MinnPost | Erin Hinrichs
When second-graders come in to Bryce Jacobson’s media classroom for their 25-minute coding lessons, they know the drill. After briefly touching base, they disperse across the library — crawling into bookshelf cubbies or sprawling out on the floor — and log into their coding program on their iPads.
Seated at a table, Kendall Malin, 8, begins sequencing arrows and commands to guide an animated bee through a garden. Once she passes this level, she will have written more than 100 lines of code.
“It’s really fun,” she said, offering a tutorial on the levels she’s already completed.
But it’s more than a game. She’s learning to program, she explained, noting it’s useful “if you want to be someone who works on computers.”
Stuck on a coding problem pictured with a zombie, Ada Geisler, 8, leaned over to ask Kendall for help and the two tackled the problem together.
It’s this type of collaborative effort that Jacobson encourages, especially when it comes to coding lessons.
“Creativity, problem solving, collaboration are the big pieces of this,” he said of the newly implemented coding lessons.
Belle Plaine Public Schools paired each student with an iPad last year, bringing Jacobson on board to help guide the integration of new technology in the classroom. His enthusiasm for coding, paired with encouragement from district leadership, has put Chatfield Elementary on the map as one of Minnesota’s newest coding-savvy schools.
Having introduced the program to second-graders this fall, using applications created by the nonprofit Code.org, the district plans to pilot a K-2 program next year, with plans to scale up to a K-12 program in the near future.
“As we go forward, we’re going to continue to make sure our programming is preparing our kids for the world they’re going into, not the world they came from,” Superintendent Ryan Laager said. “I’m really excited to watch the development of these kids, not only as they do coding in K-2, but as they move through the system. I think we’re going to see enhanced skills in mathematics, creativity and spacial awareness, and all the things that come with coding.”
A timely transition
Completing his first year with the district, Laager frames coding as the language that’s going to propel his students into the 21st century work force — where accountants, information technology specialists, and a whole swath of professions that don’t even exist yet will require coding skills.
In Minnesota alone, Code.org reports there are roughly 15,000 open computing jobs, offering an average salary of $84,705. With a mere 8 percent of STEM graduates specializing in computer science nationwide, only 1 in 4 Minnesota schools have taken it upon themselves to start preparing their students to fill this employee gap.
A few years back, Minnetonka took the lead in committing resources to the development and implementation of a K-12 coding curriculum dubbed “Tonka CODES.” While the curriculum has garnered widespread support, it’s not monitored by the Minnesota Department of Education.
The department doesn’t track which schools and districts teach coding because it’s not categorized as a state education standard with explicit benchmarks. However, Director of Academic Standards Beth Aune says there are lots of skills crossover when it comes to preparing students to meet math and language arts standards. Coding reinforces skills in algebra, sequencing and logical thinking, to name a few.
In the wake of President Barack Obama’s Computer Science for All initiative, which calls for additional funding to support computer science education at the K-12 level, Aune suspects local interest in adopting coding curriculums will continue to grow.
Minnesota is currently one of 28 states that allows computer science to count toward a high school math or science requirement.
There’s also a push to allow coding to fulfill the foreign language requirement.
In Belle Plaine, Laager may not be advocating for this quite yet. But he’s already framing coding as a universal language, best learned at an early age.
“The thing we know about language development is the younger they start it, the more fluent they’ll become in it,” he said.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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