Learning Coding
I am going to be teaching coding basics to kids Gr. 1-6 - but I need to teach myself first. I saw an email about LinkedIn Learning where it said you could learn it there, but I can't find it. Where do I start looking?
Answer
LinkedIn Learning has a ton of courses on coding, but they've got everything sorted under what coding language the course is about, rather than just 'coding' - so it's helpful to know what language you want to learn, when you search. Some common beginner ones for adults or high schoolers wanting to learn would be Python, JavaScript, HTML, or CSS.
The language I'd recommend teaching to elementary students is called Scratch. It's got a visual component that's helpful for understanding what you're actually asking the computer to do, and was actually created as a teaching tool. It's super helpful in passing on the kind of thinking you need to use if you start moving on to the more 'advanced' languages.
On LinkedIn Learning, here's the course for Scratch. It's just called "Learning Scratch" if you can't follow the link for some reason. The Scratch website itself also has tutorials for doing specific things that might be useful to structure a program around.
A word of caution: even with the visual element to it, Scratch (and any other coding language) needs a pretty strong basis in reading before you can start to make anything happen. Grade 1s and 2s can get kind of frustrated and disruptive in this situation, in my experience.
With that in mind, my recommendation would be to request the NLLS Ozobot kit if you'd like to teach coding to kids who don't yet have a strong reading foundation. Ozobots respond to colours and lines, so you don't have to know how to read or write. They have some lesson plans here for different age groups: https://ozobot.com/educate/lessons/
Best of luck with your coding!
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