Last year at the New Schools Venture Fund meeting, while I was
visiting the d-school at Stanford, Bob Lenz from Envision
Schools went to Facebook. When I saw Bob afterwards, he said,
“These companies are desperate for people who can code. They are
starting people with coding skills at $100k per year. Shouldn’t
our students learn to do this?” It sure seemed like it to me.
It’s not just an economic argument, of course. While almost
everyone knows how to consume content off of computers, not that
many are learning how to make the computer do what they want.
Producing with technology is key. So I love these new videos
from code.org. A few folks have asked me for some resources on
how to learn to code and how to help students learn to code.
Here are a few of my favorites right now. 1. Turtle Art If you
are my age, you may remember learning logo on an Apple II+
computer. Turns out there are several more modern versions of
Logo, and one of them, focused on helped kids make art while
learning programming, is called T