Why Teaching Kids How to Code Is Important

28 Sep

28 Sep, 2021
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Source : Admin

Why Teaching Kids How to Code Is Important

Why it is so critical to teach kids to learn to code

In 2014, programming was introduced in English schools for children from the age of five and in 2015, Australia followed by adding coding to the new digital technologies curriculum for children from the age of seven and up. Over in the US, code.org aimed for preparing 495,000 new teachers to teach computer science for grades K-12 by the end of 2016.

Coding or computer programming is the act of using languages to instruct a computer to perform functions and more schools are seeing the importance of teaching this skill to young students all over the world.

Why is this subject currently receiving so much attention and why is it so critical for kids to learn how to code?

The world is controlled by technology

It’s hard to imagine a life without software usage today. When we wake up in the morning we use our digital alarm clock, we make phone calls that are software-controlled, we are constantly connected to a network via our phone or computer, we make road trips based on a digital navigation system, we shop online, download films onto our tablets, we use programmed machines to produce our clothes, interiors, food and other objects. All of the above have been programmed by a developer and since these technologies play such a large role in modern life, we need more people who understand how they work, not only for future job opportunities but also during their current education. Schools are now starting to use devices rather than books as educational tools which makes it crucial that our children know how to operate them

Jobs of the Future

The COO of Government Relations at Code.org (an organization that primarily helps students in America learn computer science) has announced that computed-oriented jobs are needed four times more than any other profession in the states. In fact, their numbers go as far as stating that America has 530,472 computing occupations available right now including job titles like Software applications developer, Computer systems analyst, Web developer, Computer programmer and Computer systems engineer.

So where did all these available jobs come from? And why aren’t they being filled? The answer is that the IT market is growing faster than we are educating people to manage it. Even though a great deal is being done to introduce computer science subjects into the education system, many teachers are yet to be trained to teach it. The American Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasted that 400,000 students would graduate with a computer science degree in 2015 and by that time, the demand for jobs in the relevant field would be 1.4 million.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, also recognized that there’s a huge demand in the current market:

"Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren’t enough people who are trained and have these skills today.

Problem Solving Skills

Coding isn’t hard. Instead, it involves a lot of troubleshooting which is called debugging in coding terms. Debugging is the act of identifying and correcting errors in the code during software or hardware development. This is done by going through the written code carefully via a debugging tool or component of the program used. Sometimes the tool can provide clues on what the error might be related to. The programmer can then use a search engine to find already existing coding examples or documentation that might work well as a solution. In many cases, there are coding snippets on forums that can be put together with their own code in order to find the answers to the error.

This technique doesn’t only teach children how to solve problems in IT, it can also be applied to develop new creative ways of thinking in their professional or personal lives.

Get the parents and companies to understand the importance of teaching kids how to code