It’s the age of technology and some St. Albert schools have gotten the jump on introducing the language of computer coding to students.
The provincial government announced that a six-year curriculum rewrite is in the works and computer coding could be a part of it, but some educators in the city saw the need for more technological teaching prior to the news.
“I think that coding is its own language and it’s a certain kind of literacy that we need to be teaching our kids,” said Muriel Martin French immersion teacher, Patricia Toth.
She recognized that her students were missing out on learning essential skills for today’s society and took it upon herself to change that. With no previous experience in coding, she decided to start a coding club for grades 3 and 4 students at her school. Over the last two years, Toth has attended several technology conferences and taken online courses in the attempt to further her coding knowledge.
“It’s just starting to spread across the district which is a great thing because I think it’s very topical,” said St. Albert public schools educational technology district coordinator Scott Gibson Dodd.
Another like-minded St. Albert teacher is Robert Kelly, a Grade 6 teacher at J.J. Nearing. He had a hand in developing the Maker club for students at his school who wanted to develop their coding skills.
Along with many other schools across St. Albert, J.J. Nearing and Muriel Martin participated in an Hour of Code on code.org in December. The Hour of Code allowed students at the schools to spend a designated period of time working through a story on the coding programs created by the website.
The roadblock that both teachers have faced is the struggle to find time to teach coding. As it is not yet included in the curriculum, it cannot be taught during regular class time. Toth conducts her coding club primarily during lunchtime. J.J. Nearing took the step to convert scheduled library periods into Makerspace time. The Makerspaces were designed to allow students to practice their hands-on skills. The Maker club was created for students who wanted to spend extra time after school exploring the possibilities of coding.
Toth said that having a prescribed coding curriculum would be a huge step in the right direction.
“I think it will kind of give us a standard to follow and it’ll also make sure that our students are on the same playing field, which I think is important because when you’re just pulling resources from wherever you think you can find them there will be a discrepancy between what some kids can do and what the others can’t,” she said.
Both teachers stressed the fact that coding does more than just teach children the actual skill.
“Just the kind of logical ways to solve problems and to go about thinking through situations definitely develops a lot of critical thinking,” said Kelly.
“It changes the way that children are able to solve problems, it changes the way in which they are able to collaborate and work together and that is something that right now, it’s a skill that we’re not really teaching, it’s not explicitly written in our curriculum anywhere and how do you teach that unless you’re doing by acting,” said Toth.
There is an abundance of resources available for teaching children to code. A popular tool among students at J.J. Nearing and Muriel Martin is the MaKey MaKey kit that allows them to use small circuit boards as controllers that connect with coding programs. Other resources for elementary aged coders include Bitsbox coding applications and even small robots like the Sphero BB-8 robot and LEGO Mindstorms. Scratch is an easy online coding tool that has been used by Toth and Kelly. Using Scratch, children can write their own code or try programs made by others. It can be used in conjunction with devices such as the MaKey MaKey kit.
Educators from St. Albert Public Schools, Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools and Sturgeon School Division also met at the public school district office earlier in the school year to participate in an Apple-led coding workshop that included information about a coding application called Swift.
These forward thinking educators are not looking to completely replace traditional lessons though. The idea is to add coding to the curriculum while still teaching the basic skills that have always been top priorities in schools.
“It’s part of 21st century literacy. These kids are going to have to interact with computers. We can fight it or we can teach kids the importance of maintaining human interaction, maintaining human relationships, maintaining the ability to use a piece of paper and a pencil, but you also need to teach them how to use those tools,” said Toth.
And the students are certainly taking to the additional teachings. Toth said many of her students enjoy coding so much that they are often excited to take their projects home to show their parents and work on them outside of school hours.
The coding resources available make it a fun and educational experience that children can understand. Toth said that many of her students have already surpassed her abilities, and that she is happy to be learning with them.
Kelly said he has noticed, both from the Hour of Code and his club, that there is an even number of girls and boys who enjoy the technological teachings. His 10-week club grew to approximately 30 students, which was many more than he was expecting.
Toth highlighted the fact that the addition of coding lessons in schools pushes students to learn how to use their brains in computer culture instead of just spending hours mindlessly staring at a screen.
“The endless possibilities of providing children an environment in which they can create and contribute content,” she said. “That’s one of the biggest issues with the Internet right now. Children are consuming and consuming but they’re not contributing and so we want to try to teach kids how to make, how to think, how to make things using their brains.”
