, or to compare the same news in different media... and talk and talk and talk about things that are not so bright with tech, including p0rn, mis-concept of likes, influensers... we don't have luxury to push them into the vortex of what tech is today and hope they will figure everything by themselves, just because they understand how to code an algorithm...
For example I made a small set of workshops for one semester for 10-year olds... At the end of it, they were able to create a picture card for parents using some basic math, put it in a document, type some wishes for parents and send them from their mail accounts. But - we learned also that: there is not only one OS, that everything online can be compromised, that they should consider their data as their personal thing, that they should not communicate to unknown persons as well, and so on... every time we repeated together one or two of these premises, while working on the 'main' thing.
I get bit passionate about the sunject, sorry for long response :)
Sparking children’s curiosity for the world of technology through the power of stories with Zerus & Ona, a picture book series designed to make it fun and motivating for young and old alike.
I love that! I agree that it should start with us learning more about computer science in general. And yes, Igor, there's still a lot to learn!
We see so much focus on how to bring computing and coding into schools, but learning about computers is something that should start at home, given the importance that they have in our lives.
Now it's a matter of how to make it easy for parents to bring the topic into their families, so we can all learn, together with our kids.
Funny that you mentioned the example of asking them to write a song with software. That's the topic around my next book. :D
P.S. As you can see, I also get very passionate about this!
I was thinking into writing (or collecting) set of 'tools' or 'practices' for every-day ppl... you know those little books for kids like '100 things you can make with paper' etc, so something like that but for adults (still not sure about the target group:). Where you could find dozens of ways to use technology and something from the real world. Emphasising using it as a tool. I just need to find way how not to sleep at night :))))
Sparking children’s curiosity for the world of technology through the power of stories with Zerus & Ona, a picture book series designed to make it fun and motivating for young and old alike.
I love that idea, Igor! Let me know if you need help breaking the plan for it. I've worked on my books in between baby naps, so I might have some tips. :D
The world needs as many resources for this as possible!
(The first book is already on Amazon and for this one, I'm planning to open pre-orders in a month!)
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I loved this post!
I agree that we might be getting it wrong when adding coding lessons to schools' curriculums all around the world. Not every child needs to become a programmer...
Still, I think it's important for them to know how computers work and what they can do with them. So, they'll end up using them for their advantage (in whatever way they choose!).
I especially liked your ideas on how we need to teach critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. How do you think we could teach those 4 together with technology and make sure that kids look at coding as one more tool to express themselves?
Thanks for sharing, Igor.
Thank you for kind words!
To answer to your question: we might start from ourselves. We simply have to learn those skills ourselves - and there is still a lot to learn. Moreover, each curriculum in the tech for kids must not be only about tech. Thats where we should put all of our knowledge not to make them a 'coding monkeys':) And it is also vice-versa: put tech everywhere else - ask them to write a song with software, or to compare the same news in different media... and talk and talk and talk about things that are not so bright with tech, including p0rn, mis-concept of likes, influensers... we don't have luxury to push them into the vortex of what tech is today and hope they will figure everything by themselves, just because they understand how to code an algorithm...
For example I made a small set of workshops for one semester for 10-year olds... At the end of it, they were able to create a picture card for parents using some basic math, put it in a document, type some wishes for parents and send them from their mail accounts. But - we learned also that: there is not only one OS, that everything online can be compromised, that they should consider their data as their personal thing, that they should not communicate to unknown persons as well, and so on... every time we repeated together one or two of these premises, while working on the 'main' thing.
I get bit passionate about the sunject, sorry for long response :)
I love that! I agree that it should start with us learning more about computer science in general. And yes, Igor, there's still a lot to learn!
We see so much focus on how to bring computing and coding into schools, but learning about computers is something that should start at home, given the importance that they have in our lives.
Now it's a matter of how to make it easy for parents to bring the topic into their families, so we can all learn, together with our kids.
Funny that you mentioned the example of asking them to write a song with software. That's the topic around my next book. :D
P.S. As you can see, I also get very passionate about this!
Wow, great, when you expect book to be published!
I was thinking into writing (or collecting) set of 'tools' or 'practices' for every-day ppl... you know those little books for kids like '100 things you can make with paper' etc, so something like that but for adults (still not sure about the target group:). Where you could find dozens of ways to use technology and something from the real world. Emphasising using it as a tool. I just need to find way how not to sleep at night :))))
I love that idea, Igor! Let me know if you need help breaking the plan for it. I've worked on my books in between baby naps, so I might have some tips. :D
The world needs as many resources for this as possible!
(The first book is already on Amazon and for this one, I'm planning to open pre-orders in a month!)