CODING & PROGRAMMING

Hey fellow educators!
It's awesome to be talking about bringing coding into our classrooms. As a social studies teacher in Taiwan, I totally get that it's a big lift, especially with Common Core and AP prep already filling our plates. But I'm a firm believer that coding is a language just like history is, so here are my two cents on all of this.
You know how we tell our students that the only way to really learn about a historical event is to get into the primary sources and debates about it? Well, it's the same with coding! You can't just read about it; you've got to jump in and start building something, because that's where the real learning happens.
I checked out that Coding Resource Collection from the Twitter folks, and it's a gold mine! Having so many resources curated in one spot saves us so much time and gives us great ideas for projects, like creating a Scratch game.
I decided to jump in and try a lesson on Codecademy. I was really impressed with how it breaks down complex ideas into manageable steps, and it even has little quizzes to make sure you're on the right track.
It's so cool that grade 3 coding lessons are now available, because it shows how the new Ontario math curriculum is really pushing for this. Starting kids early with this kind of thinking will make a huge difference down the line.
Implementing coding in an eLearning classroom where students have different devices is a challenge, but totally doable. I'd lean on web-based platforms like Scratch or Tynker because they work on almost any device, and I'd also focus on project-based learning that lets students create something they're passionate about, whether it's an interactive map of a historical trade route or a political simulation game.
Honestly, my experience with coding is pretty recent. I started with some online tutorials, and it was a humbling experience! I made a lot of mistakes, but that's what taught me to be persistent and to really think about how to break a big problem down into smaller, solvable chunks.
I'd bring coding into my social studies classroom by having students create digital historical simulations or interactive timelines. For an AP U.S. History class, for example, students could code a game that simulates the challenges of westward expansion, or an AP Human Geography class could build a program that models urban sprawl. It's not just about the code itself, but about using it as a tool for historical inquiry and to show their understanding of social studies concepts.
It's so inspiring to see how coding is being used to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages. One amazing example is the Lakota AI Code Camp, where high school students learn to build AI apps that help record and preserve their language and culture. This initiative shows how tech can be a powerful tool for cultural preservation and empowerment, which is something we should definitely be talking about in our classrooms.
The biggest challenges in teaching coding in an eLearning environment are definitely a lack of hands-on, in-person collaboration and the difficulty of troubleshooting when everyone is on a different device. It requires us to get creative with virtual "maker spaces" and to create lessons that guide students through problem-solving with a little more independence.
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This AI Camp Is Teaching Teens to Preserve Their Lakota Language is a video from YouTube from the search results that shows a great example of this kind of initiative.
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This AI Camp Is Teaching Teens to
Preserve Their Lakota Language
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