Parent to Parent
It’s exciting to see we’re coming up on our sixth year in business. I’m even more excited to tell you about our upcoming online course for 3rd-5th graders. First, I wanted to tell you a story.
TechWise started out for me as a way to do something fun with my oldest son. I am a software engineer and knew that there were some good tools (designed for kids) to make games and animations. I thought he would have fun and was sure that I would have fun during the process. I also knew that computer programming was a very high-demand job and paid well. During our initial sessions, I began to see the power of coding to do so much more.
I began researching how we, human beings, learn. As a father of four, I was able to directly see the various stages of development in my own children. The more I got into the research of Educational Psychology, the more I was convinced that coding was an answer to many deficits in learning:
- The learner gets immediate, correctable feedback. You can quickly change or modify your code to address any “bugs”.
- Mistakes are part of the process and encouraged. We call it debugging or troubleshooting in programming. Making mistakes allows us to have a deeper understanding of the work. Looking back on my academic career, I remember the problems I got wrong more than the problems I got right.
- In order to code a character or robot, the students must become the teacher. We know you need a deep knowledge of a subject to teach it to others. Students must break complex problems down into their fundamental pieces to teach a computer how to solve them.
- Learning is fun. This is not just a platitude or side benefit. We learn things better when we enjoy the process. We learn things better when we want to research them on our own.
- Coding is not just about creating computer scientists. Coding, if taught properly, can cross over into every other subject. Typically, it’s associated only with math, but the problem-solving framework behind computer science (Computational Thinking) can be applied to any subject.
I experienced this firsthand as a father.
My oldest son has been an anxious kid all his life. Maybe it’s being the first-born. Maybe our lack of parental knowledge contributed. Who knows? What I do know is that being stuck on a problem caused a mini shut down. He has a lot of his mom’s genes so he’s a smart kid, but if the problem wasn’t in his current skill set, then struggling through to find the answer was likely not going to happen.
I had a proud dad moment as I watched him code his own video game in Roblox this past year (after years of trying and learning programming). His game didn’t work right away and there were several bugs. However, each time, he came up with solutions to these problems and researched them on his own. If that solution didn’t work, he found another. If he didn’t understand how something worked, he read articles and created a completely different game with which to experiment. I would sometimes give general guidance, but his solutions were often a completely different way of solving it than my own (YES!).
Coding has given him the toolset of knowing he doesn’t have to know all of the answers right away. However, he is developing the methods to figure out the answers on his own. That’s what I want for all children and why I’m so passionate about teaching coding to children at a very young age. That’s what I focus on in our new online course.
About that course, I’m excited to tell you it’s going live on June 1! School is wrapping up, and you might be looking for something for your kids to do. After the school year we’ve experienced, you might be concerned about subject retention. These are all valid concerns.
Our online course is for beginner coders, grades 3 through 5, and we’ll be using Scratch as the delivery. Students will be able to create a gravity-based game, like Angry Birds. There are a little over 2 hours of video instruction, broken up over 10-15 minute lessons, so your child can progress at his or her speed. You can also take the class anywhere with an internet connection so if you have wifi and want to take the class outside, you can.
We are also providing parents a companion course so you can learn along with your child and know what to ask them as they work through it. Learning is the primary goal. The fun just comes with it.
Sincerely,
Ryan Hunter, Co-Founder, TechWise Academy
