So I now have a new favorite video!  If you don't watch anything else, you need to watch this one because it is so inspirational!  This video was produced by Code.org and starts out with Steve Jobs, creater of Microsoft talking about getting his first computer at 13 and how his first thing that he programmed was Tic-Tac-Toe.  It then goes through so many famous people from the inventor of Twitter, to Mark Zuckerburg, to famous NBA Basketball Players explaining their first computer programming experiences.  They have people of different genders, races, professions . . . someone everyone can relate to!  Mark Zuckerburg describes his first time programming as just "making something fun" and then he kept adding on to it.  What a great video for both students and educators to watch to be inspired to give coding and programming a try.  My favorite quote was "Programming is the closest thing we have to a super power!"

This is another amazing video that I think educators should watch and then share with their students!  Google engineers go through and explain how they use computational thinking in their jobs. They begin by explaining that at Google, computational thinking consists of 3 things: decomposition, pattern recognitin, and algorithmic design.  They go on to explain how these are all used in the creation of Google Earth and Google Maps.  They go through how they had to make both of these programs "real world" and could not "make up" any of the information and all that the programming entailed. My favorite quote from this video was, "Thinking computational is a lot more like art than math - like a blank canvas and you get to create something beautiful out of it!"  Such powerful words to share with students who might be nervous (like me) to try out computer programming! Between this video and the other one I shared, we should all feel empowered to try something new!

This article was written to answer 3 basic questions: Why teach coding? Who should teach it? How can teachers get started?  The article explains how coding is behind so much of what we interact with today and that learning coding at an early age can be an empowering experience for students.  It helps our students get a better understanding of how our world works and sets them up for success to help shape our digital future.  It explains that coding is basically writing out steps for a computer to follow to perform a task and it goes through ALL of the reasons why coding is an important skill to know.  Everything from problem solving skills, future jobs, and just fun (and everything in between!) Coding is a skill that can be taught as early as 5 years old and it is relevant in every subject area.  The article finishes out by giving teachers links to the resources they need to get their students started out in coding.