Creating Interest in Cross-Curricular Coding for Reluctant Teachers

The last couple of weeks the same questions kept rising up over and over again: How am I going to convince teachers that cross-curricular coding is worth the effort, when I’m having a hard time with it? I decided to reach out to the potential learners for my project, teachers, and ask if they every considered implementing coding in their classes. The response was overwhelmingly “no”, but a few said that they had thought about it, but they didn’t know where to start and they felt a bit overwhelmed by all the choices available.

I realized I was being too specific and starting out in the wrong place. I needed to think about my intended audience and not limit content to only grade 8. I’ve decided to go with an age-range instead. Most of resources I’ve collected are for grades 5-8.

Teaching a Teacher

My vision for this project is to reach out to reluctant teachers and inspire them to try coding. My rationale is that if a teacher or teacher-librarian finds in fun and applicable to their English class, then they will be willing to put the time and energy into learning coding and teaching it.

Learning something new can be challenging and rewarding, but sometimes daunting and scary. Coding is a language. It takes time to learn a new language. It takes time.When I got back into coding, I felt a bit lost and wondered why I decided to get back into coding after so long. The reason was clear: I was having fun. Yes, it was hard and time consuming, but the giddiness over creating a website that I envisioned in my head for so long could not be ignored. That’s the key: making it personable and fun for the teachers and not just sticking to what I find interesting or fun.

I need to grab their interest straight away and draw them it to wanting more. I also have to consider the teachers in my district and the technology available. I know that this will be a new experience for the majority of the English teachers in my district. I’ve chatted with a few of them and they biggest takeaway was that if they were going to spend time learning coding and incorporating it into the classroom/curriculum, then it had to be a step-by-step guide, that is easily to learn from home and at school.

Back to the Basics: Unplugged and more Choices

First step? No computers at all. Start with Unplugged coding. The above example demonstrates what computer programmers are trying to do. They are telling the computer or game or animation what to do. If teachers don’t have a grasp of the basics, then asking them to teach it to their students would be exceedingly daunting. I remember when I started taking coding courses again this past year, and I how it felt like I was being thrown into an ocean and someone told me to swim without telling me which way. I still want my potential learners to swim, but they should get to choose the direction. Presenting them with options and how they might use them in class would be far more beneficial than just choosing one option and honing in on it. Some teachers are going to be drawn to Scratch, others Minecraft, and others just teaching the basics using Hour of Code or Code Academy.

A Choice Driven Artifact

I know my artifact needs to provide choices. It needs to be easily accessible, presentable and available to read and share. The teacher should be able to learn at his or her chosen pace. They need to try a few choices and see which one works for them and their students. Ideally, this artifact should be able to be presented in a group setting and be learned individually at home.

My choices so far:

• How-to-Guide in Google Docs (easily accessible and to use).
• Info-graphic on where to start and move forward.
• A website with all the information teacher would need to start their coding experience and would provide them with links and tools to start coding.

Maybe it will be a combination of all of these and then present it to teachers when convenient, or make it easily available to them via teacher-librarians. A website would be easier to manage and share and the resources would be in one place. With my rationale and learner considerations in place, I will try a few of these options and see which one works best.

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“A Beginner’s Guide to Teaching Kids Coding (Even When You Don’t Know How to Code).” CodaKid, 11 Oct. 2017, codakid.com/a-beginners-guide-to-teaching-kids-coding-even-when-you-dont-know-how-to-code/.

“A Modern, Open Source Code Editor That Understands Web Design.” Brackets, brackets.io/.

Burke, David. “Professor Warns That Computer Coding in Classrooms May Not Pan out | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 29 Aug. 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/coding-teachers-schools-1.3740004.

Coles, Terri. “Newfoundland Teachers Learn Coding – and What It Could Mean for the next Generation | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 22 July 2018, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/coding-teachers-classroom-create-code-teach-1.4751366.

Comisar, Shannon. “Unplugged Coding Activity.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 Dec. 2016, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p89b0RFQcTY.

“Computer Sciencewithout a Computer.” CS Unplugged, csunplugged.org/en/.

Cummings, Nancy, et al. “Codesters.” Codesters, http://www.codesters.com/?lang=en.

Diracles, Alexandra. “Coding in the Classroom: 6 Tips to Get Even Reluctant Teachers-and Students-Started – EdSurge News.” EdSurge, EdSurge, 27 Dec. 2018, http://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-01-17-coding-in-the-classroom-six-tips-to-get-even-reluctant-teachers-and-students-started.

“Educators.” Scratch, scratch.mit.edu/educators.

“Homepage | Minecraft: Education Edition.” Minecraft, education.minecraft.net/.

“Teaching Code.” Canada Learning Code, http://www.canadalearningcode.ca/teaching-code/.