Year of code

[administrator]

Their site is down after appearing on Newsnight last night:
http://www.yearofcode.org/

Apparently people can learn to code in a day and teachers are then going to upskills our brats to be computer geniuses:

[suityou01]

Their site is down after appearing on Newsnight last night:
http://www.yearofcode.org/

Apparently people can learn to code in a day and teachers are then going to upskills our brats to be computer geniuses:

Give me a D ..... Give me another D ...... Give me an O ...... etc etc

[DaveB]

Their site is down after appearing on Newsnight last night:
http://www.yearofcode.org/

It's not down, thats example XML for people to learn from

[suityou01]

Gisajob, I could do that.

Gowon.

Gisajob.



<ZG in Yosser Hughes mode>

Go and play with your diodes, you.

[administrator]

It's not down, thats example XML for people to learn from

At least its serving XML now, was completely down last night. The end of the YouTube vid is an interview with Lottie Dexter, the Director of Year of Code. Apparently if she had been taught coding at school then she could have made her own website and app for her business and saved herself a fortune. Coding really is that easy, once you have had a few lessons in it you know server architecture, the domain name system, HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc - and that is before you have got into App development. You need a degree just to get an app through the sodding Apple App Store, let alone to make the sodding thing. A completely unrealistic view IMO

And why spend half a million to teach thousands of teachers to code when you could spend a fraction of that on a web-based training program, stick the kids in front of that and they would learn more than they would through watching their teachers fumble and lie through trying to deliver training on something that they really know nothing about. All they need to do is point them to the HTML lessons on CodeAcademy. Job done!

Shameful waste of money.

[administrator]

Gisajob, I could do that.

Gowon.

Gisajob.



<ZG in Yosser Hughes mode>

Learn to code in a day and you'll be sorted! Not sure you will be able to secure work with a scouse accent though...

[suityou01]

So what you saying then? Not a fan?

[DirtyDog]

And why spend half a million to teach thousands of teachers to code when you could spend a fraction of that on a web-based training program, stick the kids in front of that and they would learn more than they would through watching their teachers fumble and lie through trying to deliver training on something that they really know nothing about. All they need to do is point them to the HTML lessons on CodeAcademy. Job done!

Shameful waste of money.

Maybe they should try Codecademy instead?

The primary school where my children go have bought in a load of set lesson plans etc. because they need to teach coding and they haven't got the experience to do it themselves. Year 5 and 6 are using Scratch, which is pretty good for the kids to get something working quickly; I don't know what the younger ones are doing.

There are significant benefits to learning to code, even if people don't go into computing at all. At the most basic level, learning to program teaches that if you have a complex task, breaking it down into simple units that can be tackled easily is the best approach - a skill which works well whatever the children do as a job in later life.

[doodab]

I think it's possible to pick up the basic structure of a computer langauge to the point where one can write programs in a day or two.

Learning to code to a high level and the associated background knowledge of maths and comp sci is obviously a whole different ball game but if you can teach someone who can barely count maths and physics to a level standard in their school career then it ought to be possible to teach them computer programming as well. Whether we should is debateable.

[minestrone]

There are significant benefits to learning to code, even if people don't go into computing at all. At the most basic level, learning to program teaches that if you have a complex task, breaking it down into simple units that can be tackled easily is the best approach - a skill which works well whatever the children do as a job in later life.

You can teach that in woordwork and lets face it for the general population that is massively more useful to know than printing the alphabet backwards with some ropey perl code.