This post was last updated on February 16th, 2021 at 02:34 pm
Since the start of the 21st century, Silicon Valley has been impacting not only the economics and progress of the US, but its influence can be traced all over the world. It is only a matter of time when it dictates the needs for professionals of the new era. Actually, the future has already started.
Programming can lay the foundation for logical thinking. Through logic, you can learn to look into the essence of processes, a skill that comes in handy in any field.
When a first-grader is explained what programming is, he or she is asked, for example, to describe how to make a sandwich. The first time, the child is baffled because he or she hasn’t thought about it before. Then we start to figure it out together with the kid: first, you have to take a piece of bread for the sandwich, then put the sausage on top, then the cheese.
Even such a simple analogy helps us understand the principle of programming and just look deeper into the structure of everyday things.
The Professions of the Future
We all see robot vacuum cleaners and self-driving cars. It is clear that in the future regular professions, whether it is a bank employee who gives out receipts or a car driver, will be replaced by robots that someone has to operate.
If kids get a chance to learn about it in school, they might want to go into programming. If not, the basics of logic acquired will be useful in any other profession, and if a programming skill is developed, it will be an additional plus in an interview.
Coding or its aspects is going to be the most essential skill in the future, so the educational system must adjust the sooner the better. Actually, Silicon Valley has already started taking care of the proper education for the kids.
Code.org and Why it is Important
Created in 2013, the training platform code.org is a non-profit, completely free online learning system dedicated to the promotion of programming among all those who want to master it.
There are famous personalities in the IT industry among the founders and investors: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Gabe Newell (Valve), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), and others.
The creators of the project believe that every student in every school should have the opportunity and access to learning computer science and programming at a decent level. Code.org is made to help everyone enter the world of modern IT technologies regardless of their age and abilities.
The learning process is in the form of a game, but it covers all the basic concepts of programming languages. As in the acclaimed Scratch, a similar language is used – “blocky”, children do not need to memorize text structures to write code. Scripting (algorithms) is done by dragging and dropping blocks of commands and other constructs into the code area.
How to Start
Peter, a graphic designer at Pro-papers suggests that teachers can use code.org before learning Scratch because it provides pre-designed courses that are easy to get started quickly.
After creating an account, the teacher can monitor the progress of his students. To do this, you need to create a virtual classroom, select a course to study (there are many courses for different age categories), add students (list export is supported) and you can start learning.
After the teacher has set up the class, each student is given a unique secret word. Each class has a personal login link. With the help of this link and the secret word, the student logs in to the account.
The service can be used to organize additional homework or in extracurricular classes.
The kids will love this resource at first sight. It’s a game-based learning experience, and the main characters are inspired by the popular Angry Birds series. During the course, kids will have to perform various tasks, learning the basic principles of programming and as a result creating their own simple computer game. Note that engineers from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter had a hand in the development of this resource, so despite the seemingly frivolous nature of this course, it is definitely worth our attention.
A lot of services similar to code.org are available all over the world. Silicon Valley’s impact is ubiquitous. The environment changes, as well as the trends for the education of the future. If our kids emerge into coding since their childhood, they can reach immense success as adults, pushing our world forward.
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