Ready, Set, Code ... Starting a Code Club in the Elementary

Purpose & objective

The purpose of sharing on this topic is to help add enrichment and engagement opportunities for students. By sharing how simple it can be, and how it can be self-directed I think it takes the pressure off the educator to get it up and running. I am hoping to share how I am continuing to evolve the program and keeping simple enough that anyone can offer this opportunity to their students with little to no coding background. The engagement, creativity, and problem solving that it fosters in students is irreplaceable. I found from running my first session, once I had all the students on and "working", to hear their conversations and see their reactions and focus. It reminded me of the "why" that people are often looking for. Educators, administrators, parents are looking for the "why". Seeing students work on these activities when they have a goal in mind that THEY established, speaks louder than any words that can come out of an innovative, veteran teacher's mouth. Educators will come out of this session knowing how to start as low as kindergarten with coding to start to foster the love of solving puzzles and playing games. It will quickly evolve to meet the needs of any grade level and ability with a variety of apps, and curriculum provided from websites like Code.org. It can transform from playing games to solving problems, found in their classroom, school or community. Much of the curricula for coding that is available now is being created by former Silicon Valley developers. The Article from gettingsmart.com,(http://gettingsmart.com/2015/09/3reasonscodingshouldbeacoresubject/ by Mark Engelberg), states that England has made a push and succeed in making computer science a core subject. ISTE standards are developed in an effort to prepare our students to be competitive in the International work force. This is yet another opportunity to offer a "job readiness" skill, even starting at a young age. Programming can be cross curricular, foster problem solving and critical thinking skills as well as being fun. Students can gain skills in their recreational time (since many schools are not offering it during their day) at no cost, that could put them in a position leaving high school that they would need very little, and rather inexpensive, secondary training/education to be employable in a market that is struggling to fill lucrative positions with qualified, self driven, motivated individuals. Participants will leave this session with an initial plan to use with their class or with their school to help start a coding club to help expose students to coding and foster the job ready skills that are going to help put their students ahead of the rest now and in their bright future. I have successfully duplicated this Code Club at the elementary level in 7 schools for 5 years now. Looking forward to starting our third year and continuing to grow the program I have presented on this topic at a State and National Conference to date.

Supporting research

https://code.org/promote/pa http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2014/06/computer_science_is_newest_cor.html http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/07/29/nyc schoolsusevideogamesteachcomputer- coding
http://my.umbc.edu/groups/webdev/posts/44439