Coming Up at Essex Elementary—The Hour
of Code
This week (December 7th through December 11th)
Essex Elementary School will be abuzz with talk of the “Hour of Code”. Here are
some questions and answers to you may have about our teaching the elements of
computer programming to students at EES?
1. What is the Hour of Code?
The Hour of Code is a worldwide
program run concurrently this week in over one hundred eighty countries and
involving millions of students. All over the world students will experiment
with basic computer programming thinking, creating, changing their view from using
digital devices to changing what happens on the device. In essence, by thinking
outside of the box, our students will be able to program their tablet or
computer.
2. What’s the point of teaching young students computer
programming? Do they really need to learn this?
Computer programs are based on developing a set of steps to solve a
problem or reach a goal. Learning to solve problems is essential to living in
our world. What we are teaching is another approach to thinking and to creating
strategies, which will better equip our students for the challenges of living
in the twenty-first century.
3.
If this is a
critical skill for the future, how will just an hour of coding have any impact?
Actually,
our technology program has been teaching the elements of coding over the course
of the school year for the past three years. While the Hour of Code lights a
fire, both programming skills and creative uses of technology to solve problems
are built into the infrastructure of the technology curriculum we are teaching
all year long. We are excited to have participated in the Hour of Code since
its inception in 2013. This year we have many new activities, which will begin
with the week of the Hour of Code and continue as the year progresses. For more
information, please feel free to contact Dr. Bodmer-Turner.
