Did you notice that our kids are smarter with technology than we are? They are amazing with games, more efficiently with maps while you drive and know how to search better in Google! A quiet revolution is taking place in the background that have made vital for us to teach our children to code. We are already living in a world dominated by software. Your telephone calls go over software-controlled networks; your television is delivered over the internet; people don’t buy maps anymore, they use the web; we all shop online. Do you realize that technology is all pervasive? Information driven automation has taken over to make our lives more luxurious, safer…and the list continues.
The coming generation will be even more digital & Tech savvy. Soon, your house would be controlled with software, some of your medical care would be delivered over the web and self-driving cars are almost on roads now. In all the above situations software is the bond between devices and us. Today, coding is the only unified language of our world.
“Estonia, with a population of 1.3 million people, now has launched a nationwide scheme to teach school kids from the age of seven to 19, how to write code.”
OSSCube, an open source IT solutions provider, gears up to the new world order, and has recently initiated its program “Code for Kids”. OSSCube invites its own techies to come forward and Teach the kids how to code.
CODE? WHAT IF THE KID IS NOT INTERESTED in coding…Fair question, but interestingly it’s not about CODING or software writing but Computational thinking. Computational thinking is how software engineers solve problems. It combines mathematics, logic and algorithms, and teaches you a new way to think about the world.
“Everybody in this world should learn how to program a computer…because it teaches you how to think.” – Steve Job
Computational thinking teaches you how to tackle large problems by breaking them down into a sequence of smaller, more manageable problems. It allows you to tackle complex problems in efficient ways that operate at huge scale. It involves creating models of the real world with a suitable level of abstraction, and focus on the most pertinent aspects. It helps you go from specific solutions to general ones. Fields as diverse as mechanical engineering, fluid mechanics, physics, biology, archeology and music are applying the computational approach. In business, we are beginning to understand that markets often follow rules that can be discerned using computational analysis.
Computational thinking is a skill that everyone should learn. Even if one never become a professional software engineer, they would benefit from knowing how to think this way. It would help you understand and master technology of all sorts and solve problems in almost any discipline.
“In fifteen years we’ll be teaching programming just like reading and writing. We’ll be looking back and wondering why we didn’t do it sooner.” – Mark Zukerberg
GOVERNMENTS AROUND THE WORLD ARE REALIZING THIS EVERY DAY!
Last year, the UK government took a bold step by adding coding into the core school curriculum. From this year onwards, your children would be exposed to Boolean logic and bring home words like Ruby and Objective C. The challenge is that few parents (and not all teachers) really understand what coding is all about.
OSSCube has introduced this voluntary workshop initially to be done on one-half Saturday every month for 5-6 months. The first set of workshop is meant for kids between 5-8 years of age and is limited to 10-12 kids. The response has been amazing and the way kids are able to bring pieces together to create a logic and give directions to robots through code is phenomenal.
The workshop introduces code.org, MIT scratch, some cool gizmos, robots and other games to teach kids coding, logic in a fun way. And it is an amazing experience for each trainer to work with these kids.
Education is shifting the focus from learning computing language to the digital building process itself, a world of creativity has been unleashed! Let us catch ‘em young and imbibe the right mental logic and coding skills to help them boldly step into this digital, dynamic, & future.
What do you think, should our kids learn to code? Let us know…
About The Author
Sachin Khurana is leading the people function at OSSCube and is responsible for complete team member life cycle. An Alumni of Department of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics, gained extensive industry experience spanning Technology Startups, Indian Conglomerate and large MNC’s. He is passionate about technology, Startup, Leadership and innovations in HR and can be connected on Twitter @SachinKhurana05. The article is Co-Authored by Subrata Kar, the social media evangelist, he is reachable at @Subratakar
(This is a guest post contributed on Techstory. Techstory is not responsible for the views expressed or the contents of this post.)
