It seems that every school board, education ministry or country feels that it is lagging, and being left behind in tech literacy, so this time, the Brits have decided to do something about it.
Not long ago, schools were encouraged to make laptops available to each student, in an effort to get all of them computer literate. And then along came the iPad and other tablet successors, and the students would be using them to begin studying computers.
However, these efforts were usually introduced on a piecemeal basis, for certain grades in certain jurisdictions, and did not have the necessary extensive teacher preparation.
Naturally, the success of these programs was uneven, to put it mildly. Los Angeles Public schools recently canceled their across-the-system laptop program; too many machines were being lost or damaged often beyond repair, and many of the older students had hacked the software anyway, and were playing computer games and doing social communications in class time.
One of the most exciting ideas to come along in many years, has just been launched in many classrooms, particularly those in Britain. Just two weeks ago, schools across Britain have introduced coding — mandated in all levels from primary to high school — to get the country to try to keep up with technology.
Coding will be used, not to tell youngsters about computers, but how to use them.
I have read about the lists of goals across the age groups, in articles designed to explain them to parents.
The school system has also enlisted the aid of private software companies, in promoting courses and providing materials.
Throughout our learning careers, many of us have been through exercises to develop logical thinking skills. Because I was a good student in my early school years, so I was introduced to Latin in grade 7, and worked on it for about a year and a half, as I recall. (I even have a copy of the — dreaded — text book, ‘Living Latin.’)
Latin, with its many many rules and six declensions, forces you to think logically; there are many wrong ways to speak / write in Latin, but in a particular context, there is only ONE correct way.
I liked Arithmetic, and did well in basic operations, and think the Latin skills helped when we got into more metaphysical concepts in Algebra, where you had to make sure that what was on the left side of the equal sign must be the same as what was on the right side.
I was glad when we were introduced to Geometry, mainly because I enjoyed pencil drawing, and could relate to such concepts as parallel lines, rectangles, squares, and then circles.
When I got to university, however, it all came to a grinding halt: I had been placed in the Honours Science degree program, and was immediately over my head, especially in learning basic Calculus. Except for learning the basic concepts when taught by a brilliant Colleague many years later, I have no clear understanding (and really don't care) about plotting and finding the area of a cone, for example.
At my first training sessions in the federal Public Service in 1967, we were introduced to computer programming. (A computer filled a large room, which had to be air-conditioned, with raised floors for all the cables).
I still remember the prof.'s opening for the first class: He picked up the chalk and wrote two words on the blackboard: 'Buy Xerox.' I realized only a few years later that if only I had done that, I would now be unspeakably wealthy!
Computers in those days used holed data cards to input data, and you had to painstakingly plot the location of each hole correctly in order to have the computer perform any operation.
Ten years later, I was introduced to BASIC computer language at the local community college, in an evening program.
In that class, I learned about the precise writing and order of codes: whatever you mark ‘open’ must later be ‘closed;’ if you want something to happen within an operation that is already happening, you must ‘nest’ the coding, so here you have to think logically, as with Latin exercises!
All of this coding came in handy when, a few years ago at age 61, I decided to set up and operate our Parish website.
Suddenly, even though I was learning many new concepts and codes, HTML came quite easily.
(I could then tell people that I had just enough HTML skills to be dangerous!)
Today, using templates from a content management system such as ’joomla!', you don't need to insert codes very often to manipulate website content. However, coding skills come in handy when the program does not do exactly what you wanted to do; for example, if you want certain notices to appear in a particular format.
I wish all British educators and their students every success in coding for logical thinking skills, but I still need somebody to teach me how to find the area of a cone, using Calculus!
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