The 2015 prediction post is a staple so I will incorporate a prediction into a post with a more general purpose. My prediction is that the Hour of Code will prove to be another education fad.
This is an ed tech blog and this prediction may seem sacrilegious to the true believers so I should explain my logic. I would suggest that we have seen this movie before. A few decades ago we had the original coding push – think LOGO and Seymour Papert. There is a great literature out there for those who want to investigate. What are presently being promoted as benefits were carefully investigated based on educator attempts to teach LOGO.
Multiple goals were proposed for spending class time on programming:
- coding is a vocational skill
- coding removes the mystery from technology
- coding develops content area skills (e.g., math)
- coding develops higher level thinking skill
Research (I am sorry but data does matter) demonstrated that most students exposed to the amount of programming schools could provide accomplished few of these goals. The “coding teaches about technology” argument was removed by the ed tech facilitators who began to promote the mantra – it is about the learning and not the technology. Computer literacy was assumed or argued to be developed as part of more content area based activities.
What I am describing here is not anti-coding in any way. I propose the programming be taught as an elective to those who are interested. Real courses allow sufficient time to meet some of the original goals.
Just to make a point and possibly to encourage educator reflection on personal motives I like to make the argument for a different “hands on” activity. I propose the teachers consider the educational potential of cultivating a school garden. It may sound strange, but it is more common than many might expect. Gardening removes some of the mystery of where our food comes from (a kind of food literacy) and deals directly with issues of nutrition (pretty hard not to accept the importance of improving general understanding of nutrition). Gardening works well as a way to investigate science (biology and chemistry) and can easily focus on data collection and analysis (math) and writing. For some, agriculture represents a vocational skill and some would argue exercise. It is a great life-long activity. From experience, I can suggest that one of the major challenges for teachers is maintaining the garden during the summer months. My point is that the relevance arguments can be made for multiple topics
The reality is the classroom time is limited. Efforts to increase time as might involve flipping the classroom and home work are meeting with resistance. Efforts to engage all students with shallow experiences – a little bit of this and a little big of that – are ineffective and wasteful. If you promote coding, the productive route would seem to be making the argument that coding should replace something. This seems to me to be the only honest approach. The enthusiasm of addition is naive unless the issue of the time available is addressed.
