Monthly Archives: August 2013

scratch game
education, STEM

Learn to code; Code to Learn

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What do kids learn today?

Unfortunately not much beyond memorizing some facts and figures.

With the No Child Left Behind policy which is still in effect; Teachers are not allowed to teach anything beyond core curriculum.. That leaves much to be desired.

The California School system recognizes this shortfall and has a proposal before the Dept of Education for Next Generation Science Standards.

Alas, this process is lengthy and will take a minimum of 2 years from ratification ( maybe as early as Sept 2016)  before curriculum is actually introduced into our children’s classrooms.

TechsCool uses MIT’s Scratch programming language to teach kids to code.

What do students learn as they create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art with Scratch?

For one thing, they learn mathematical and computational ideas that are built into the Scratch experience. As students create programs in Scratch, they learn core computational concepts such as iteration and conditionals. They also gain an understanding of important mathematical concepts such as coordinates, variables, and random numbers

Please see the link below

http://scratched.media.mit.edu/sites/default/files/Learning%20with%20Scratch.pdf

 

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Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media

STEM

Fundraiser Time – Lets write some computer Games!!

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Please click here and donate what you can.

http://www.razoo.com/br/causes/Techscool-Kickoff-1?fb_ref=emzH3STZy

Did you know that the number of high schools offering AP computer science classes is down 35 percent since 2005?

 

 

Did you know that– The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that by 2020 there will be more than 1.4 million computing-related job openings.

 

Did you know that;;At current rates, however, only 30 percent of those jobs can be filled with U.S. computing bachelor’s graduates

 

I’d like to address that gap with starting a computer programming school

 

I will teach programming concepts  using the MIT developed program named Scratch to to kids 9-18. So they can write computer games and learn 21st century skills, like analyzing, logical reasoning, and collaboration.

 

I limit class size and ensure that all kids learn and have fun learning about computer concepts and themselves at the age in their lives when they are thirsty for knowledge..