John Wark — Design Principles for a High School Coding Curriculum

Slides and notes for John Wark’s lightning talk at Click 2014.

John is the founder of Nashville Software School.

Transcript

1. Design Principles for a High School Coding Curriculum John Wark Nashville Software School 1 Saturday, March 8, 14
2. Accidental Educator • Started programming in 1971 • Founded Nashville Software School 2012 • Advisory boards for NACS, Overton H.S. IT Academy, Stratford H.S. Gaming/Simulation Academy • Consulting with Williamson Co Schools to design a four year multi-track cross-disciplinary curriculum integrating Apps and Arts into regular h.s. curriculum for reboot of MCHS • contact: wark.john@gmail.com 2 Saturday, March 8, 14
3. HANDS ON 3 Saturday, March 8, 14 learn by doing constructionism over instructionism get kids coding - the sooner the better deal with the boring stuff later big influence on selection of tools
4. MAKE IT FUN 4 Saturday, March 8, 14 Hard fun - fun is not a synonym for easy it ain’t math coding games is still coding get them hooked - there’s lots of time for the comp sci/abstract stuff later
5. MAKE SOMETHING 5 Saturday, March 8, 14 Programming is for building things - so build something Solve problems Do projects - problem-based learning build students’ portfolios
6. MISTAKES ARE GOOD 6 Saturday, March 8, 14 you can’t get it right without getting it wrong
7. BLENDED LEARNING 7 Saturday, March 8, 14 use online tools/sites for core content instruction flipped classroom and/or station rotation - see http://www.christenseninstitute.org/ blended-learning-model-definitions/ let kids self-pace as much as possible use multiple modalities - let’s kids explore how they best learn (so they can learn to learn)
8. Problems • A lot of what I just said is very hard within the top-down mandated curriculum guidelines and approved course standards • K-12 education establishment is not familiar with and in some cases very uncomfortable with technology • School bureaucracy moves very slowly and has huge impedance mismatch with the pace of change in technology • Any programmer worth a darn can make two or three times more money coding than teaching 8 Saturday, March 8, 14