To anyone who has taught themselves to program, I apologize for the title, but I really couldn’t resist! If you’ve never learned to code, just know that the first coding project in almost any book, tutorial or learning platform is to make the words “Hello, world!” appear on the screen in the new language you’re trying to learn.
This semester, I am working on two major projects, one of which is to be presented on a website, so this seemed like a great time to get my education website and blog up and going!
In Communication, Technology, and the Knowledge Building Enterprise, our final project is to learn everything we can about a particular subject, and to build a website or other multimedia project detailing our learning process and including resources and any products we create as part of our learning endeavors. For this project, I have decided to learn Flutter, which is Google’s cross-platform development language. I have some students who are interested in learning to build apps, so my colleague and I chose Flutter because of the availability of free online learning resources, and for the ability to create a cross-platform application with a single code base. For any non-technical folks, this means that we can write one set of code which will then work on iOS and Android mobile devices, in web browsers, and soon, on desktop operating systems as well.
For this project, I will build an app, detailing my progress in blog entries and videos that I will share to this page. I hope you’ll join me on my new coding adventure!
In my other class, Systematic Design of Instruction, I will be designing a “mini-course” for other teachers. The topic I’ve selected is close to my heart – How to Teach Kids to Code (When You’re Not Quite Sure How to Code Yourself).
For a lot of teachers, who usually don’t have any coding experience, teaching their students to code can be a scary prospect, but in my experience, you don’t need to know much about coding to help kids learn how to code. The most important thing is a willingness to be an active learner so that they can watch your learning process in the classroom. Once you’re willing to learn alongside your students, supporting the development of their coding skills is a lot of fun, and you’ll be surprised at how much your students can teach you.