Why Coding Skills?

I believe learning coding skills are essential for high school students. In this post, I would like to demonstrate some reasons, why students, must be familiar with programming and coding before going to school. 1. The tech industry continues to grow exponentially every year. Students need to learn digital skills to work. 2. Coding skills provide great opportunities to create content, for instance, instead of only using games as consumers, they learn how they can create them. 2. Students can develop their creativity through coding skills. Coding is based on the input-output process. Students learn to find logical processes to convert an input to the desired output. Within this rational process, they can develop their analytical thinking. 3. One thing that I teach my student would be taking risks, making mistakes, and learning from failures. I think the coding environment provides a safe place for students to take risks and fail, which is one effective way of learning. Through their risk and failure, students can learn what they did wrong in their code and fix it. Any student, no matter their background, can use coding as a vehicle to learn that they can create and do amazing things. 4. Coding is general and inclusive, which means that coding skills will be beneficial to our career, no matter what they do as their career, scientist, researcher, chemist, software developer, financial analyst, data analyst, etc., all they need to learn coding skills. 5. Coding develops teamwork and collaborative skills. Through coding activities, students work effectively as teamwork, it is a more engaging and interactive activity, in which students communicate and seek help. 6. “Coding is, without a doubt, one of the most straightforward ways for children to boost their problem-solving skills. At its simplest definition, problem-solving refers to a person’s ability to tackle complex or novel situations efficiently. Someone with well-honed problem-solving skills weaves disparate skillets such as creativity, emotional intelligence, research skills, collaboration, and decision-making into a cohesive and effective response. In a programming context, coders are constantly challenged and asked to problem-solve. The practice all but requires them to break issues down into more manageable sub-problems, then progress through an iterative process of identifying, prioritizing, and implementing solutions. Thus, children start honing their problem-solving skills as soon as they take on their first coding challenge”. [Ref.] 7. Coding improves computational thinking, through coding practices, students learn a better understanding of algorithmic thinking patterns. 8. One goal in the new curriculum, is developing digital literacy. Although digital literacy is a broad term, which deals with technology in a meaningful way. Coding opens new windows to new fields such as internet safety, cyberbullying, digital footprints, and online ethics. In conclusion, I can’t emphasize more the coding skills, these capabilities require to be captured as early as possible. Therefore, families and teachers must encourage kids to work on coding ad programming as the essentials of the digital world. Ref: https://techbootcamps.utexas.edu/blog/why-kids-should-learn-to-code/