Professional Learning for Busy Educators

Many educators across the world will be inspired to engage their students in a coding lesson this week, as December 3-9 is Code.org’s annual Hour of Code event. Coding is not only great as an elective or extra activity, it can also provide an avenue to apply and deeply engage in mathematical concepts. Perhaps we should consider including coding as part of our mathematics explorations more often!

For instance, our board member, Mike Lefkowitz wrote about how mathematics provides the foundation for the other STEM subjects, including science, technology and engineering. Similarly, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Matt Larson, made a compelling argument that math education is STEM education. So maybe it makes sense to build these skills in conjunction with one another, and support students in identifying those connections.

Other articles have also explored upon how coding can help students make sense of the eight mathematical practices, and here I endeavor to showcase more examples and anecdotes from colleagues working in technology.

Are you wondering what coding means for your classroom? Join us for a look at how to include computational thinking into your teaching.

Explore the vocabulary of coding and the opportunities for offline activities. Showing cross-curricular links and real world application, this webinar will use both Discovery Education Coding and freely available resources to support the teaching and learning of computing.

Inside The MagPi magazine #117

- **Build a Raspberry Pi Smart Garden.** Automate your plants, power up your patio, and have fun with outdoor gadgets. Have fun in the sun with your microcomputer.

- **High-end audio special.** Set up a whole house audio system with Raspberry Pi.

- **Monitoring shipwrecks.** Makers in Athens use Raspberry Pi to keep track of underwater archaeological sites.

- **Emulate a C64 with Pico.** How Raspberry Pi Pico is used to emulate Commodore’s classic computer.

- **TARDIS treasure hunt.** Use Raspberry Pi and LEGO to create a Doctor Who-themed treasure party.

- **WIN! Five Argon EON NAS stations are up for grabs.**

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As well as being male, I’m also a passionate teacher who has noticed some very gender-specific behaviours when working with pupils. For example, I once gave Maths doodle books to my class for showing their working out. The boys’ books looked like an arithmetic"Do young girls take a dislike to coding because it can be a messy process with plenty of chances to get it wrong?" grenade had gone off within the pages, but the girls could have placed theirs back in the cellophane for a full refund! It was nothing to do with the fact that they couldn’t do the equations. It seemed to be more around not wanting to show those failed attempts. Perfection was the key, and the messy risk-taking that proceeded was nowhere to be seen. For this reason, they loved the table whiteboards because they wipe clean every time.


So is this behaviour symptomatic of why there is such a scary deficit in women taking up coding as a career choice? Do young girls take a dislike to coding because it can be a messy process with plenty of chances to get it wrong? I believe it’s certainly one factor, but think the problem stems from a number of culprits.

Nothing is cuter than pictures of kids sitting at their computers, mastering skills their parents never dreamed of. And nothing is more popular than the current idea that all our children should learn to code.

"Most jobs in the future will most likely have some sort of connection to coding," Navdeep Bains, the federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, told a room full of children assembled for a recent photo op. He was there to announce a $50-million initiative to teach coding to young people. "Some of you may develop incredible apps," he beamed.

Next to babies, politicians love innovation more than anything. Innovation invariably means high tech and computers. And the hottest innovation in education these days is teaching kids to code. Coding skills, we're told, are a fundamental building block of 21st-century literacy – right up there with reading, writing and arithmetic. Coding skills will make people more employable and the nation more competitive.