Coding is undoubtedly the most important skill that kids should learn at school. Among all the subjects, coding is uniquely placed to bring together inquiry-based learning, critical-thinking, applied mathematics, sequential thinking, logical reasoning, debugging problems for root-causes, and more.
Learning by doing and investigating is a paradigm introduced by American philosopher John Dewey, and coding is at the heart of this approach. Students who studied computer science courses in high-school tend to fare better in their overall grades at school, according to the US Department of Education. Students who took coding classes, on average, had half a point higher GPA than those who didn’t take any coding courses.
During my undergraduate days, I found learning coding especially helpful in clearing the cloud around mathematics for me. For example, a topic like integral calculus or probability distribution is usually very theoretical and is not easy to visualize and relate to when we read it in isolation. But, when I used to write computer programs to apply this mathematics in a visual way to see distributions and probabilities, the math started to become easier and more beautiful.
In a world where technology is everywhere, knowing coding and how it works behind the scenes really puts one in a non-disadvantaged position of parity in a self-sufficient manner. Coding classes for kids is one of the best investments for any parent in terms of the return that the children can gain for the years to come.
Let us understand why is coding important for kids:
- Coding develops inquiry based learning. We explore the four types of inquiry based learning in our curriculum and in our coding classes: structured inquiry, guided inquiry, problem-based inquiry, and open-ended inquiry.
- To apply mathematics in real-life problems. Children can learn the applications of prime numbers in cryptography mathematics, progressions in various computer series applications, distributions and statistics in machine learning applications and many more. These are simple applications that teenagers build to simulate similar large scale applications in the real-world.
- Spatial Thinking, Creativity, and Expression: Children will use their imagination and create various sprites, backgrounds, and blobs throughout their coursework while programming various games. They develop these game characters and program their behavior and properties much and that helps them in a more concrete visualization of spatial thinking and creativity.
- Attention to detail and debugging the root-cause. They say when you are programming you’re recreating your mind. It is similar to writing in a way that it helps you to achieve a lot of clarity in your thinking. Programming helps to gain that clarity in your sequential thinking. Often when the output is not as desired, the child goes back and forth in understanding what went wrong, fixing it and checking whether the fix worked or not. These are fundamental cognitive principles that lay the foundation for a great mindset in a person.
- Learning to create things and to solve difficult problems in the face of it. More than anything, learning programming really enables children with the self-belief and thinking that building anything is possible. They don’t get overwhelmed by seeing the latest technology and feel ignorant about the aspects that drive both user-behavior and also the mechanics behind the scenes. They become comfortable with getting their hands dirty and build self-assurance in handling and building stuff with technology.
- Develops critical thinking: To think critically about a problem is to get into the heads of the clock-maker and understand various perspectives and requirements with empathy, and then articulate it and conduct it in a specified output form. Learning coding literally enforces this behavior in children and teenagers for their good.
Children in Canada can take a range of different coding courses designed for kids from Scratch and Python to Java and Unity and to the more advanced data structure and computer networks. These comprehensive range of coding courses help children graduate through the journey of coding from beginner to advanced coding courses for kids and teenagers.
Hope this is useful, thank you.
